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story292.xml

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2002-03-21

I had come to work early on September 11 for an 8:00 AM breakfast meeting in the ground floor coffee shop of the City University of New York Graduate Center, which is located across from the Empire State Building on 34th St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan. A late arriving colleague at the meeting announced to all of us at the table that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. Like millions of others we assumed this was a small plane that had flown accidentally into one of the towers. We said something about this lamentable accident and resumed our meeting, which ended a bit past 9 AM. On exiting the coffee shop I encountered the president of The Graduate Center, who stood ashen faced near the entrance to the college. She asked me if I?d heard the news, and I said yes, something about a small plane hitting the WTC, and she then told me that, no, a second plane, a large airliner, had struck the WTC. And like everyone else, in that instant I realized that this was no accident, but a planned terrorist act. I immediately flashed back eight years earlier when the WTC had been bombed by terrorists.

Along with many others inside our building I was drawn to the street where, if one looked down Fifth Ave., even that far north, it was possible to see the tops of the twin towers. Black smoke billowed from the two towers and as I stood, with fellow New Yorkers on Fifth Ave. (traffic, except for emergency vehicles, had disappeared) gazing south and trying to comprehend what was happening, I saw the first tower silently crumble and disappear from view. Someone standing next to me screamed "the tower fell" and I responded, with absolute certainty, that that wasn?t possible, that perhaps just the top of the tower had crumbled. We all rushed inside, seeking functioning radios or televisions, and I soon discovered on TV, to my uncomprehending horror, that the first tower had indeed fallen. I knew that the WTC drew tens of thousands of people every day, this was after rush hour, and I was certain, in that instant, that literally tens of thousands of people had died.

Those of us who stood around staring at the college?s few TV sets were subjected to endless recorded and live images of fire, mayhem and that awful shot of the second plane flying full speed into the second tower. Within minutes of coming inside, as we watched the second tower crumble, an intense feeling of shock and numbness washed over all of us. Some of my colleagues literally couldn?t speak; others couldn?t stop speaking. We all sat in front of those horrible televised images for several hours after, not knowing what else to do but bear witness to what was unfolding just a few short blocks downtown.

Periodically, we?d leave the TV for our desks to try to call loved ones, usually without success because of clogged phone lines. I was particularly concerned about my colleagues at the American Social History Project offices, which are located in lower Manhattan, scant blocks from the World Trade Center. ASHP staff members were attending the weekly staff meeting in the downtown office and only hours later did I finally learn that they were unharmed, though they?d all had to walk for miles to get home that morning. I was also finally able to reach my wife by phone (she works far uptown) and a bit later learned that my daughter, who had been on her way by car to teach in southern New Jersey, had gotten stuck in Staten Island when all the bridges into and out of the city shut down. It ended up being far easier to communicate with friends, colleagues, and family members via email, which I was able both to send and receive within minutes of the attacks. The feeling of numbed horror stayed with me and every other New Yorker for days after the attacks as we tried, largely unsuccessfully in the coming weeks, to have our lives return to some semblance of normality.

Steve Brier