story11414.xml

story11414.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-05-22

I had just arrived at my school from Manhattan, where I live six blocks from the Trade Center. When I got into Chapel( Upper School Assembly) at my highschool, our headmaster approached us and said to the school "a small plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center" I then ran to the front office because my mother was on a plane leaving JFK at 8:30. My mom didnt pick up her phone at all and I was very worried that the plane that crashed might have been her flight. Luckily as I had later found out, it wasn't. I then ran upstairs where I knew there was a TV and watched as the second plane hit the trade center. I then proceeded to gather all my friends from my neighborhood, TriBeCa, which is the Downtown area by the trade center, and began searching for a ride downtown. Unfortunately we were locked out of the city and out of our neighborhood. We then proceeded to spend the next 5 days at our friend Adam's house in Sheepset Bay, Brooklyn. By the time we got to his house, smoke had covered most of southern brooklyn, including the layer of ash on our school ground, and there was a stench of burnt metal and rubber from the buildings wiring. All I could think about was the plane. All I could think about was what was next? What would we do, how would we respond. I began to question what went wrong.