Wednesday, 12 September 2001
Eventually I couldn’t watch anymore, and since my throat was sore from grit and crying, I couldn’t talk anymore. Unlike some of my friends, I didn’t go to bed wondering if we’d be attacked again and I’d die in my sleep, but I did go to bed wondering what the city would be like when I woke up. Some of the relief efforts went on working all night, but some couldn’t and would pick up in the morning. In any case, they were still refusing to give casualty estimates, and we all knew we couldn’t get the full effect for quite a while.
A friend wakes me at 7:00 a.m. calling from Wales to see if I’m okay. From some of the reactions and calls and emails I’m getting, it seems the news outside of the city seems to make it sound as though everything south of 14th Street is gone, which isn’t true. Before going back to bed, I needed to walk into the living room and look out the window, but they’re still gone. I find myself checking over and over, and so does the rest of the city. I guess I just imagined the smoke would clear, and they’d still be there, like they’ve been the whole time I’ve been here, but the smoke has cleared enough that I could see through, and there are no twin towers. I have some playing cards pre-1972 with a skyline without the World Trade Center. I remember visiting it when it had just opened. I remember taking a day off work to visit it with an out-of-town guest just a few months ago. Everyone I know of so far got out, but everyone I know, including me, could have been there. We all went there regularly, and since it’s a tourist site, we all have strong happy personal memories of it.
Back to the play-by-play impressions. A different friend Tim (not the one in Wales) comes by on blades. He was trying to get downtown again, but it’s still barricaded. Out my windows, you can only see police, emergency vehicles, and people on bikes, rollerblades, etc. There are still no cars. Tim also skated downtown first thing yesterday morning, and he took pics and some video as he went. He posted them on his personal website, and got 22,000 hits in one day, so the server’s been intermittent and overloaded, but I’m still recommending it since I didn’t take pictures. He did a radio interview for a station in Minnesota this morning, so some reports you get outside the city might be him. His video and pictures are quite moving, but I wish we’d taken photos when we were downtown, because I still haven’t seen anything on the news like what we saw, and now it’s all different and anyway it’s blocked off. Paul and Rob, with whom I went yesterday, both had cameras, but we were all too overwhelmed to use them. I think they also felt guilty — that it was too personal and horrible or that taking pictures was morbid rubbernecking. I felt that way too, but I wish we hadn’t. Tim didn’t get as close to the rubble as we did, but he got there earlier and got a much better view of the collapses. He saw people jumping from the buildings, he estimates from about half-way up. He said they could see black blobs falling, and they only realized some were people because they fell straight down instead of twisting in the air like the debris. We were guessing some were just panicking or preferred to die jumping than in smoke, but he said some were carrying things from their offices, so maybe they thought they’d survive the jump.
I check my emails, and a few out-of-towners took me up on my offer to try to track down people here, so I make the calls. Everyone I can reach is okay, but I still can’t reach a few people. I send a mass email to the NY jugglers because I’m getting emails about them from all over the world. I’ll set up another page to say who I’ve heard from. Several people who work there are all OK — Ezra, Scott, and Mark all either got out or didn’t make it to work.
The news on the television is bad. The hospitals are empty; the triage centers are still waiting for patients. Giuliani is trying to make arrangements to get food into the city — that was a problem the last few blizzards. Of course there’s nothing in my fridge except olives and beer, but I don’t go stock up. Yesterday I saw lines at bodegas and ATMs. Today I don’t.
