story1282.xml
Title
story1282.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-08-20
911DA Story: Story
I woke up at 8:30 on Tuesday, September 11. It was a ordinary late summer day in Borough Park, the neighborhood in Brooklyn where I was living at the time. I was supposed be at work by 9:30, and work was normally about 30 minutes away by train, so I was in somewhat of a rush to wash up and get out of the door. I exited the bathroom around 8:45, and sat down in the living room I shared with 2 roommmates to catch a couple of minutes of Good Day New York on channel 5 while I had a coffee and a cigarette. I was watching the view from the traffic chopper, when suddenly the camera panned jerkily to a smoking, flaming hulk that I instantly recognized as the World Trade Center.
I watched in complete, frozen, horror for a few seconds; then I shook my roommate awake to tell him the horrible news. He had fallen asleep on the living room couch after a night of hard drinking, and he was in no mood for TV news of any kind.
"Holy s***, the World Trade Center is on fire! A plane just flew into the f***ing World Center!"
After taking a long moment to come to his senses, my roommate replied "So what? We live in Brooklyn. I don't care... I'm going back to sleep."
He then dragged himself into his bedroom and went back to sleep. It was then that an interesting if terrible dilemma occured to me. My office was located at 80 Maiden Lane, 3 blocks from the World Trade Center site. In fact, my usual subway stop was the Cortlandt Street N and R train station located under the World Trade Center. However, September 11 was to be an important day at work, and if my office was in fact still going to be open, I was quite obligated to be there. So I arrived at the natural conclusion that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers arrived at that day: Even if the tallest building in the city is on fire, I still have to go to work. I left my apartment at about 9:05 AM, and walked over to the 9th Avenue W train station.
On my way to the subway station, I noticed a dark trail of smoke originating in front of me, in Manhattan, and stretching all the way to the zenith and back down behind me to the other horizon. Another odd phenomenon struck me after I had walked about halfway to the train station: It was snowing. As I looked closer and thought about ti, I realized that the "snow" was in fact ash and torn, charred bit of various documents from the World Trade Center. I saw an invoice dated from 1996 land in front of me on 39th Street and 9th Avenue in Brooklyn, in one piece.
For some reason, I boarded the W train anyway. As the train neared the city, there were progressively longer delays between stations, and the passengers boarding at each stop were progressively more agitated. Finally, at around 9:50 AM, the train reached the Court Street station in downtown Brooklyn. At this point, the conductor announced over the PA that due to a sick passenger, the train woudl be going out of service and all passengers were to leave the station.
Oddly enough, many people still seemed intent on getting to work. A mass of humanity streamed from all the downtown Brooklyn train stations towards the Brooklyn Bridge, when tens of thousands of people were still trying to walk into the city and go to work, or school, or whatever their obligation in Manhattan might be. But now, we started to see the real gravity of the situation; people were streaming from the bridge walkway coming fom downtown Manhattan, covered in ash, crying hysterically, some completely in shock. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the bridge itself were already closed for emergency traffic, and there was a steady flow of emergency vehicles into Lower Manhattan.
As I reached the hlafway point of the bridge, I began to meet people coming back from the Manhattan side who told me that police were no longer allowing people into Manhattan. At this point, a more pressing concern than my job, or even the conflagration in the Financial District, crossed my mind: my mother and her parents live in Independence Plaza, located 7 blocks from the World Trade Center site. My first priority became making sure that they were alive and healthy.
I ran the rest of the way to Manhattan, and sure enough, when I reached the end of the Brooklyn Bridge walkway at Chambers Street and Centre Street, a police officer turned me back, insisting even when I showed an old ID that bore my mother address in nearby Tribeca. So I ran back across the bridge, and when I once again reached the halfway point, I heard people behind me screaming. When I turned to look, I saw the single most impressive and revolting sight I ever hope to witness: 1 World Trade Center collapsing in a shower of dust and glass. i remember the entire moment as if in slow motion. Watching the beautiful cascade of glass and dust, realizing in a detached way that thousands of poeple had just died, and then wondering if the shockwave from the collapse would affect the bridge I was standing on.
After that, I found myself struggling with the idea that I was standing in the middle of the first battle of World War III. I walked back to Brooklyn, frantically trying to reach my mother, my job, and my grandparents on my cellphone.
