email611.xml

email611.xml

born-digital

email

unknown

yes

2002-08-27

Hello everyone,

I've gotten a lot of e-mails. And I'm sure I've gotten a lot of calls too, but the phones (land and cellular) are down (payphones are working, so if you have other loved ones here, they may be able to contact you from a payphone, though the lines are very, very long.) So, I thought I would take the step of e-mailing just about everyone I know (thank G-d for the internet). If I missed anyone, please forward this out.

I am OK. For those of you who worried about me, I do appreciate it. I live a good mile, mile and a half from where the World Trade Center used to be - so, I was never in any danger. Most of you will not be surprised to hear that I was asleep when the attacks occurred. I was awoken by my roommate, Charles, at around 10:15AM, Eastern Time, shortly after the second tower collapsed. After watching a little on TV, and heading up to a friend's room to look out his window, I grabbed my camera and walked south, towards the site. The streets were almost entirely empty of automobile traffic. 90% of vehicles were police/fire/rescue or public utlities (electric/phone). All civilian vehicles were heading in the opposite direction. There was a huge plume of dark gray smoke coming from where the WTC used to be. Fortunately, the wind is blowing strongly to the southeast, sending the smoke out into the ocean, and not north over Manhattan, or East into Jersey. A number of people were heading downtown, like I was - many with cameras or camcorders.

I reached road blocks around Worth St, about 12 blocks north of the WTC. Police were there. I also saw FBI, ATF, federal customs police, US Marshalls, NYFD, and many other city and federal agencies. I turned west and tried to head to the Hudson river to try and head south from there, but was again stopped by road blocks. The West Side Drive is shut down, for emergency traffic only. So I turned East. I made it to Foley Square, where I worked this past summer - about a 10 minute walk from the WTC. Incidentally, if this had happened two months ago, I quite possibly would have been exiting my train in the basement of the WTC at the time of the attack. A sobering thought.

Foley Square is where the state and federal court houses are, in addition to a number of state and federal government office buildings. All were closed, heavily patrolled by armed officers - men with shotguns and machine guns - not a usual sight anywhere in the US. I had my walkman with me and was listening to the radio. Reports were coming in from all over - some confirmed, some speculation. But the scene on the streets was somewhat surreal. It was generally calm. People were moving orderly, very few tried to pass the road blocks. It was eerily quiet except for the sounds of sirens. Throughout my walk, a number of people saw I had a radio and asked me for the latest news. There were also large crowds of people gathered around stopped cars and trucks listening to their radios. Many people all over had surgical masks on, or were covering their mouthes and noses with t-shirts, rags, or paper towels.

From there, I went even further East, to the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, and then turned south. This area was almost entirely deserted as it was in the past of the blown smoke and ash. I walked down Water St, and turned West on Wall St. This area seemed to be the most heavily hit. There was a good inch and a half of ash coving the street. Parked cars were covered with the ash. Small bits of debris were floating down from the sky - paper and such. I picked up a piece of what looks like a financial spreadsheet printout - the edges of the paper charred - along with a charred metal vertical blind, which presumably floated down from the WTC. I made it all the way to the New York Stock Exchange - perhaps 4 blocks from the WTC. There I encountered more barricades. I also had to turn back because the ask and smoke was getting too thick. The sun was blotted out from the smoke, which was turning more white, from the dark black it was when I left my building earlier this morning. I saw a number of Air Force fighter planes circling the city, but aside from them and a few news helicopters, the sky was empty of air traffic. I made it almost all the way south to Battery Park before I reached another road block. Then I turned for home. I'm going to try and donate blood, by the rumors are that the lines to do so are many hours long. Maybe tomorrow.

Again the scene was just very surreal. I could not get close to the WTC. So it was hard to visualize the unimaginable carnage and devastation and loss of human life that occurred there. People overall were very calm and orderly. Police and fire were likewise calm and orderly. I saw long lines of ambulances and fire trucks, waiting to approach the WTC to search for any survivors.

I think it will become even more surreal in the coming days. I can't even imagine looking south towards downtown and not seeing the two massive buildings which defined the skyline. I hope that those responsible will be brought to justice - or perhaps simply wiped off the face of this planet. I think when we all wake up tomorrow, we awake to find a very different world that the one we woke up to this morning.

For those of you with friends or loved ones in NY or DC or on an airliner, my thoughts and prayers go out to them. I think in the time that it took me to write this e-mail, my phone is working again (but not my cell) - so maybe you can now contact them on the phone.

Best wishes to everyone.

-Shawn

9/11/02 2:55PM EDT

Devastation