"We kept our masks on": observations from 9/12/01
This is the second part in a series of posts about my personal experiences during, and after, the 9/11 attacks. For the post on the events of September 11, go to "Totally terrorized": observations from 9/11/01.
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Email to family and friends, 9/12/01, 11:04 PM:
Hey y'all - here's a summary of what today was like. Luckily, I haven't had a dramatic near-death experience like some of the people you've heard about on TV (and like I've heard about from a friend of mine - though everyone I know is okay).
Today we woke up and turned on the news to find that there wasn't really much news at all. Last night's story about the van full of explosives trying to blow up the George Washington Bridge (which goes from NJ to N. Manhattan) turned out to be completely false. There weren't many more people rescued than there had been the night before. There just wasn't anything new to make the news - but yesterday had been so bizarre that we all had to wake up and watch a couple hours of the news just to confirm that this all had really happened. Every single time I've seen the buildings collapse on that video, it's been shocking. Every time it reminds me (and everyone else here?) that it actually happened, and wasn't some bizarre dream like the kind of nightmares where you wake up thinking someone you know has died.
I called my work voicemail again just to make sure the message I had heard the night before was still there - it said something like "due to the catastrophic event that happened yesterday, GREY New York will not be opened on Sept. 12 . . ." I went to use the bathroom, and upon coming back to my bedroom, I heard jet noises outside, and realized they must be from the F-16's providing air cover for New York City, because no other planes were allowed to fly over the area (and perhaps even in the whole U.S.?).
We (we: my friend Dan from work, who stayed on the couch because he couldn't get home to Long Island, and me) decided we had to go over to Manhattan and see if we could help. One of Dan's friends works in the WTC, and Monday had been his first day of starting the late (4-midnight) shift. There's thousands of lucky stories like this. We'll never hear the unlucky stories, of course.
We knew we'd at least be able to give blood. On the way to the train station, we could smell a terrible smell - it smelled like burning plastic, but somehow worse. The air was thick with this smell, and with particles in the air, and I remembered seeing the way the smoke seemed to be blowing over to Brooklyn when I was watching TV the night before. We took a train over the Williamsburg Bridge, which goes into Chinatown, which is about 20-25 blocks north of the WTC. As we got out onto the bridge, everyone looked out, and upon seeing the pillar of smoke where the Twin Towers used to be, everyone kind of realized they didn't even know where the Towers usually were. That sounds crazy, but if you listened to the conversations, everyone was pointing and saying things like "was it next to that building with the point on top?" The Trade Center was always the reference point by which you judged where things were in comparison to the south part of Manhattan. Without it, you were really visually confused.
Getting out of the train station in Chinatown was bizarre - it's usually the most crowded part of Manhattan (and perhaps the U.S.?), an insane, annoyingly crowded place packed with cars (many coming over from the nearby Williamsburg Bridge) and people. There was an eerie quiet over the whole area - instead of waiting for hundreds of cars to pass, and then hurriedly running across the street when the WALK light came on, we casually walked diagonally across what is normally one of the most heavily trafficed [sic] intersections in Manhattan. It was like a ghost town. I took a picture of the streets, that's how strange it seemed for them to be so devoid of traffic.
We kept walking SW towards the (former) World Trade Center - going by our understanding of the geography and by the huge cloud of smoke billowing out of the WTC. When I say cloud, understand that we were truly confused at one point, and even had a short disagreement over whether the smoke was actually the smoke, or just a cloud. That's how huge, and high in the sky, this cloud of smoke appeared to be.
Then we came upon a late-30's-something woman wearing an NYPD jacket. We asked her where the police line was (local TV stations had varying information about what part of Manhattan had been closed off - just before leaving, we had heard everything south of 14th Street was closed, which was obviously not true, since we were already about 20 blocks south of there). When we asked the lady cop where the cut-off line was, she asked us why we wanted to go down there. She had been on the site since before the buildings collapsed, with almost no rest, and had witnessed the buildings falling, and several friends and co-workers were still missing. We talked to her for several minutes. She was utterly shaken by what she had seen at the WTC site:
"I've been on the force 20 years this coming January. This is by far the worst I've ever seen. I should've just been a prostitute or a waitress or something - anything would be better than having to see what I've seen in the last 24 hours."
