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I was on a bus on the FDR Drive approaching the
Brooklyn Bridge exit, on my way to work at the World Trade Center Tower
1. Suddenly, people on the near side of the bus start looking out the
window, shocked. Someone said "A plane just hit the World Trade
Center." I couldn't even believe it, it really didn't register. The
bus driver pulled off at the Brooklyn Bridge exit, stopped the bus, and
told us we had to get off and "Good luck getting home." I got
off the bus and looked up. Only now did this start to sink in, as there
was a gaping black hole in the building, flames rising, and chunks of the
building falling off. I couldn't figure out which tower it was, though,
as I was in too much shock to remember which had the radio antenna. I
tried to get on my cellphone, but it was not working. I walked about a
quarter of a block, found a payphone to call my parents to let them know
I was not in the building when it happened and to ask them to tell me
which tower it was. I suppose at this time I still had some stupid idea
that I would try to get to work if Tower 1 was not the one that was hit.
Of course, at this point, we all thought it was an accident. Anyway,
after I called my father, who hadn't even heard yet, I walked back down
to look at the building. By that time, the second tower was on fire, with
an even worse gaping hole. I started to cry even harder at that point,
because I realized that this could not possibly have been an accident.
People all around me were just staring up at the building in shock, some
in tears, some unable to do more than stare.
Eventually, I started to walk uptown again, with some vague idea of
getting on a subway home. I had a portable MP3 player with an FM radio
with me, so I decided to listen to the news while I was wallking.
Unsurprisingly, and if I had been thinking clearly I would have realized
this, the subways were not running. I did see that local bus service was
still running, so I walked a ways to a bus stop and got on the First
Avenue bus. I was sitting on the bus listening to the radio. Since no one
else on the bus had a radio, I was telling the other passengers what I
was hearing. I told them that the Pentagon had been hit also, and
everybody's faces went even whiter at that. Somewhere around 34th Street,
the news came on that Tower 2 had collapsed. At that news, the bus got
very quiet. Around 50th Street, traffic was so bad that most of us got
out to walk. I walked up a bit, still listening to the news, when I heard
that Tower 1 had also collapsed. At that, I started crying again. Some
very nice man stopped to reassure me, and then I went to find another
payphone to call my parents again. Took me a while to find one, but
eventually I did and called them. Then I walked a little ways further
until traffic had cleared up and got back on a bus the rest of the way
home. All told, it took me two hours to get home that morning.
The rest of the day was spent trying to let people know I was okay. I
couldn't make outgoing calls for hours, but I was able to get some
ingoing calls and so got some news about some of my coworkers who had not
been upstairs at the time of the plane crash. I sent an e-mail to a guy
who used to work for me who had moved to Chicago a couple of months
earlier to let him know I was okay and to find out if he had heard from
anyone else. He had not, at the time, but that got me on an e-mail list
wherein we would all report when we contacted someone, so we had a list
of people who were okay. I basically spent the rest of the day in shock
on the Internet and phone, waiting for news of my coworkers, combing the
survivors lists, crying off and on. I have not, to this time, seen actual
footage of the towers collapsing, and I'm not sure when I will be able to
watch that. It's enough for me to know that my office is completely
obliterated and that hundreds of people I know are dead. I don't think I
can bear to see it on tape.
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