story1122.xml

story1122.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-19

Still etched in my mind is how deep blue the sky was that morning. It was my first day back to the office after a 10 day vacation. I was happy with the way things were going in my life and even considered my self fortunate. Getting settled in my office that morning in Jersey City (along the water), I placed a call to someone in my IT group about a problem with my PC. The response I got was a calm but eerie "forget about that, come into my office and look out the window; a plane just crashed into the WTC).

We did not immediately know what type of plane had hit so we turned on the TV to see what was going on. The news was getting conflicting versions at first. We continued to watch out the our window facing downtown. Someone was passing around binoculars. I remember saying "why aren't the sprinklers putting that fire out?". I would realize later that any water supply would have been severed but the impact of that plane and even if it was functioning could never compete with the flames of burning jet fuel.

The fire was growing larger and the smoke billowed high above the tower. I watched the flames grow as I viewed through the binoculars. As I passed the binoculars to someone, I noticed something coming from what looked like the direction of South Ferry an airplane; moving faster than anything I'd ever seen before. My first thought was it had to be the Air Force coming in for a close look. As it got closer, we all realized in horror that it was a passenger jet. There was nothing said..............maybe 20 of us stood there just saying one word....................'no'.

What we saw from the Jersey City side was the plane hit and flames flickered through I guess about 3 - 4 floors of the South tower. The entire floors taken out from one side to the other. Something shot out of the northern side of the South tower like fireworks but it may have been a piece of the plane .A few seconds later you could see all the smoke from the impact.

At that point we all realized that terrorists that wanted to see the WTC destroyed in 1993 had finally did some incredible damage. We evacuated the building but continued to watch from the ground. That deep blue sky was now filled with the smoke; dark, thick and filled with death. I thought maybe they can rebuild those upper floors......still not grasping what was about to unfold.

When the south tower collapsed, the scene on the waterfront was like that of an old Godzilla movie; people running in all directions and screaming 'it's falling, the towers are falling". The sound was something that will never leave me; cement just slapping down, a horrible reverberation and then ..................silence. I couldn't breathe from fear. An F15 (or F16) flew over and the sound was enormous. I thought it was another plane coming for our building (The Newport Tower; one of the highest buildings on the waterfront). I froze in terror. A hotdog vendor had an AM radio tuned into 1010 WINS or 88 and they were telling us things we could not fathom. A plane had hit the Pentagon and there were 8 planes unaccounted for. Nothing was out of the question anymore and anything could happen.

Growing up in Staten Island, I remember the towers being built. My Dad would take me down to St. George to view. It was surreal to see only one tower standing and all this smoke around it. When the second tower went down, it felt like the world had changed completely for me. It took hours to get out of the Jersey City area. Fortunately a great co-worker offered me a ride home. I could not call my wife because there was no phone service. I have to travel downtown occasionally so of course she was worried.

When the second tower came down, all I saw was smoke ....................nothing else. No buildings could be seen from about 14th Street down to South Ferry. I thought of all my friends that worked in the towers and the surrounding area. I figured they would all be lost. The smoke lasted for days and on Wednesday we started to smell the acrid stench in Middletown.

When I finally got in touch with a very close friend on who works on the Cotton Exchange on Tuesday evening, I yelled at him for not calling right away. I finally broke down and cried. I realized that there were so many others that were lost. I don't remember what day it was, maybe Thursday or Friday I went into the office. I picked up the Daily News and read something about how Cantor Fitzgerald had lost an incredible amount of people. I remembered a close friend whom I had lost touch with worked there. I never knew Cantor was in WTC. I still miss him now. He was an incredibly good influence on my life and I'm sorry to this day that I never made amends.

I cannot believe that a year has almost passed. This morning in Hoboken, the magazines are all blaring with covers "9/11....one year later". I can't look at it. I still remember the missing people fliers posted all over Hoboken and downtown. It seems like last week to me.

God bless all the families and friends of those lost that day. It is a great tragedy that these people were taken from us. My friend from Cantor leaves behind 2 beautiful children and a wonderful wife. He is just one of so many. The firefighters and policeman that I grew up with in Staten Island. Quite a few of them went to Susan E. Wagner High School with me. One firefighter was a neighbor in Staten Island.............they are all great heroes.