An Asian woman with her kids walked up seconds after the cop had made this shocking statement. The Asian woman wanted to know where she could get a hamburger (which was already kind of an odd request to get from an Asian person in Chinatown), and I guess she thought the policewoman would know. We tried to help her by pointing out a Chinese place we'd passed.
"No, we want a hamburger," she said. A hamburger just seemed like such an absurdly unimportant thing to have, when just 10 or 15 blocks away, there were thousands of people who were dead or dying. I told her that there was a Wendy's open up near the Williamsburg Bridge.
Despite the policeman's warning, we decided we had to keep going SW towards the site. There was something really disturbing about sitting on the couch watching this stuff, with absolutely no power to help, and knowing that it's happening less than a mile away from Brooklyn. That's why we had left, really, and at this point we kind of realized that we had to try to get as close to the WTC site as possible. As we got closer to the site, we saw the police barricade. The dust started to get bad - we'd take sips out of our Poland Springs bottle and spit out the dust that had gotten into our mouths. We pulled our shirts up over our faces - the dust was getting bad. At each barricade, which went all the way across the island on Canal St. (the main street in Chinatown), we asked if they could use any non-medical volunteers. They didn't - but they referred us to several other sites that needed them.
It's hard to explain how crazy the scene was. It looked like something you'd see happening in the Gaza Strip or something. First, these usually-busy streets were empty of cars and people, except for cops, firefighters, other rescue workers, and folks like us who wanted to get near the action and provide help if we could. We saw dozens of cop cars, military convoys, buses, dump trucks full of removed debris (who knows where they took it), and supply trucks - all coming into Lower Manhattan. At one point, we saw Humvees with machine guns mounted on top passing through. The stoplights were meaningless - military men in fatigues were directing traffic. Most of the cops were wearing air filter masks, and by the time we'd worked our way over to the West Side, some cops had offered us masks.
By the time we had gotten to the West Side, with our air filters over our faces, we could see what we thought must be the remains of the Twin Towers. We looked up and saw a skeleton of a steel frame, with smoke obscuring our view. There were signs up on the street corners - "Volunteers - go to corner W. Greenwich and Moore to sign up" "RESCUE WORKERS - FREE FOOD AND WATER AT D'ANGELINO'S PIZZERIA, CORNER OF BROOME AND BROADWAY."
We moved along the edge of the police line, and when we got to the West Side Highway (at the far west side of Manhattan) - there was a big crowd cheering for any new rescue trucks coming in. It was exciting, and a few seconds worth of seeing that cancelled out all the crap you've ever heard about New Yorker being selfish assholes. We decided we had to get up to the volunteer headquarters, which was at the huge convention center 50 blocks or so away. We hitched-hiked a ride up to the Javits Convention Center. The driver, a son-of-a-UN official who sounded like some kind of international playboy ("yah, that's like when there was a bomb threat when I was coming back to New York after going to Ibiza and then L.A. . . ."). He said his sister was a doctor who had told him to leave New York due to the "CRITICAL" asbestos level. Dan and I looked at each other and put our air filters back on over our faces.
At the convention center we signed up to volunteer, but it seemed like they had enough non-medical volunteers. They said they'd call us if they needed us. So we asked where we could give blood. My type, O+, turned out to be in high demand.
