story20756.xml

story20756.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2006-09-11

I resided in West New York, NJ. My Wife and I lived in a newly constructed building on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. The building itself was 3 stories, and if you were to draw a line towards the New York skyline was roughly directly across from 57th Street. The windows in the master bedroom were focused directly upon the parking-lot for the ferry terminal between NJ & NYC. Our apartment did not have a view of the skyline, it faced inward towards the primary tower within the "Riverbend" community that was 15 stories high. Our view of lower Manhattan was basically kneeing upon the sofa in our living room, pressing our face to the window, and looking to the left...which meant, unlike with other river facing apartments in the complex, we didn't possess a view of Manhattan. My Wife arose at approximately 7:30 AM on 9/11 and began to shower, etc prior to her commute to Wayne New Jersey for work. I slept in a bit, having watched the Giants beat Denver in the first Monday Night Football game of the season the prior evening. I arose at about 8:20 AM, my Wife was in the kitchen about to depart for work, and had the NBC "Today" show on in the living room. We kissed good-bye, and I went directly into the second bathroom in the apartment to shower, etc prior to leaving for work. I knew it was going to be a long-day for me, and decided to drive into the city and park, instead of my normal ritual of taking the ferry. I feared, due to work commitments and a scheduled dinner, that I would have to wait for a lengthy period to take the ferry home at a very late hour, hence my decision to drive into Manhattan. While dressing, I overheard on the "Today" Show that a plane had hit the WTC, but I didn't stop to watch the screen. While readying myself, I listened to a caller to the "Today" Show who stated "It was a really big plane...like a 737...and it just crashed into the building". At this point I rolled my eyes, and turned off the television without glancing at the screen, I am a private-pilot and always had a distaste for initial "eye-witness" accounts of any accident. Looking outside, it was an absolutely pristine day, and I thought to myself that if any aircraft had hit the WTC, it had to have been a Cessna or other very light aircraft. I knew that the traffic pattern into LaGauardia Airport ran along the Hudson River, but that those commercial aircraft were at an altitude of roughly 3,000 feet, so it couldn't have been an Airliner and was most likely a scenery "joy ride" in a Cessna that had gone horribly wrong. Although, given the weather, and no discernable wind, I still couldn't fathom how a pilot could possibly have hit the tower, aside from the outside chance that a mechanical problem had caused the aircraft to veer into the WTC. I left the apartment, and was holding a number of things including a briefcase and several documents, as well as my car keys. By the time I took the elevator down to the lobby level, I had completely purged the "aircraft hitting the WTC" from my mind. I walked outside, and directly towards my car. My car was parked in such a fashion that it was in the first space along a row of cars parked with their right wheels to the curb....in essence the car had a complete unobstructed forward view of the WTC. I got into my car without even gazing upon the WTC, and since I hadn't driven it in awhile, started it and let it idle for a few minutes. A CD was in the radio console and I turned the volume down, but I never looked forward----as I mentioned, I had basically purged the plane-WTC report from my mind, and was placing the assorted documents in my hand into compartments in my briefcase. After roughly one minute, I began to notice an abnormality in that from my peripheral vision I could see several people dashing towards the river edge. I ignored them for a few moments, then rose my head and gazed upon the smoke pluming from the North Tower of the WTC. The smoke was a harsh coloration of black that I had never seen before, it was not industrial looking, just toxic and flowing with such intensity that the entire top of the North Tower was eclipsed. The gash where American Flight 11 had punctured the facade of the North Tower was apparent, and I immediately said to myself "that was no Cessna". I turned my car off, and started to walk towards the shoreline where roughly thirty others were standing. I was unable to truly process what I was seeing, in so much as my knowledge of aviation and being a pilot, didn't reconcile with the possibility of a large Airliner hitting the tower in such incredible Visual Flight Rules conditions. I stood with the others at the shoreline, and noticed that many were on cell phones speaking in heightened voices and relaying what they were witnessing. I found it a bit