My 9-11 Journal, from 9-16-01

I lived in Manhattan in 2001, and on 9/16/01 I wrote a journal of my experiences over the preceding 5 days. I am publishing it here today in respectful remembrance of the events and aftermath of 9/11. I have not edited this journal at all, except to insert pictures.

September 11-16

For me, a 5-year New Yorker

At 9:15 a.m. last Tuesday I read an email from my dad asking me to call him soon for some chit-chat. I called him at his office right then, and we played phone tag with a lot of trouble getting through on both sides. He said, “you’ve got planes crashing into the World Trade Center” and, “just call me when you get to work.”

I didn’t get it. I envisioned an errant biplane with a clipped wing. So at around 9:30 I put on my headphones and left the apartment. On the way down the stairs, I encountered some neighbors heading upstairs, and one of them said, “You can see it from the roof.” “What?” “The planes…the planes that hit the World Trade Center.”

I live in Alphabet City, which is in the lower eastern part of Manhattan. Two to three miles northeast of the WTC complex, probably.

I turned around and headed up to the roof of my 6-story apartment building. About 10 other people were already staring south. We had an absolutely clear view of the two towers, gaping, smoking, flaming. We knew that at least one of the planes had been hijacked, but not much else. I couldn’t believe the towers were standing. We all just said, “Holy shit” over and over.

Eventually I went back downstairs to get a camera; when I came back up, all the people from my building had left but there were lots of other people on other roofs nearby. I took pictures of the tower and pictures of the people. At that point, I didn’t really think of not going to work; I thought to call, but there was no getting through. I started walking. There were no available cabs—I mean none—though usually at quarter of ten there are plenty (I go to work pretty late even for a New Yorker). I started the 30-minute walk westward on Houston Street.

People were wandering all around the sidewalk, everyone looking aimless and aghast. Small crowds were gathering at all the intersections, where you could see south between the buildings. People were giving each other sympathetic and confused looks. One such woman started walking next to me (completely unheard of on any other morning in Manhattan). She told me, “One of the towers just collapsed.” Sure enough, by the time I got to the next big intersection and looked south, there was only one tower.

A few minutes later I slowed down to listen to a man who was telling a gathering crowd how he’d been in one of the towers, and it had taken 30 minutes to get out. A little farther along I encountered another man with a similar story. In this second group a woman who knew someone in the WTC broke down, and the strangers comforted her. At about 10:30 I finally got to work on the far-west side, and I had to show ID to even get in the door. Upstairs, I stopped in the main conference room just in time to watch the second tower crumble on the oversized TV screen.

Clearly the office was closing. People were gathering in small groups saying profound things like “New York will never be the same.” I went to my desk and emailed people I knew would be wondering about my safety, then I headed out. Straight back to the East Village, to a friend’s place 7 blocks north of mine—he has cable.

There were still crowds of people just sort of milling around. Most people were headed north, as they would be for the rest of the morning. I started to see dust on shoes. Everyone was still being unusually friendly.

My friend’s apartment became command central for his friends and his girlfriend’s. He also has a cable modem, so we didn’t have to worry about dial-up Internet access. And thank goodness for the Internet—if it weren’t for email and instant messenger, we wouldn’t have been in touch with our families till late afternoon at least. Everyone was absolutely frantic to find out that we weren’t anywhere near there.

For the rest of the day we sat, stared at the TV, talked to each other, checked our email and called people when we could. We also started what was to become a 5-day binge eating spree. Later in the afternoon a couple of us went to Beth Israel hospital to try to give blood, but we were turned away along with a crowd of about 30 people; they already had more  donations than they could handle.

Walking around town, I saw restaurants passing out ice water on the sidewalks, and there were scribbled signs “restrooms open to the public today.” There was a huge steady stream of people walking north; that was the only way for them to get uptown. Many people had dust-covered shoes, and it was very weird to see people in suits with briefcases and just COATED with dust. I’ve never seen so much foot traffic, and so eerily quiet. Everyone was being friendly with everyone else. Thousands of people had to walk home to Brooklyn and Queens.

Back in the East Village cable TV hovel, people were speculating about the potential for chemical or biological attacks, and people in delis were saying, “Buy bottled water!” (not many people, just some vocal ones some friends spoke to on a run for corn chips and salsa).  A friend of a woman in my party took one of the ferries home to New Jersey, where they were dumping buckets of water on them as they got off and frisking, questioning, and examining (heart rate, breathing, etc.). So I spent some time freaking out that someone thought there was a credible threat of who-knows-what. We also heard rumors that the WTC was full of asbestos…and that all New Yorkers should be wearing masks around for the next 2 weeks. And the cat owners in the room were described their cats’ odd and wiggy behavior that morning.