We went over to the East Side, taking the crosstown bus - to try to give blood at one of the hospitals that needed blood. As we passed the big shopping areas along 34th Street, it became apparent that many New Yorkers were trying to go on with their lives - getting onto the bus with big Macy's or Foot Locker bags the way you do any other day of the year. We tried to give blood at both the NYU and Bellevue Hospitals on the East Side, but even my in-demand type wasn't in demand, at least for a couple of days. They were all full. It seemed like the dust/smoke from downtown had started to drift up towards Midtown, where we were. Like many of the people near the makeshift rescue centers and hospitals, we kept our air filter masks on when we were on the street. We went into a diner across the street from Bellevue Hospital and ate burgers and fries. Upon leaving, we noticed block after block of city buses lined up and down First Avenue, and we asked a cop again if they needed help with anything at all. The cop cryptically said "Nope, we're just setting up."
Then we walked down the East Side to the East Village, stopping to drink a pint and watch the news at a bar. Police, firemen, doctors, nurses, and other rescue workers streamed past the bar on First Avenue toward Bellevue Hospital, and the TV station said that Bellevue had become the new morgue for the whole disaster site. It was disturbing to think that we'd just eaten right across the street from there. A fireman who had obviously been downtown came into the bar, just as CNN talked about how yet another building downtown had just collapsed and all the firemen had been forced to leave the area. "A lot of my friends and family are missing," he said, and took a shot of Vodka and put back a Heineken. We thanked this guy for working so hard, but he left quickly to go back and join the crowds of workers moving north towards the new morgue at Bellevue.
When we left the bar, we put back on our air filter masks that we'd been wearing all day. Everyone was staring at us. Cute NYU girls wearing Diesel jeans and talking on cell phones would look at us, and seem to say something about how weird it was that we were wearing the masks, even though the smell of the dust (possibly asbestos) was still in the air. It was hard to believe that something that was almost necessary just to breathe a few hours ago (and only a few dozen blocks away) was now being looked at as a strange abnormality. We kept our masks on.
I got back on the subway at 14th Street and got on the train to Brooklyn. As soon as I hit send, I'll walk back into the living room and watch the buildings collapse again, just to make sure this all has really happened. Then I'll go up on the roof and look for the Twin Towers again, just to make sure I'm not crazy or something.
Thad
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See also: "Totally terrorized": observations from 9/11/01, "Missing" signs: observations from 9/13/01, and "This is the morgue": observations from 9/14/01.
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Email to family and friends, 9/12/01, 11:04 PM:
Hey y'all - here's a summary of what today was like. Luckily, I haven't had a dramatic near-death experience like some of the people you've heard about on TV (and like I've heard about from a friend of mine - though everyone I know is okay).
Today we woke up and turned on the news to find that there wasn't really much news at all. Last night's story about the van full of explosives trying to blow up the George Washington Bridge (which goes from NJ to N. Manhattan) turned out to be completely false. There weren't many more people rescued than there had been the night before. There just wasn't anything new to make the news - but yesterday had been so bizarre that we all had to wake up and watch a couple hours of the news just to confirm that this all had really happened. Every single time I've seen the buildings collapse on that video, it's been shocking. Every time it reminds me (and everyone else here?) that it actually happened, and wasn't some bizarre dream like the kind of nightmares where you wake up thinking someone you know has died.
I called my work voicemail again just to make sure the message I had heard the night before was still there - it said something like "due to the catastrophic event that happened yesterday, GREY New York will not be opened on Sept. 12 . . ." I went to use the bathroom, and upon coming back to my bedroom, I heard jet noises outside, and realized they must be from the F-16's providing air cover for New York City, because no other planes were allowed to fly over the area (and perhaps even in the whole U.S.?).
We (we: my friend Dan from work, who stayed on the couch because he couldn't get home to Long Island, and me) decided we had to go over to Manhattan and see if we could help. One of Dan's friends works in the WTC, and Monday had been his first day of starting the late (4-midnight) shift. There's thousands of lucky stories like this. We'll never hear the unlucky stories, of course.