I walked for an indeterminate amount of time before reaching a two block long line for a payphone on Pineapple Street near the bridge. As I was standing on the line, blanking staring down Pineapple Street and across New York Harbor at the spectacle, an elderly man in a military uniform and a VFW hat walked up to the line and addressed me and the young man behind me in line.
"This is war, ya know! They just attacked the Pentagon. It's f***ing World War III, and now you little bastards are gonna go through what I had to go through! You're gonna be drafted, and you're gonna go off to war. You better pray you're ready for it, because you're going whether you like it or not!"
The two men in front of me in the line for the pay phone were covered in ash and visibly shaken. Not knowing what else to do, I asked them where then had been when 'it' happened. They were Programmer/Analysts for the Port Authority who had been on the 72nd floor of 1 World Trade Center and had narrowly escaped. One of them kept repeating "I just want to get home to New Jersey. I just want to see my wife."
Eventually, I got to use the pay phone, and I called my mother and my grandparents. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my mother had already been evacuated, but my grandparents had elected to stay, as the were 8 blocks from the site and more or less not in danger. I talked to my grandmother on the phone, and told her that I loved her, and to tell the family that I was OK. I also told her to make sure to tell my mother to call me as soon as she heard from her. I then began the long walk home, back to Borough Park.
Near the Barnes and Noble on Court Street, I finally got service on my cell phone, and left a message at my job saying that I was alright and that I hoped everyone had gotten out safely. A reporter from the Wall Street Journal saw me using my cell phone, and she asked permission to use it to call in to the office. I let her use my phone to call in to her office, and then answered a few questions for a piece about cellular phone service during the tragedy. It says something about my state of mind at the time, that I neglected to ever even look up the story, and still have not to this day.
As I apporached the Gowanus Canal, I came across a woman being comforted by three or four others. She was screaming and weeping about biological weapons on the planes. Again, I didn't know what else to say, so I took the Zen approach and said "If there were biiological weapons in those planes, we're already infected, and you would do best to make it home to your family and enjoy what time you have."
As I walked deeper into Brooklyn, I started to notice not only the monotony and the ubiquity of the sound of sirens, but also the profound depth. It seemed as if there were emergency vehicles passing by from every direction for miles. At a small park on 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue, I saw a woman I recognized from the building where I worked. She was covered head to toe in ash, except for the circles under her eyes that had been washed clean by tears. I could not even bring myself to speak to her.
When I reached my block, everyone from the whole neighborhood was outside, listening to news reports on boomboxes and car radios. Whatever this was, it had certainly hit home.
I watched in complete, frozen, horror for a few seconds; then I shook my roommate awake to tell him the horrible news. He had fallen asleep on the living room couch after a night of hard drinking, and he was in no mood for TV news of any kind.
"Holy s***, the World Trade Center is on fire! A plane just flew into the f***ing World Center!"
After taking a long moment to come to his senses, my roommate replied "So what? We live in Brooklyn. I don't care... I'm going back to sleep."
He then dragged himself into his bedroom and went back to sleep. It was then that an interesting if terrible dilemma occured to me. My office was located at 80 Maiden Lane, 3 blocks from the World Trade Center site. In fact, my usual subway stop was the Cortlandt Street N and R train station located under the World Trade Center. However, September 11 was to be an important day at work, and if my office was in fact still going to be open, I was quite obligated to be there. So I arrived at the natural conclusion that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers arrived at that day: Even if the tallest building in the city is on fire, I still have to go to work. I left my apartment at about 9:05 AM, and walked over to the 9th Avenue W train station.
On my way to the subway station, I noticed a dark trail of smoke originating in front of me, in Manhattan, and stretching all the way to the zenith and back down behind me to the other horizon. Another odd phenomenon struck me after I had walked about halfway to the train station: It was snowing. As I looked closer and thought about ti, I realized that the "snow" was in fact ash and torn, charred bit of various documents from the World Trade Center. I saw an invoice dated from 1996 land in front of me on 39th Street and 9th Avenue in Brooklyn, in one piece.
For some reason, I boarded the W train anyway. As the train neared the city, there were progressively longer delays between stations, and the passengers boarding at each stop were progressively more agitated. Finally, at around 9:50 AM, the train reached the Court Street station in downtown Brooklyn. At this point, the conductor announced over the PA that due to a sick passenger, the train woudl be going out of service and all passengers were to leave the station.
