story2023.xml

story2023.xml

born-digital

story

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2002-09-10

It has been a year since I witnessed, heard, smelt, and lived the terror of violence a block away from where the WTC Twin Towers were. I have been struggling to heal in the past twelve months. In this one-year anniversary, I finally accumulate enough courage to revisit what I have actually gone through and arranged my scattered journal entries, the journal entries for a day that brought futures and loving families away. I am writing to share my story in the best details on what I recall, hoping that in the years to come, we will all remember this tragedy, not for motivation to retaliate, but to remind us that the cruelty and evilness in human nature can possibly produce more harm than Mother Nature. I am proud to be an American and I do not think there is anything anyone can do to take this pride away from me. I do not, however, believe in retaliation. I honestly do not think bombing or killing people would help solve the root of the problem. I know I may have been too na?ve as terrorism will not fade regardless of how much I want to forget and forgive.

I live and work in Los Angeles, which is around 2,500 miles away from New York. On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I happened to be taking a vacation in New York between my two jobs and visiting my best friend Candy, whom I have known since grade eight. Candy used to work in Merrill Lynch, located in the World Financial Center that was connected to World Trade Center by a bridge. Knowing Candy, I was not surprised that she conveniently chose to rent an apartment in a complex called Gateway Plaza, which was only a block away from her work. Candy could literally get up 15 minutes before reporting to work every day and not being late. In retrospect, I am thankful that I was visiting Candy during that time because she took two weeks off for me. Otherwise, she would have been a bridge away from the WTC as opposed to a block away?..and she would probably have to face something worse alone??

It was about 8:55am on the morning of September 11, 2001 while Candy and I were still deeply asleep from our exhaustive girls? talk that lasted till 3 or 4am that morning, we were woken up by a huge sound of collision. Being woken up from our dreams and with our air-conditioning on and curtains down, our first impression was a truck collision on the street. I even jokingly asked Candy what a truck would be doing this early in downtown Manhattan. After moments of silence, we started to hear ceaseless sirens. After a minute or two of the constant sirens, Candy and I finally decided to pull ourselves up from the bed and checked out what we once thought the ?truck accident?. When we first pulled up our curtains, we instinctively looked down onto the street; however, none of us could find the ?truck?. All we saw were legions of people, police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances. And surprisingly, they were all looking and running towards the same direction ? towards the World Trade Center direction. When we re-oriented our eyes and heads in an upward fashion, we were stunned with the big dent on the North Tower, not to mention the clouds of smoke, flames of fire, and the falling debris. At the time we did not know that a plane was actually inside the North Tower. We thought there was an internal accident that caused a big explosion?.

The northwest side of Candy?s apartment was directly facing the WTC. And we were living on the 18th floor. As we were so close to the scene and the Tower was so tall, Candy and I actually felt that the thick black smoke was starting to cover the clear blue sky above us. At the time we continued to believe that it was just an accident and there was no need to panic. As we were still looking from the window, we started to question whether we had indeed woken up or whether we were only having nightmares! Before we had the chance to clarify, we saw a plane that was flying unusually low and abnormally fast and was heading towards the direction of the burning North Tower! Candy and I kept shouting to each other in words like: ?that plane is flying too low and getting too close!!? Before we had time to catch our breaths and blink our eyes, we saw the plane crashed right into the South Tower and caused an immediate explosion. And as I have mentioned, we thought it was the ?plane?, not knowing that it was the ?second plane? already?..While Candy and I were trying hard to figure out what had actually happened and trying to make sense out of everything we saw, we both felt noxious. We both had to help each other to climb back to our common bed and lay down for a minute. At that time, we didn?t know what was causing our noxiousness. We later figured that it was the natural reaction from the shock plus a combination of intense heat waves and the smell of gasoline. After resting for a minute, we both managed to be up on our feet again. Ironically, Candy?s family called from Hong Kong to check on us and let us know that there were actually two planes (as opposed to the ?one plane? we had in our minds) that crashed into the WTC. It was dinner time in Hong Kong and Candy?s family were all seeing the live broadcast on TV. A light bulb was immediately shining on top of our silly heads ? why didn?t we turn on the TV ourselves to find out what has been happening a block away from us?! Meanwhile, I recalled that I was scheduled to meet with my auntie and uncle who were planning to drive all the way from New Jersey to meet me for brunch that morning. They were supposed to pick me up from Candy?s apartment at 10am. I am grateful that I managed to call my auntie and uncle to let them know what had happened and at the time, we both still thought we could meet at a later time on that same day (we both had no clue of the magnitude of the incident and its impact). I?m glad they were running late themselves that morning. After hanging up on my auntie, I instantly thought of calling my family in Los Angeles ? the ones whom I have always been dependent on whenever I am in doubts. I did not care the fact that it was only around 6am in LA and my family would still be sleeping. I first called my parents and my mom answered. I told her that I just saw a plane crashed into a building and my mom couldn?t believe what I said. By that time, Candy?s home phone and cell phone were both starting to be jammed by calls. She even had to start using my cell phone to call out to check on her colleagues in the World Financial Center. I had to be brief with my mom and promised her that I would call back with details. I never thought it could have been the last time I talked to my mom on the phone.