We knew we'd at least be able to give blood. On the way to the train station, we could smell a terrible smell - it smelled like burning plastic, but somehow worse. The air was thick with this smell, and with particles in the air, and I remembered seeing the way the smoke seemed to be blowing over to Brooklyn when I was watching TV the night before. We took a train over the Williamsburg Bridge, which goes into Chinatown, which is about 20-25 blocks north of the WTC. As we got out onto the bridge, everyone looked out, and upon seeing the pillar of smoke where the Twin Towers used to be, everyone kind of realized they didn't even know where the Towers usually were. That sounds crazy, but if you listened to the conversations, everyone was pointing and saying things like "was it next to that building with the point on top?" The Trade Center was always the reference point by which you judged where things were in comparison to the south part of Manhattan. Without it, you were really visually confused.
Getting out of the train station in Chinatown was bizarre - it's usually the most crowded part of Manhattan (and perhaps the U.S.?), an insane, annoyingly crowded place packed with cars (many coming over from the nearby Williamsburg Bridge) and people. There was an eerie quiet over the whole area - instead of waiting for hundreds of cars to pass, and then hurriedly running across the street when the WALK light came on, we casually walked diagonally across what is normally one of the most heavily trafficed [sic] intersections in Manhattan. It was like a ghost town. I took a picture of the streets, that's how strange it seemed for them to be so devoid of traffic.
We kept walking SW towards the (former) World Trade Center - going by our understanding of the geography and by the huge cloud of smoke billowing out of the WTC. When I say cloud, understand that we were truly confused at one point, and even had a short disagreement over whether the smoke was actually the smoke, or just a cloud. That's how huge, and high in the sky, this cloud of smoke appeared to be.
Then we came upon a late-30's-something woman wearing an NYPD jacket. We asked her where the police line was (local TV stations had varying information about what part of Manhattan had been closed off - just before leaving, we had heard everything south of 14th Street was closed, which was obviously not true, since we were already about 20 blocks south of there). When we asked the lady cop where the cut-off line was, she asked us why we wanted to go down there. She had been on the site since before the buildings collapsed, with almost no rest, and had witnessed the buildings falling, and several friends and co-workers were still missing. We talked to her for several minutes. She was utterly shaken by what she had seen at the WTC site:
"I've been on the force 20 years this coming January. This is by far the worst I've ever seen. I should've just been a prostitute or a waitress or something - anything would be better than having to see what I've seen in the last 24 hours."
An Asian woman with her kids walked up seconds after the cop had made this shocking statement. The Asian woman wanted to know where she could get a hamburger (which was already kind of an odd request to get from an Asian person in Chinatown), and I guess she thought the policewoman would know. We tried to help her by pointing out a Chinese place we'd passed.
"No, we want a hamburger," she said. A hamburger just seemed like such an absurdly unimportant thing to have, when just 10 or 15 blocks away, there were thousands of people who were dead or dying. I told her that there was a Wendy's open up near the Williamsburg Bridge.
Despite the policeman's warning, we decided we had to keep going SW towards the site. There was something really disturbing about sitting on the couch watching this stuff, with absolutely no power to help, and knowing that it's happening less than a mile away from Brooklyn. That's why we had left, really, and at this point we kind of realized that we had to try to get as close to the WTC site as possible. As we got closer to the site, we saw the police barricade. The dust started to get bad - we'd take sips out of our Poland Springs bottle and spit out the dust that had gotten into our mouths. We pulled our shirts up over our faces - the dust was getting bad. At each barricade, which went all the way across the island on Canal St. (the main street in Chinatown), we asked if they could use any non-medical volunteers. They didn't - but they referred us to several other sites that needed them.
It's hard to explain how crazy the scene was. It looked like something you'd see happening in the Gaza Strip or something. First, these usually-busy streets were empty of cars and people, except for cops, firefighters, other rescue workers, and folks like us who wanted to get near the action and provide help if we could. We saw dozens of cop cars, military convoys, buses, dump trucks full of removed debris (who knows where they took it), and supply trucks - all coming into Lower Manhattan. At one point, we saw Humvees with machine guns mounted on top passing through. The stoplights were meaningless - military men in fatigues were directing traffic. Most of the cops were wearing air filter masks, and by the time we'd worked our way over to the West Side, some cops had offered us masks.
