story135.xml

story135.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-03-05

Almost everything I remember about September 11 has to do with smoke.

I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and I take the B67 bus to my office in the Transit Building in downtown Brooklyn. On that day I stopped to vote in the City Council election, but the polls were crowded and I couldn't wait. I jumped on the bus and was reading the paper, as always. Traffic seemed heavy, and after the bus passed the Long Island Railroad Station at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues I checked my watch -- it was almost 8:50, and I was sure I would be late for work. Then I noticed a column of grey smoke to the west and thought "wow, that must be some fire!" I thought it might be in Downtown Brooklyn, and my next thought was a rather gleeful "yay! hookey day!" figuring that the disruption would make it hard to get into my office building.

But there wasn't a fire downtown. I got to my desk and looked out the window and was puzzled to see more grey smoke. What was really odd was that there were hundreds of pieces of paper floating in the smoke; at first I thought it was a flock of white birds. Then my office-mate's wife called to say that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We ran to the balcony of the building on our floor, and, indeed, we could see the tower on fire. Until, all of a sudden, we couldn't see it any more -- there was just a cloud of brown and grey smoke. Someone had a radio on, and we learned that the building had collapsed. We heard about the planes at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, and rumors of a bomb at the State Department. I called my parents in the Midwest to tell them I was OK, but I was wondering if I also was saying goodbye to them. I thought it was over for this country.

A cop ran down the hall ordering us to get out. We evacuated, but it was chaos downstairs; people were crying and trying to figure out what to do. I saw my boss arrive, covered in dust; he had been on a subway in lower Manhattan and had fled a cloud of smoke and debris and flying shards of glass by running across the Brooklyn Bridge. I decided to go back upstairs and provide what assistance I could; the secretaries had gone home, so I answered phones and helped out for the rest of the day (I'm a lawyer and I make a lousy secretary).

At about 7:30 my boss told me it was OK to go home, because things were a bit calmer. I walked down to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to look across the river at lower Manhattan. It looked as if the world had come to an end. There was charcoal grey and black smoke belching up, lit by the setting sun, which gave it a surreal rosy undertone. I could see a portion of the Trade Center grille facade, leaning at an angle. It was strange -- I couldn't really remember where the building had been. It was never something you had to think about; it had been so prominent in our view.

Just south of Manhattan island the sky was entirely clear; it had been a beautiful day and we were seeing the last of it. What I also remember was the absolute silence, except for an occasional siren. The FDR Drive was deserted, except for patrol cars with blinking lights parked at intervals. It was the apocalypse. Our beautiful city was in flames.

I took the F train home. As it emerged from the tunnel after the Carroll Street stop everyone crowded by the windows to look at the skyline. Again, everyone was silent. When I got home to Park Slope the wind had shifted, bringing the acrid, stinging black smoke swirling through the brownstone streets and into my apartment. The day that had begun with smoke in the distance ended with smoke in my nostrils and my lungs. I smelled that smoke for months every time the wind shifted and every time I went on the subway near the site. One day, I noticed that I didn't smell it any more. The fires were out.