email43.xml

email43.xml

born-digital

email

unknown

yes

2002-03-06

Subject:
       Ground zero
  Date:
       15 or 16 September 2001
  From:
  To:

I went to Ground Zero today.  Actually, we went everywhere.  I was on a
van donated by the Coach Lines which have tour buses and we were with an
actual red tour bus and both the van and the tour bus were loaded with
food, drinks and some medical supplies.  First we went to the police
station near Cabrini Hospital downtown where many of the police are
stationed.  They had a lot of perishable food and junk food, they wanted
healthy non-perishable food (granola bars, etc) but they also wanted
insoles.  All the police wanted insoles, wherever we went.  We didn't
need a van of food, we needed a van of insoles.  The station was where
we went to pick up a police escort.  Then we went to the armory where
are the families go to look for missing persons.  The armory on 14th
Street takes up a block and the entire block was pasted with pictures of
missing persons:  their height, their weight, the rings on their
fingers.  There were tents of food and first aid.  We then went to the
West Side Highway which is a huge parking lot for police trucks and
ambulances and police are lines up at every corner.  Nobody needed
water.  Everyone needed insoles and gatorade.  A couple needed
toothbrushes and toothpaste we had brought.  We went to Chelsea Piers,
now a morgue and gave out food there.  It was an eerie feeling, to see
the symbol of fun and games, so silent and sad.  In the middle of it, we
saw a woman on a bench in a bathing suit, sunbathing!  Ah New York! Our
officer told us that workers down at Ground Zero were being bussed in
from 14th Street but had to walk back to 14th Street when their shifts
ended (12-17 hours later).  When he saw this (around Houston), he
stopped cabs which took the works to 14th St for free.  Cabs to
volunteer places are free.  So are public phones.

We started to go down Broadway. We went to Union Square where a homespun
memorial had grown to the whole square, a memorial of pictures and
rememberances and poems and flowers and signs and ribbons. Then through
the East Village which looked as if nothing had happened.  People were
eating in cafes and walking around the streets.  That was true past
Houston too.  Soho was soho, although quieter.  Past Canal, however, it
was unrecognizable.  Police and national guard and army were
everywhere.  There were constant checkpoints.  But around Worth, (where
the driver's license dept is, and the court buildings) it was still
okay, and people had gotten in to gawk, although they were screened by
police.  At this point, I lost my bearings.  To many trucks and army and
police officers so that I had no idea where I was.  I saw no markers, no
J&R.  I remember seeing the mayor's office but everything was overrun by
this business.  We kept feeding people on the way down.  I don't know
how we did it, tour bus and all, but we went all the way down, right
where you see the pictures of the World Trade Center.  There was dust
everywhere and we were given gas masks.  At the other stops, people had
come to our van and our bus.  Here, we took the boxes out to the
workers, one here, two there, as we walked down the street, trying not
to stray to far from the safety of our cars, trying not to gawk like
spectators.  This is where I found it most useful to give out small
bottles of aspirin and tylenol, listerine, eye drops.  Nobody wanted
food.  Nobody wanted water.  Nobody even wanted baby wipes which I
thought was strange, but after awhile you realize that there is so much
dust, baby wipes wouldn't help at all.  There was no sun down there, and
the dust was phenomenal.  I guess, if you asked me what I took away from
my experience, the most alarming was the dust.  It covered everything
for blocks.  You could see how this tornado of building remnants had
covered everything.  Tall buildings blocks away were covered, head to
toe with dust.  Sometimes you couldn't even see where the windows were,
there was so much.  The rain the other day did nothing to dampen this.
In my little time there I can't get it out of my nose, my hands, my
chest.

And the smoke that I was talking about in the other letters?  Well it
was smoke from smoldering cable work, etc.  But it was also dust.  I had
never thought about that.

I realized that much of our supplies are not getting to the workers in
these places.  It's getting to the command posts and the red cross.  But
these men and women are blocks away from these posts.  They have water
-- they all have water.  But someone needs to bring bags of tiny vials
of visine right to them so they can put it in their back pocket.  They
can't use huge containers of it, and they don't have the strength or the
time to walk blocks (through blockades and broken buildings) to the
command posts to get what they need that second.  One person asked me
for dental floss.  Who would have thought of that?  I ran out of visine
too quickly.  I ran out of aspirin second.  Few needed bandaids.  None
needed antibiotic ointment.  Many wanted gatorade (something other than
water).  Many wanted something hot.  Food was not big there.  Who could
eat in all that dust?  It was a hot day, but they were all wearing
jackets. Helmets.  Gas masks.  Boots.  Were they wearing our clean socks
which we so lovingly packaged and sent to the Red Cross?  Who knows.  I
should have brought those too.

Once we were in Ground Zero, we were in.  We went everywhere.  S----, A----, we went right to where the subway station lets you out at the
World Trade -- where we went when we came back from Cirque to Soleil.
That's where the main command post is.  Where all the heroic fire
fighters are, and the people who are sifting through the steel and
rubble for people.  They are covered with mud and dust and something
white.  There is a mountain of smashed cars in one area, including a
fire truck.  All those cars in parking lots, lost.  The command station
also has beds for the weary.

And the buildings?  There is rubble two or three stories high with those
posts that you see in the news, standing, on their own, and you can see
the number '1' on one of them.  But I had no idea where I was at this
time.  Everything was unrecognizable.  And these people down there are
working so hard, and so bravely.

Then there are the asbestos guys.  These are the ones in white suits
with masks and hoods.  It seems that the World Trade Center has 20
floors with asbestos after which the laws changed and you weren't
allowed to build with asbestos anymore.

We saw the people who were allowed in to get their stuff from their
apartments in Battery Park.  They were lined up in long, overcrowded
areas with signs stating where they lived.  National Guard were taking
them.  They must have been there for hours.

Finally, we had nothing left but water, which they didn't need.  And we
went home. My whole body aches from lifting and carrying and jumping on
and off that van.

I would like to go back tomorrow.  Or late in the evening.  Mostly, I
want to get the Red Cross and Javits Center to open the medical supplies
and sort the visine and the insoles and the aspirin so we can bring
those down to the workers, walking through those dusty streets, trying
to give some comfort to a group that is not only weary, but profoundly
saddened that this clearly has become clean up and no longer a rescue
effort.

15 or 16 September 2001

Ground Zero