email618.xml

email618.xml

born-digital

email

unknown

yes

2002-08-28

The day after disaster, and I thought I'd share a little more of one New
Yorker's experience. That one New Yorker happens to be me.

I didn't go to work today. The courts were closed, our phones at my office
are still down (again, not because of the terrorist attack), and I didn't
feel like doing much of anything. Cathleen and I watched TV for a while,
listening to the excited reports of the recovery of only nine survivors.
Last night our friend Seth called at midnight to let us know that he was
fine. We knew that he worked in a law firm downtown, and I thought that he
worked in Battery Park, a safe distance from the WTC. As it turns out,
Seth's office window is directly across the street from the Twin Towers.
And although he wouldn't have been at his office at 9:00 am, he happened to
be in DC yesterday. Meanwhile, one of the doormen in our building is still
missing a cousin, the cashier at the local pharmacy knows someone who is not
accounted for, etc. I thought that Cathleen and I didn't know anyone in
harm's way, and then I received emails from my ultimate teammates that one
of our teammates who works downtown had not emailed yesterday to say he was
safe (we had all been checking on each other). Later this afternoon I
learned that he was fine, but that he literally found himself running for
his life yesterday.

Cathleen and I found ourselves going a little stir-crazy, so we decided to
go for a walk downtown to see what we could see. We walked across 34th
Street, and at one point a cavalcade of emergency vehicles drove by -- each
one from a different town in Westchester County. The Empire State Building
was completely sealed off by police barriers and police tape, and there are
police, it seems, everywhere.

We turned down 9th Avenue and ran into one of Cathleen's former co-workers,
Kelly Cook, at around 20th Street. Kelly was with her brother and her
brother's girlfriend. The girlfriend recently moved into an apartment on
Greenwhich Street, about six blocks from the WTC. She was now locked out of
her apartment because the police were not allowing anyone, except rescue
personnel, south of Canal Street. You could get below Houston Street if you
had ID indicating that you lived below Houston, but you can't get below
Canal even with ID, even if you have pets to attend to. They told us that
they saw one woman who went for a run this morning, only to find out that
she couldn't return to her apartment when she was done. They were told that
people won't be allowed to return to that neighborhood for at least a couple
of more days.

At 12th Street, Cathleen and I walked further west to West Street which runs
along the western side of lower Manhattan. We walked along the bike path
there and joined the hundreds, if not thousands, of other onlookers. At the
intersection of Christopher Street, a gauntlet of people had gathered to
cheer on every rescue vehicle that drove by. People held signs that said
"You are our heroes" and "God Bless America." Two guys held up flags, one
an American flag, the other a vintage "Don't Tread on Me."

We wound our way down to Houston Street, the farthest down we could go. The
sight was still unbelievable. The lower Manhattan skyline was still
engulfed in a dark cloud of smoke. The Woolworth building would eerily
disappear and reappear amidst the smoke. It used to be that you couldn't be
that far downtown without the Twin Towers completely dominating your view.
Now, it felt like looking in the mirror and not seeing your nose for the
first time.

We turned back east on Houston and by the time we got to Sixth Avenue we
could finally smell the smoke and dust that we had been seeing for 24 hours.
It didn't smell like a fire, but closer to what you'd think a collapsed
building would smell like. As we continued walking east, the smell
intensified at times, and some of the police stationed in that area were
wearing airmasks. We passed by trucks laden with scaffolding lining the
street for four or five blocks, and dumptrucks and excavators waiting to be
used. In a police van, two or three policemen slept in the back seats.

A reporter on TV just said "seeing it on TV is one thing, but seeing it in
person is another." I don't know. It still seems remarkably unreal. When
Cathleen and I returned home, we could begin to smell the smoke in our
apartment and we were forced to close our windows.

And so the story continues.

- Rick

9/12/01

Rick's Take: The Next Day