By the time we had gotten to the West Side, with our air filters over our faces, we could see what we thought must be the remains of the Twin Towers. We looked up and saw a skeleton of a steel frame, with smoke obscuring our view. There were signs up on the street corners - "Volunteers - go to corner W. Greenwich and Moore to sign up" "RESCUE WORKERS - FREE FOOD AND WATER AT D'ANGELINO'S PIZZERIA, CORNER OF BROOME AND BROADWAY."
We moved along the edge of the police line, and when we got to the West Side Highway (at the far west side of Manhattan) - there was a big crowd cheering for any new rescue trucks coming in. It was exciting, and a few seconds worth of seeing that cancelled out all the crap you've ever heard about New Yorker being selfish assholes. We decided we had to get up to the volunteer headquarters, which was at the huge convention center 50 blocks or so away. We hitched-hiked a ride up to the Javits Convention Center. The driver, a son-of-a-UN official who sounded like some kind of international playboy ("yah, that's like when there was a bomb threat when I was coming back to New York after going to Ibiza and then L.A. . . ."). He said his sister was a doctor who had told him to leave New York due to the "CRITICAL" asbestos level. Dan and I looked at each other and put our air filters back on over our faces.
At the convention center we signed up to volunteer, but it seemed like they had enough non-medical volunteers. They said they'd call us if they needed us. So we asked where we could give blood. My type, O+, turned out to be in high demand.
We went over to the East Side, taking the crosstown bus - to try to give blood at one of the hospitals that needed blood. As we passed the big shopping areas along 34th Street, it became apparent that many New Yorkers were trying to go on with their lives - getting onto the bus with big Macy's or Foot Locker bags the way you do any other day of the year. We tried to give blood at both the NYU and Bellevue Hospitals on the East Side, but even my in-demand type wasn't in demand, at least for a couple of days. They were all full. It seemed like the dust/smoke from downtown had started to drift up towards Midtown, where we were. Like many of the people near the makeshift rescue centers and hospitals, we kept our air filter masks on when we were on the street. We went into a diner across the street from Bellevue Hospital and ate burgers and fries. Upon leaving, we noticed block after block of city buses lined up and down First Avenue, and we asked a cop again if they needed help with anything at all. The cop cryptically said "Nope, we're just setting up."
Then we walked down the East Side to the East Village, stopping to drink a pint and watch the news at a bar. Police, firemen, doctors, nurses, and other rescue workers streamed past the bar on First Avenue toward Bellevue Hospital, and the TV station said that Bellevue had become the new morgue for the whole disaster site. It was disturbing to think that we'd just eaten right across the street from there. A fireman who had obviously been downtown came into the bar, just as CNN talked about how yet another building downtown had just collapsed and all the firemen had been forced to leave the area. "A lot of my friends and family are missing," he said, and took a shot of Vodka and put back a Heineken. We thanked this guy for working so hard, but he left quickly to go back and join the crowds of workers moving north towards the new morgue at Bellevue.
When we left the bar, we put back on our air filter masks that we'd been wearing all day. Everyone was staring at us. Cute NYU girls wearing Diesel jeans and talking on cell phones would look at us, and seem to say something about how weird it was that we were wearing the masks, even though the smell of the dust (possibly asbestos) was still in the air. It was hard to believe that something that was almost necessary just to breathe a few hours ago (and only a few dozen blocks away) was now being looked at as a strange abnormality. We kept our masks on.
I got back on the subway at 14th Street and got on the train to Brooklyn. As soon as I hit send, I'll walk back into the living room and watch the buildings collapse again, just to make sure this all has really happened. Then I'll go up on the roof and look for the Twin Towers again, just to make sure I'm not crazy or something.
Thad
-------------------------------------------------------------
See also: "Totally terrorized": observations from 9/11/01, "Missing" signs: observations from 9/13/01, and "This is the morgue": observations from 9/14/01.
posted at 11:07:00 PM | permalink
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