story1095.xml

story1095.xml

born-digital

story

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no

2002-08-19

Text from e-mail I wrote to family and friends on Thursday, September 13.

As you all should know by now, I was able to narrowly escape the tragedy that unfolded before my eyes at the World Trade Center this past Tuesday. This has been my first opportunity to check my e-mail since the disaster happened and I am touched that so many people were concerned about my safety and wellbeing. Fortunately, many in the family did not know at the time that I was doing an internship in the World Trade Center; this proved to be a blessing as I'm sure more would have been concerned had they known that I was working directly at ground zero that day.

I normally attended my internship at the World Trade Center on Wedensdays and Fridays. However, this Tuesday my boss asked me to come in for 9 a.m. to do some work as I had asked for the rest of the week off in order to go to D.C. to take the written section of the Foreign Service Exam. On Tuesday morning I initially got on the wrong train into Manhattan and because of this I was about 15 minutes behind schedule as I arrived at the subway stop for the World Trade Center - almost exactly at 9 am. As I climbed out of the subway I noticed everyone craning there necks upwards and as I looked up I saw the side of the North Tower on fire. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was only a few minutes after the first American flight had crashed into the North Tower. (For those of you who know New York City, at this point I was standing on the corner of Fulton and Broadway, only two blocks from the World Trade Center.) At first I had no idea what had happened. Then a few bystanders explained that a 'small' plane had hit the building. I didn't believe them because I didn't think it was possible. No one is supposed to fly even near those buildings. As I watched the fire got worse. Sirens wailed and yet I wondered how the firecrews could possibly get up that high to do anything. The fire began to spread more and more quickly and I soon realized that this would be catastrophic. Parts of the building started to fall off and then the worst thing I have ever seen in my entire life, people jumping, one by one, you could seem them clearly, dressed in their business suits, falling and jumping from so high up, flailing their arms, clearly still alive, yet falling, it seemed almost like they were floating because they were so high up and it took them so long to fall. Everyone on the street felt so helpless but there was nothing that we could do. I saw at least 20 people jump.

Then suddenly, an unbelievable explosion that shook the street and everything around us. I was looking right at the North and South Towers when it happened. The United plane came from a northernly direction but we were standing to the southeast of the Towers, and so we didn't see the plane coming at all; from our vantage point it came from directly behind the South Tower. Suddenly the plane impacted; we had heard no warning, no sound of jet engines, nothing. I don't know if this was because of other noise going on around us or due to some other as yet unexplained reason, but the fact of the matter is we had no warning. As soon as the plane hit there was an explosion like nothing I have ever seen and we all took off running. It was complete chaos. I was worried about flying shrapnel or other debris landing on me. There was complete chaos as everyone ran northwards past City Hall. At this point I believed that it was a bomb that had just exploded and I was concerned about possible chemical or biological agents in the air. As I was frantically running, out of sheer coincidence I saw a friend of mine who also works in the World Trade Center. She was running hysterically and I grabbed her and we both ran into a building to try to look for shelter and a phone. No cellular phones were working anywhere in the city at this point and everyone was frantically trying to get in touch with family or friends. I managed to get one quick call through to my grandparents house in St.Croix to let them know that I was okay. That was the only call that I could make. My friend and I then went outside and we saw thousands of people streaming across the Brooklyn Bridge into Brooklyn from Manhattan. I thought that there were too many people on the bridge and that if there had been a bomb placed in the World Trade Center then surely there might be one on the Brooklyn Bridge. I decided that I would not cross. I repeatedly tried dialing different numbers on my friend's cell phone but none of the calls would go through. Suddenly, I got through to my friend in Miami and he told me what I couldn't believe: that it had been planes that had been flown into the World Trade Center. This is all he could tell me before the call got disconnected. The friend that I had been with all this time, who I had literally run into while fleeing the carnage a few minutes before, decided that she would try to get uptown to look for some people that she knew. She left and I walked northwards and then westwards, all the while watching the twin towers and wondering if it would even be possible to put the fires out. I got near the West Side Highway and continued to watch along with hundreds of other onlookers. I asked a guy next to me if he knew what exactly had happened. He left for a few minutes, somehow managed to make a call, and then came back to me and whispered, "they just attacked the Pentagon." I asked in disbelief, "What??!!" He repeated himself and then added, "No one knows yet and don't tell them, they'll panic even more." As I stood there in disbelief the fire began to reach it's apex and I saw three more people jump from the upper stories. Then, the sight that no one could ever imagine, what I still can't believe, the South Tower crashing down right before my eyes. Panic again as everyone rushed further uptown, everyone desperately trying to find a way out of Manhattan, but the bridges clogged, subways shut down, and buses not functioning. I ran uptown a few more blocks to what I felt was a safe distance and then headed eastwards, again parallel to the Towers yet now a much safer distance away, perhaps 10 blocks or so north. I knew Tower 2 had just collapsed and I could see that the upper half of Tower 1 was almost completely engulfed in flames, but I never thought that it too would fall. And then it did, just toppling over on top of itself. It was the final unbelievable culmination of an utterly unreal day. I didn't know where to go and I wandered around for some time, the streets filled with desperate people, all distraught and dazed in disbelief. Then I stepped inside a nearby bar and found that it was packed even though it was not yet even 11 in the morning. Everyone, people from every part of the city and every profession, were glued to the news aghast at what they were seeing. Drinks were flying off the shelves as people struggled to find something to soften the harsh realization that this was real, this had happened, this was not a movie, and there was no rewinding the footage and starting over.

I appreciate the concern that all of you had and I'm grateful that none of you were in New York City and near the disaster. This has changed everyone everywhere forever and no words will ever be able to convey what happened or how it will affect all of us. Only time will tell.

Love, Julian.