Tim and I discuss the strange religious rhetoric the nation is adopting. Well, strange to me. I heard a reporter on CNN say that even if you didn’t believe in God before this, that now you were forced to look to some type of higher power. Tim heard a reporter ask someone on the radio whether he was religious, and the man answered, “I am now.” Well, it seems to me it’s still about crazy people and just because I don’t understand it I’m not making up explanations. I feel so helpless, but I don’t think praying is going to make me feel better, and making the person doing it feel better is about all the good I can imagine praying does. New York doesn’t need prayers right now, we need blood and construction vehicles and food. On the other hand, I guess I wish there were a higher power, because I can’t think of anyone I trust less to be in control than George W. It’s funny, he even makes Giuliani look good. One of my friends noticed that Bush doesn’t mention the World Trade Center or the Pentagon in his speeches — it’s all just “the incident” or “this attack on our country.” I wonder if they wrote the speech for him as an all-purpose before anything even happened. Giuliani is at least more sympathetic, but his is a different job. He doesn’t need to move to rhetoric, he’s got work to do, and Bush doesn’t know who his enemy is. It was also funny to see Hilary Clinton so presidential, talking big policy and reaction and Chuck Schumer so sympathetic and personal. Oddly, the best person I’ve heard was Tom Clancy. He said that even though people were blaming Muslims, that the Koran prohibits suicide. Therefore, the terrorists were not Muslims, just crazy people, and crazy people call themselves all kinds of things.
Didn’t I say I’d try to keep to the play-by-play? Well, no one has ever accused me of following a straight storyline.
We leave to try to get breakfast. My building is on the corner of 14th and Hudson, and the police do not let us turn the corner from my building to get south. The police are all very friendly and not very officious. My windows face Hudson (west) and south. I always wished my address were on Hudson, but since it’s on 14th, I can’t get through the blockades. We skate uptown to find an open diner. On the way there, the strangest thing for us might not even be noticeable if you weren’t from here: the streets are empty. There are still some sirens and emergency vehicles, but few other cars. I see ambulances from Pleasantville, Mamaroneck, and even Rochester, which is pretty far away — we go to a convention there every year, and I always think it’s a six-hour drive, and Jaime always says it’s an eight-hour drive, so I don’t know for sure, but it’s far. Unfortunately, few of the ambulances seem to be in any hurry. Most have lights flashing but no sirens, which may also be because there’s little other traffic to need to move out of the way and hundreds of police everywhere to stop it for them when necessary.
After eating we head back west to the river. I want to try to see the aircraft carriers and battleships and stuff. There are police officers (or trainees or something) maybe every twenty feet along the west side highway, and clumps of them at each intersection. We can’t see the naval stuff, but we do see maybe thirty humvees and other military transport vehicles driving down the West Side Highway. I think they’re going to the Javitz Center. Maybe they set up some kind of military command operation there. The kids in the hummers are standing up and taking pictures of the city and of us as they drive in. Many of them wave or give us peace signs — well, I interpret it as peace. Tim is British, so he associates it as a victory sign. It’s surprising to discover I don’t feel invaded, I feel relieved. I am those children in Kuwait. We wave and welcome them and give them the peace sign back. The Intrepid Air and Space Museum (on board a decommissioned aircraft carrier with military planes on it) is empty and guarded. Normally there would be multi-block lines waiting to board on a day like this. It’s eerie to think about it defending the city.
Tim says the camouflage doesn’t really work for the urban environment. I say what should they wear, business casual? He’s laughing, but my first thought was what should they wear, business suits? Then I thought that all the suit-wearers in the city had just been killed.
We skate farther uptown and find a pier to look south. We can’t see much, but it’s still smoky over downtown, and the view is still missing its major markers. There are quite a few old ruined piers and whatnot along the river, and we do joke that we could sell pictures of “The wreckage they won’t show you on CNN.” It’s a beautiful day, but everything seems wrong. We see lots of heavy construction equipment heading downtown. It’s so strange to see dumptrucks and forklifts on the West Side Highway, which is normally closed to commercial vehicles. What would Robert Moses say?
We cut back through central park, and it’s a beautiful day, and since so many businesses are closed, the park is packed. Tim says it feels like a Sunday only more so because in New York businesses are normally open on Sundays. We skate back to Tim’s through Times Square, and the signs, which were black last night, are back on. I’m not sure whether they were off in mourning or as a black-out precaution, but it’s reassuring to see them still there. All kinds of familiar sites are making me choked up. The tickers have nothing to announce though, because all the markets are closed, so they just keep scrolling telephone numbers to call for Morgan Stanley employee info and requests for blood donations. Apparently they are so swamped that they’re only taking type O though, and no English blood (and I was just in England and have A anyway), so we don’t give yet. They have my number.