While Candy was on the phone with her friend, I found out from the TV that the Pentagon was hit too. After watching the TV for a short while, it was the first time that Candy and I discovered we both just witnessed a terrorist attack. Okay, we thought we had seen the worst of it though. We still did not think we would physically be in danger even though our windows were already covered with layers of smoke and dusts.

We thought at least we were a block away. We thought it would be the end of it and we were even thinking about going down to help out others on the street (rather than to evacuate ourselves at that time). Meanwhile, with my public health background and knowledge, I was starting to prepare a mini ?survival kit? with some wet towels, bottles of drinking water, medications, and different forms of bandages. I figured those may come in heady when we would help out on the street (and we still thought we could be helping?). The elevator was still working when we were planning to go down, but both of us were at least clear-minded enough not to take the elevator as we might be stuck and no one would be able to help because all the firemen would be down on the street. While we were on our way down using the stairwell, Candy told me that she just realized she was wearing open-toe shoes. And we had to walk back to her apartment. When Candy was changing her shoes, we suddenly heard a horrendous rumbling noise that grew louder and louder. Our apartment started to rock side to side. Although I didn?t know what it was at that moment, being a Californian who has been well-trained in earthquake preparation, I instinctively pulled Candy all the way from the windows and hid ourselves under the dining table. From a scale 0 to 10, it was like an 8.0 earthquake. Suddenly, everything went dark. No more electricity, no more TV, no more phones. By that time, all the home phones were no longer functioning and all cell phone lines were jammed. The complete darkness was accompanied by a moment of silence. We thought a third plane might have hit us as the wrong target. We started to breathe in cascades of dust and smoke. After checking with each other, Candy and I had to literally use our hands to feel the ground to tell if we were still on a horizontal level. This was the first time we realized we were in real danger and that our lives might be threatened. Though all we saw was pitch black, we started hearing screams and panic runs. Candy and I managed to reach our door and got back to the hallway, where there was limited emergency lighting. When we were in the hallway, we heard children cried, dogs barked, and one of Candy?s neighbors even screamed out that she found a broken arm in her balcony?.after meeting some of the other tenants, we all figured that it was the collapse of one of the Towers. We then followed the big crowd to head down. Candy held my hands tight and we started to make our way down the 18th floors. I kept reassuring Candy that it?s going to be okay and I sounded surprisingly calm, but I was extremely frightened deep inside. Candy and I, together with the other tenants, counted each floor as we passed. By the time we reached the 11th floor, we already saw people coming back up urging us not to go down. ?We went down to the 5th floor and we couldn?t breathe due to the heavy debris. There?s no way for you guys to go down, not even with a mask.? My initial reaction was: ?so?!?. We didn?t know what was going on, and we could only keep guessing. Imagination went wild. What used to be ridiculous now seemed possible. Anything could happen next, all the tenants agreed that it would be safer to stay inside the building. Worst comes to worst. Candy and I were even prepared to die together.

While we were stuck in the stairwell, we heard cries asking for help from downstairs, tenants from the fifth and sixth floor were yelling up telling us that they needed help since there were people on the street who were climbing up seeking for help. Some of us who are younger and stronger split into groups and rotated between the floors to help. Before we could get to the fifth floor, we felt the second ?earthquake? and we realized this time that it was the collapse of the other Tower. It seemed forever when Candy and I, together with a couple of other young and strong tenants in their 20s and 30s, were running up and down helping and checking on people, especially the elderly and disabled in the building. After an hour or so, someone from the fourth floor shouted up and let us know that the dust has settled down a little bit. We decided to go down as a group and both Candy and I were carrying a child on our arms. By now, the emergency lights were so dim that we could no longer see the stairwell. We all had to use our torches for lighting. We walked, stopped, tripped over, and stood back up. I forgot how long it took for us to climb down those floors. All we would never forget though was the scene we saw when we reached the ground. That was the first time in my life that seeing was not believing. I could not believe that the Twin Towers were gone. They were converted to masses of debris, soot, and intense heat waves vaporizing thousands of bodies. Candy and I were turned into complete ?snowwomen?, or ?dustwomen? rather. In addition to the mountains and mountains of debris, clouds of smoke and soot, burning ashes, we saw everything and anything you could name ?pieces of clothes, shoes, scattered computer parts, research reports, and things that we could not even tell, or things that we were unwilling to guess what they were. All the surrounding buildings were on fire due to the gas leak and the heat waves. While we were overwhelmed with the sense of disbelief, we could walk nowhere as if we were walking in a war zone full of mines. Random things were falling from the smoldering buildings, gas was leaking, and we could no longer tell our directions. It had almost been two hours since the first plane struck, but when will our ?escape? journey end?