rc_story38.xml

rc_story38.xml

born-digital

email

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2004-08-19

I was at my desk at the American Red Cross North Central Blood Services building in St. Paul, Minnesota. I actually work for the Tissue Services division of the ARC and I had just arrived for the day. I had been at my desk for maybe 20 minutes when a co-worker came in from her car saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. As we have a World Trade Center here in St. Paul, and there is a small airfield not far from that building, I was initially confused. We turned on the radio to listen for any news reports and that is when I found out there was also a World Trade Center in New York City. The only major building I knew about in NYC was the Empire State building. I was so naïve I had never even heard of the WTC. As we listened to the radio, I thought, With all the tall buildings in that city, Im surprised we havent had this problem before. It was just a matter of time before a plane would accidentally fly into a building. Going about my job, going to other peoples desks, listening to the different radio stations reporting, I thought it odd that they would evacuate the White House because someone had accidentally flown into a building. I started to realize this wasnt just an accident. The Pentagon. The second tower. The crash in Pennsylvania. Would this continue? Were there other missile planes in the air? Guards were posted at the front entrance to the building. I remember a rumor spreading about the fear of package bombs. People went about their work knowing that we would be affected more acutely as the hours went on.

I went home on my lunch break and watched the coverage on the television. Replay after replay after replay of the plane striking the second tower. Again and again and again. Thousands of people covered in ash and pulverized cement, completely gray except for the dark streaks streaming from their eyes. The herds of people walking out of Manhattan. I went back to work.

By early afternoon, our division of the ARC, Tissue Services (a tissue bank that supplies human tissue for transplantation) began to mobilize to ship skin for grafting to the many burn patients expected to be pulled from the rubble in NYC and Washington DC. As all aircraft were grounded, special arrangements were made to ship the skin tissue under guidelines that allowed organs and other lifesaving transplantable tissues to be shipped via air. We released as many square feet of skin grafts as we could to our distribution office in Virginia, to service both NYC and Washington. We waited for the survivors, just like the rest of the country. As the days went on, we realized those survivors were not to be found.

The North Central Blood office and St. Paul Area Chapter are merely across a parking lot from one another. The phones rang constantly for a week and a half. The St. Paul Area Chapter has a blood donor room that had people waiting in line for 4 hours to give blood. There were lines for a week. No one complained about the wait.

Two days after the attacks, I heard a jet flying over as I walked from my car into the office. It scared me. Terrified me. There hadnt been a commercial aircraft in the air for two days. I didnt realize how used to the silence I had become. It was a jet from the 148th Fighter Wing in Duluth, Minnesota, that was doing reconnaissance over the Twin Cities metro. At times I would look up and see the trails from the engines where the jet had made a tight turn and feel comforted. Someone was keeping watch.

I've been wanting to write this down for nearly three years. I'm glad I've gotten the opportunity.

I aided however I could at work as well as donated to the ARC Liberty Fund and the United Way September 11th Fund. I attended two community memorial services.

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