Oddly enough, many people still seemed intent on getting to work. A mass of humanity streamed from all the downtown Brooklyn train stations towards the Brooklyn Bridge, when tens of thousands of people were still trying to walk into the city and go to work, or school, or whatever their obligation in Manhattan might be. But now, we started to see the real gravity of the situation; people were streaming from the bridge walkway coming fom downtown Manhattan, covered in ash, crying hysterically, some completely in shock. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the bridge itself were already closed for emergency traffic, and there was a steady flow of emergency vehicles into Lower Manhattan.
As I reached the hlafway point of the bridge, I began to meet people coming back from the Manhattan side who told me that police were no longer allowing people into Manhattan. At this point, a more pressing concern than my job, or even the conflagration in the Financial District, crossed my mind: my mother and her parents live in Independence Plaza, located 7 blocks from the World Trade Center site. My first priority became making sure that they were alive and healthy.
I ran the rest of the way to Manhattan, and sure enough, when I reached the end of the Brooklyn Bridge walkway at Chambers Street and Centre Street, a police officer turned me back, insisting even when I showed an old ID that bore my mother address in nearby Tribeca. So I ran back across the bridge, and when I once again reached the halfway point, I heard people behind me screaming. When I turned to look, I saw the single most impressive and revolting sight I ever hope to witness: 1 World Trade Center collapsing in a shower of dust and glass. i remember the entire moment as if in slow motion. Watching the beautiful cascade of glass and dust, realizing in a detached way that thousands of poeple had just died, and then wondering if the shockwave from the collapse would affect the bridge I was standing on.
After that, I found myself struggling with the idea that I was standing in the middle of the first battle of World War III. I walked back to Brooklyn, frantically trying to reach my mother, my job, and my grandparents on my cellphone.
I walked for an indeterminate amount of time before reaching a two block long line for a payphone on Pineapple Street near the bridge. As I was standing on the line, blanking staring down Pineapple Street and across New York Harbor at the spectacle, an elderly man in a military uniform and a VFW hat walked up to the line and addressed me and the young man behind me in line.
"This is war, ya know! They just attacked the Pentagon. It's f***ing World War III, and now you little bastards are gonna go through what I had to go through! You're gonna be drafted, and you're gonna go off to war. You better pray you're ready for it, because you're going whether you like it or not!"
The two men in front of me in the line for the pay phone were covered in ash and visibly shaken. Not knowing what else to do, I asked them where then had been when 'it' happened. They were Programmer/Analysts for the Port Authority who had been on the 72nd floor of 1 World Trade Center and had narrowly escaped. One of them kept repeating "I just want to get home to New Jersey. I just want to see my wife."
Eventually, I got to use the pay phone, and I called my mother and my grandparents. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my mother had already been evacuated, but my grandparents had elected to stay, as the were 8 blocks from the site and more or less not in danger. I talked to my grandmother on the phone, and told her that I loved her, and to tell the family that I was OK. I also told her to make sure to tell my mother to call me as soon as she heard from her. I then began the long walk home, back to Borough Park.
Near the Barnes and Noble on Court Street, I finally got service on my cell phone, and left a message at my job saying that I was alright and that I hoped everyone had gotten out safely. A reporter from the Wall Street Journal saw me using my cell phone, and she asked permission to use it to call in to the office. I let her use my phone to call in to her office, and then answered a few questions for a piece about cellular phone service during the tragedy. It says something about my state of mind at the time, that I neglected to ever even look up the story, and still have not to this day.
As I apporached the Gowanus Canal, I came across a woman being comforted by three or four others. She was screaming and weeping about biological weapons on the planes. Again, I didn't know what else to say, so I took the Zen approach and said "If there were biiological weapons in those planes, we're already infected, and you would do best to make it home to your family and enjoy what time you have."
As I walked deeper into Brooklyn, I started to notice not only the monotony and the ubiquity of the sound of sirens, but also the profound depth. It seemed as if there were emergency vehicles passing by from every direction for miles. At a small park on 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue, I saw a woman I recognized from the building where I worked. She was covered head to toe in ash, except for the circles under her eyes that had been washed clean by tears. I could not even bring myself to speak to her.
When I reached my block, everyone from the whole neighborhood was outside, listening to news reports on boomboxes and car radios. Whatever this was, it had certainly hit home.
Collection
Citation
“story1282.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 19, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/16377.