email34.xml
Title
email34.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
email
Date Entered
2002-02-28
September 11 Email: Body
Page 2--
It was not until around 14th street that i could see the clouds of smoke and dust. I walked out onto the West Side highway and south on the bike/walkway that is part of the new park that runs from 59th down to the Battery. Straight ahead was the visible evidence of the attack--a gigantic column of smoke, constantly shifting in shape and shade of gray, roiling. There was little wind and the tower of smoke just stood there. TV commentators remarked during the evening about the absence of the towers from the skyline, but that was rhetoric, I think. In fact, the hole left by the collapse of the towers was filled by the column of smoke all day. When you looked south there was no more of an open vista than there had been the day before. The aftermath of the attack more than adequately filled the hole in the world.
Ten blocks south I turned into the West Village and went home. Nan and I came out a half hour later and walked south down Hudson toward the WTC. There was no traffic not related to the attack. Thousands of people were walking there --like us to see, to help if possible, to give blood. Cameras were everywhere. Media people were spread throught lower Manhattan and the crowds of civilians, workers, and media folks grew denser as we got closer. By the time we got "there" the limits of the perimeter had been pushed north by the police to Duane Street about 6 blocks north of the WTC. We joined everyone else watching the smoke and dust rise and change; we took pictures and gaped at the exhuasted fire fighters and patient police. These were almost all men at Hudson and Duane, but we saw many women officers on Greenwich and on the cross streets.
We could not see the devastation, so our imagination turned to the implications of what we could see, mostly the faces and bodies of men and a few women in one kind of uniform or another struggling north out of the WTC obviously at the end of hours of rescue and recovery work. Unlike us in the crowd, in shorts and t-shirts, Lakers ball caps and ban-rays against the afternoon sun, they were uniformly gray with dust, helmets in one hand, goggles and respirators in another. Fire fighters wore the same almost antique fashions of fire service over the last 50 years--heavy twill shirts and pants, thick jackets, big gloves, huge boots. We also tried to guess what the big trucks were bringing in, besides fresh workers. We wandered around but saw nothing we could do but gape. We walked over to the river and there saw the great concentraion of equipment that even by then had poured into the lower half of the city; fire trucks, earth movers, back-hoes, bull dozers, flat bed trailers, busses, emergency trucks, portable generators, ambulances; it was like a grotesquely grown up version of a Richard Scarry book.
We bought some arab food for dinner, deciding to preserve our own larder in case the city stayed shut down, and went home.
Chris
jon-christian suggs
english
city university of new york
212.237.8575
jcsjj@sprintmail.com
It was not until around 14th street that i could see the clouds of smoke and dust. I walked out onto the West Side highway and south on the bike/walkway that is part of the new park that runs from 59th down to the Battery. Straight ahead was the visible evidence of the attack--a gigantic column of smoke, constantly shifting in shape and shade of gray, roiling. There was little wind and the tower of smoke just stood there. TV commentators remarked during the evening about the absence of the towers from the skyline, but that was rhetoric, I think. In fact, the hole left by the collapse of the towers was filled by the column of smoke all day. When you looked south there was no more of an open vista than there had been the day before. The aftermath of the attack more than adequately filled the hole in the world.
Ten blocks south I turned into the West Village and went home. Nan and I came out a half hour later and walked south down Hudson toward the WTC. There was no traffic not related to the attack. Thousands of people were walking there --like us to see, to help if possible, to give blood. Cameras were everywhere. Media people were spread throught lower Manhattan and the crowds of civilians, workers, and media folks grew denser as we got closer. By the time we got "there" the limits of the perimeter had been pushed north by the police to Duane Street about 6 blocks north of the WTC. We joined everyone else watching the smoke and dust rise and change; we took pictures and gaped at the exhuasted fire fighters and patient police. These were almost all men at Hudson and Duane, but we saw many women officers on Greenwich and on the cross streets.
We could not see the devastation, so our imagination turned to the implications of what we could see, mostly the faces and bodies of men and a few women in one kind of uniform or another struggling north out of the WTC obviously at the end of hours of rescue and recovery work. Unlike us in the crowd, in shorts and t-shirts, Lakers ball caps and ban-rays against the afternoon sun, they were uniformly gray with dust, helmets in one hand, goggles and respirators in another. Fire fighters wore the same almost antique fashions of fire service over the last 50 years--heavy twill shirts and pants, thick jackets, big gloves, huge boots. We also tried to guess what the big trucks were bringing in, besides fresh workers. We wandered around but saw nothing we could do but gape. We walked over to the river and there saw the great concentraion of equipment that even by then had poured into the lower half of the city; fire trucks, earth movers, back-hoes, bull dozers, flat bed trailers, busses, emergency trucks, portable generators, ambulances; it was like a grotesquely grown up version of a Richard Scarry book.
We bought some arab food for dinner, deciding to preserve our own larder in case the city stayed shut down, and went home.
Chris
jon-christian suggs
english
city university of new york
212.237.8575
jcsjj@sprintmail.com
September 11 Email: Date
9/12/2001 4:37pm
September 11 Email: Subject
recent events
Collection
Citation
“email34.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed November 30, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/39557.