After stopping at Tim’s to see his videos again and drink water, I skated down Fifth Avenue, which is almost empty. The blocks around the Empire State Building, are all sealed off. I’ve been trying to read more of the police uniforms, and lots of the police I see are apparently Police Academy students, especially on traffic patrol. Even though there are few cars, there are so many emergency vehicles careening around, even miles away, that many intersections have multiple police guarding them. I count ten to twelve officers (or I guess not officers but police people or students or whatever another police rank might be) at a few of the intersections. Many of them are very young and look scared. They also have no idea what they’re doing, and we are made to wait quite a while before we’re allowed to cross the street. Everyone is very nice, though, and it is making me appreciate real New York City cops more.
I’m still not ready to be indoors or alone, so I skate to Rob’s. He’s playing videogames, but his TV is bigger and better than mine with more stations to watch the reports, so I watch with his roommate Paul. The other roommate, Stu, comes home from trying to help a colleague get back into his apartment in Battery Park City. They found a hole in the barricades and made it to Houston, where there are more barricades. I was wondering about that — about whether once you made it past 14th you could go wherever you wanted, but you can’t. So Christopher was allowed through and the others turned around. Christopher actually lives so close, that he shouldn’t have been allowed through anyway, because there’s no access to his building, which is partially destroyed, but he went through and got some pictures. He said the situation was much worse than the media were letting on, but since I’ve been sitting crying at the television for hours, I can’t imagine how it could be worse. While we’re watching, the remainder of Two World Trade Center and One Liberty Plaza both collapse, and buildings Four and Five are in danger. One Liberty Plaza was a commercial building, the old U.S. Steel building, and they were using it as a temporary morgue.
More world leaders are piping in, and Stu announces that we have the support of the French. Even through my tears I realize I was wrong, and there is someone I’d less want in charge than George W.
Rob can’t watch anymore and turns to Walker, Texas Ranger, which I couldn’t watch even if the world weren’t ending so I skate home. I think I’m going to become one of these people who goes everywhere on skates. Skating north earlier, the air was ok, but now the wind is from the south, and I’m facing into it, so it feels smoky or gritty. I pass the Armory, which has blocks of military vehicles around it and lots of soldiers milling about. I also pass crowds at the Salvation Army and at the barricades at 14th and Seventh, which I figure is people trying to get to St. Vincent’s to find out what’s going on.
In the elevator, I run into a neighbor, and I realize I’m afraid to ask. He does eventually, and we start chatting. It turns out he works for Banker’s Trust in Four World Trade Center. That’s one of the buildings that was still on topple-watch last I heard. He was late to work that day so he wasn’t there. All his immediate group has been accounted for, but his company has 1,000 people still missing.
Back at home now, and I am hearing some sirens. Streets below me are still barricaded and empty. I’m very happy to have emails or calls from so many friends who are OK. I’ll post a list for a juggler reference. Phones are still intermittent; some power and relay stations got hit. I’m seeing more Verizon and ConEd trucks on the streets now, so I hope communications will be back up. Several local television and radio stations are knocked out, because their transmitters were on the tower. I haven’t heard of any blackouts though, and the local phone station is making all the payphones free to help people get info to each other. They also now take incoming calls, which they stopped allowing before drug dealers got cell phones and stopped using the beeper/pay phone system anyway.
They keep saying 50,000 people worked in those two buildings, so I’m thinking maybe conservatively 25,000 more worked in the surrounding ones that were destroyed — I’m not even thinking about all the ones that were damaged — four buildings are all the way down as of this writing with two more tottering. I give a best-case scenario of 70,000 people who SURVIVED this — either they weren’t at work or they got out or whatever, and where do they go tomorrow? And what do they do?