story8369.xml

story8369.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-10-05

That morning , moments after the first plane hit, my manager paged me from her office in Atlanta
(she knew I may have been there) with the words "WTC are you ok".

Was leaving my house anyway , decided to call her from the car and learned a plane hit the WTC
on the radio, tried calling, my cell was not working.

A small plane crashed 500 feet from my house on its way to Teterboro 2 years before, expected the
incident at the WTC was a light aircraft, an accident.

Minutes later the radio station reported another plane hit the WTC, they said they didn't want to
cause any confusion so they couldn't give any further details until they had information that was
confirmed but they think it might be a terrorist act.

Could see the smoke from the towers, on my way to work, it was far worse than any fire I had ever
seen, traffic was delayed as usual in the morning but people were
quiet, no horns or angry drivers, everyone was intent to hear their radio.

When I arrived at my building many people were crying and frightened in the hall and on the elevator,
some faces were red with sadness, others pale, in shock, all were affected their were police stationed
on the elevators.

Inside our office everyone was gathered around the TV watching CNN and looking out the window as
the towers burned, trying to figure out what happened and what will happen next.

Our telephone line weren't working for most calls, with no way to make calls all we could do was
send email, shuffle our papers and wait. Was able to call our site on Hudson St. they were ok,
agreed with the manager to get the guys out of Church St and advised I would also take responsibility
for abandoning the site, was my role to interface with management and customers in person anyway.

Later we watched from our windows in horror and disbelief as the towers collapsed, during the
first collapse, we could see was white smoke blanketing lower Manhatten, we saw the second tower
begin collapse and said OMG they're both gone.. an emptiness swept through everyone (it was such
a priveledge to see the towers in the New York skyline from my desk every day, sometimes I looked
at them before leaving for the PATH train into the WTC sometimes I'd use them as a guide while
walking around Manhatten).

It was almost lunchtime and I was at my desk, Angelo ran through our area waving his hands telling
everyone to "evacuate theres been a threat to our building", my co-worker confirmed there was a threat,
building management was only "advising" people they should leave the building for safety, 20 minutes
later another threat was made and buidling management said
everyone must evacuate.

We were all in front of the building, the streets were totally jammed, dozens of buses were arriving
from the city because trains were shut down, we knew there was no place to go for a while so many
of us had lunch across the street, later we went to the Hilton and stayed with some of our co-workers
who had no way to get home until they were able to make arrangements.

We were told to go into the city on 9/12 so we could begin the process of restoring service.

The PATH line from Newark to 33rd St. was running, we took it to Christopher st and walked
the mile to the Hudson St. site about 6 blocks from WTC.

Later, we were told to go to the other site at 100 Church st - 1 block from the north tower
and adjacent to WTC 7.

We went to the other site, the streets were full of mud, ash, streams of water, hoses and
papers everywhere, parked cars and truck were burned into twisted heaps.

The site it was full of dust, a few broken windows and no power - it was a switching center
that processed about 500,000 calls/day, totally out of service, commercial power and battery
systems were shut down by the fire department the night before for safety and the FBI closed
it as a crime scene, pieces of the planes landed on it.


It was shocking, sad, unbelievable and frightening to see what had happened in a place we were
so familiar with, so busy and full of life.. its an outrage to know it was a terrorist act, not
only on U.S. soil but right here in front of our own eyes, where so many Americans lived and worked.

By Saturday we were given a mandate to work "7 days a week until futher notice due to the attacks"
it wasn't necessary for us, we always stay until things are running again.

We worked 24,36 and 48 hour shifts, sleeping in the early morning hours in chairs for a couple hours,
no hot meals, no clean clothes, no fresh air.

The smoke was very thick at times, when I got home and showered the acrid smell was still there.

On 9/21/01 - 2 of my co-workers and myself took a walk through ground zero

It was dark and early in the morning, the streets were full of mud, firemen everywhere, trucks,
cranes working to remove the debris, when we walked by the WTC sites it was heartbreaking, so
much innocent life lost, destruction everywhere in places I visited for business before the attack.

Looked at the mud in the street.. six inches deep, this is New York there is no mud it was ash.

As we got closer, the WTC site could be seen, it was enourmous, very hard to believe it could be
transformed into a mass of twisted steel and rubble.

We walked down a side street to make our way to the south side, it was then very much like being
in a war zone, blackened burned out buildings, abaondoned streets, military vehicles on every corner,
as we got closer warnings of possible collapse was painted on some buildings in red.

We walked up what was Liberty St., storefronts were blown out and being used as temporary camps
for the rescue and fire teams, exhausted firemen were everywhere but there was nothing but silence,
you could see a lone worker high atop the rubble with an acetylene torch cutting pieces of steel loose.
He was up so high it looked like he was on top of a small mountain.

As we walked north on Church St, the remaining buildings stood silent, windows broken as high as you
could see, the smaller WTC buildings sat with no walls, debris hanging everywhere, you could see most
of the site from there, it didn't resemble a place were people had ever been or could have survived.

As we left a heavy rain began, nature was cleaning up.. trying to wash away time.