nmah6720.xml

nmah6720.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-09-10

On the morning of September 11th, I left home early to vote before getting the No. 7 train into Manhattan to work. It was a gorgeous fall day - beautiful blue sky, no clouds - the kind of day you thank God you're in NYC. I voted and caught the train in; as the train left the Courthouse street station my cell phone rang. A friend who was home from work was calling... I laughingly answered saying "talk quick, we're about to go into the tunnel."

She said "Did you see the news?" I answered "No, that I had been voting before getting on the train." She said,"A plane hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center" then my cell phone went dead. I looked out the window of the train car to see smoke pour out of the building. I said "The World Trade Center is on fire" out loud in the train. Everyone in the car turned and looked at the building and then we all turned back to our reading or listening to music as the train went into the tunnel to take us under the East River. I'm sure that everyone else on the car had similar thoughts - simply a small plane had hit the tower and hopefully no one had died. I had no idea as to the true extent of what was happening...

I arrived at Times Square, probably about the same time as the second plane hit the South Tower. When I arrived in my office, I found everyone watching the televisions and was told what was really happening. Every few minutes, we would walk out to the balcony for our office at 1440 Broadway - we had a clear view of towers as they smolder and later as they fell.

The T-1 lines were still up, so I emailed everyone to let them know that I was all right and to please call those without email. Working for an online media company, I spent the day posting information for our online community members and pointing to places where information could be found on the 'net. The traffic online was so overloaded that most new websites could not handle the bandwidth needed - ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, BBC, SkyNews, CBC, Australia were all inaccessible. The only english news site availble for a few hours was ERT (Ireland News)until CNN stripped it's site of everything except text. The other news services soon followed suit since this would allow more people to access their site at a given point of time.

Since the trains weren't running, those who didn't live in Manhattan decided to hunker down for awhile. We still had electricity, water and food - there were much taller buildings around us. However, around 4 pm the No. 7 train was running again. A friend's husband agreed to meet me outside of my building (he worked a block away) to take the train out to Queens.

When I stepped outside of my office building, the thing I noticed was the total silence. All traffic had been blocked below 42nd street - there was no honking or squeeling of brakes. You could only hear the faint sound of sirens as fire truckes sped downtown. There were some people just wandering around with large suitcases - tourists looking for a hotel? But no one was talking. They just walked around in somewhat of a daze, glancing up every few minutes. I guess we were all checking for planes.

We took the train to 40th street and Queens Blvd. and headed to the Courtyard pub. It's an Irish neighborhood, and everyone was gathered at the local to make sure everyone was ok, share news they'd heard and hear more. Besides, no one wanted to sit in their apartment watching Penny Crone talk to families desperately searching for loved ones - you knew by then that they were probably gone.

A week and half after Sept. 11, I was laid off from my job. I had been waiting for it - it was the 6th round of lay-offs that year. With the job market being so bad and family health issues in Washington State I decided that it would be a good time to leave NYC and head home.

On Oct. 18 I drove a rented truck with all my belongings across country to Spokane, WA. It was on that trip that I discovered that silence unnerves me - for 18 months, I felt panic whenever it was very quiet and a siren pierced the silence... this never happened in NYC, probably because of the constant level of noise. I still feel unconfortable without having some noise in the background.

After seeing all posters of missing people, I thought about how horrible it would be for my family to have to sit down and try to remember where a large mole was - I got a tattoo of a Swedish flag on my ankle. I also decided that I wanted to do something that had an impact on the future - no one is guaranteed time to "do it later." I signed up for a Master's In Teaching program and am now a high school english teacher.

I think that people should remember that life is precious and nothing is guaranteed - you have to make meaning now. The best "revenge" is spending time making the world or a littl piece of it, a better place for everyone to live in.