obtrusive that these fellow observers were so engaged in conversations. Only a few moments passed while standing upon the shoreline, as my thoughts turned to how on earth the Fire Department was going to confront battling a blaze to this degree. In an instant, one of the bystanders pointed towards a rapidly moving dark colored object approaching the WTC. I looked at the object and could discern that it was a proportionately large aircraft, and I immediately figured out what it had to be. It was a forest fighting aircraft that was about to make a fire suppressant dump upon the North Tower. Almost immediately this thought became cognitively "unacceptable" to what I was seeing. I knew the aircraft was traveling too fast, I could also see that it was approximately the size of a 757/767/A300 and knew that only a very few "jet propelled" forest-fire fighting aircraft were in existence, and that they were all based out West. So, I just watched as United 175 plunged into the South Tower, and witnessed the subsequent fireball and fragmentation of debris. In retrospect, I often contemplate that very moment, because it made what was occurring, very obvious, none of what I was witnessing was by nature "accidental", these were coordinated strikes upon the WTC. I continued to watch the smoke, now pouring out of both towers, for roughly four minutes, before I could mouth any words to the other bystanders. I looked at a girl standing next to me upon the rivers edge, she had just gotten off her cell phone with "friends" in Florida, and was feverishly dialing another "friends" number, when I softly said to her "I wouldn't make that call". She gazed upon me with a confounded expression, and I turned my head back towards the flaming towers as she said "What?!?!". I then said to her, "You need not speak, you should just watch and absorb what you are witnessing. This is a monumental event, its akin to seeing Pearl Harbor...this is the sort of event that you need to just quietly watch in order to absorb the full magnitude of the moment, don't disrupt your memory with phone calls", I don't know what happened to her, but she quickly moved away from me, either recognizing the gravity of what we were witnessing or to place a call out of my ear-shot. After approximately five minutes of watching the smoldering towers, I became pensive in that just standing upon the shoreline, provided no information as to what was occurring. I repeatedly kept asking myself "where on earth did those planes come from, and how do you steal a plane that large?". With these thoughts filling my head, I left the grouping and walked back to the entrance way for the lobby. While walking, several of the maintenance crew ran past me yelling that they had relatives who worked in the WTC. I re-entered my apartment, and turned on the television. I was watching the continuation of coverage that was being aired upon an "Extended Edition" of the "Today" show. Footage of the second plane striking the South Tower was played repeatedly as the Reporters fumbled to attempt to explain what was being shown. I continue to think, where on earth did these aircraft come from, and my conjecturing on that topic was all over the board. I fathomed the possibility that they had been stolen from the desert where airlines store aircraft on a regular basis, but couldn't construe how these flights were made across the entire United States, and who could have piloted the aircraft? Upon hearing that the Pentagon had been struck, I began to think this was Armageddon. Again, reports came that the smoke emanating from the Pentagon was a result of an airliner crash. My initial response was that "a probability" existed that the Pentagon aircraft strike, could possibly be a result of pilot error or an earnest accident given the proximity to National Airport. I continued watching the news coverage, and was awe struck as the South Tower of the WTC collapsed. It was an awkward sensation, that instead of sitting upon the couch in the living room, I could exit the building an actually see the smoke plume that was engulfing lower Manhattan. Instead I chose to continue viewing the unfolding events from the confines of the apartment. My wife phoned me at home, and I immediately directed her to return ASAP, which she was in the process of doing, but was bogged down in traffic. Shortly thereafter the North Tower collapsed, and with it went the Television signal for NBC in New York, the screen fading into static. I immediately switched to CNN, which was reporting that a plane had just crashed in Pennsylvania, United Flight 93. I initially assumed that this was a "simple" air crash, given that the middle of Pennsylvania made no sense in terms of an attack. That is all I can write...yes, I knew people who perished....and the vision of United 175 striking the south tower of the WTC, remains embedded in my consciousness.