Wednesday morning, 14th street south was “closed,” and that includes my apartment and my office. That means no cars, no one allowed in but residents of the area, ID required. I lost my driver’s license (and before that it was from Arizona anyway), so I carried around my passport and my phone bill. Except for the groups of people gathering around cars blasting news broadcasts and the general deer-in-headlights look about everyone on the street, even lower Manhattan didn’t seem much different than normal. It wasn’t like dust and debris settled over the whole city. Rudy Giuliani implored New York to go back to normal life…eating out, shopping, just a normal day. Right!

I’ll tell you what though; my friends and I are all liberal or progressive and have never been big fans of Giuliani as mayor. Everyone I’ve talked to has been completely supportive of and delighted in his attitude and his leadership in the aftermath. He’s been real, and direct, and honest, and strong, and he really gives the impression of having everything as much under control as is possible in the circumstances. We’re pretty happy with Pataki too…only Bush has been maligned, but I won’t get started on that.

I went out early to get some food, and the grocery store and some delis I could see were open. No newspapers made it in though. There was a coffee/bagel shop open and there were people hanging out there. I thanked the guys for being open and he smiled and said, “Well, I didn’t know, they said everything is closed, but I came in and took the risk.” It was a sunny beautiful day and I could only see smoke from my neighborhood every once in a while, though there was a big sort of white cloud-looking formation seeming to emanate from that direction.

My roommate and I figured out that we can get shaky channel 2 reception. We stayed glued to the TV the whole day, following the rumors that people had been rescued, the stories about cell phone calls from the rubble, and the news of some guys being caught with a van full of explosives headed for the George Washington bridge. We ate the ice cream I’d bought that morning. We kept trying to call people, and kept getting more emails asking how we were. One email from a friend of mine in Texas reported that her high school students had been dumbstruck to read the accounts I sent. She said they didn’t get it; they’d laughed when they saw people running on TV. For some reason I took this very personally.

That evening we ventured out for more supplies: ice cream, videos, scotch.

Thursday I spent on the couch. All day. With the TV, and another pint of B&J. There was mild nervousness about the air quality. Lower Manhattan was still closed, as was my office. My roommate, who’s office is in Soho, was redeployed to the upper west side, where she actually took calls from customers who called her “an atrocious administrator” for not having contingencies in place. Most, however, were kind and understanding. Of course, my roommate is asthmatic, so I required her to wear a mask at all times when she was outside. Still no newspapers.

Thursday evening I got some good news, however: I had an opportunity to volunteer at the Red Cross, doing data entry. They’d received so many volunteer applications, they needed people to come in and put the information into a database. Instantly I felt incredibly privileged; volunteer spots are very hotly contested in Manhattan at the moment. It is only through my association with a new media networking group that I got this chance to do something, to contribute.

The stories continued to trickle in. Financial types who’d watched the whole thing from their 29^th floor windows. A friend was getting off the subway under the WTC when she heard the boom; she helped the blind man across from her out of the subway and away from the buildings. Someone threw themself over a fallen baby to protect it. A man frantic to get in touch with his wife passed out his phone number to strangers with cell phones; by the time he reached her, 3 other people had called to tell her he was OK.

Friday I finally managed to get out and walk around. The area was open but my office was closed out of respect (a classy move, I thought) so I had another day to myself. Not much wanting to be alone, I convinced a Brooklyn friend to come into town and hang out with me. Around 7:00 we were in Thompkins Square Park when people started gathering with candles. At 8:00 there was a vigil there, and it was really lovely. People were just quietly setting candles in circular groups on the walkways, and sitting and looking and thinking.

My friend started getting friendly with a pit bull (New Yorkers, or East Villagers anyway, are nuts about pit bulls and all manner of squash-faced dogs) named Dorothy. Dorothy’s owner said the dog had been trembling. We sat down next to them, and Dorothy climbed right into my lap and sat down. She was shaking like a leaf. Eventually she curled up in my lap and just lay there till her owner stood to go…she’d stopped shaking and I felt a little better too.

We then made our way up to Union Square, which had been kind of the emotional center of the reaction. The square was absolutely packed, with people and candles and flags and flyers. I was very surprised to see how absolutely peaceful everything was, and how clearly people wanted this to be the end of it. Signs everywhere said “Islam is not the enemy; War is not the answer” and “An eye for an eye and we all go blind” and “Pray for peace.”

On my way home I left the $4 flag I’d bought outside a firehouse on east 14^th Street, where there was a large crowd of people gathered and tons of flowers, flags, candles, and thank-you notes plastered all over the front of the station.

8 a.m. Saturday I had to be at Red Cross headquarters, which I got to rather quickly. I had extra time to read the notes plastered on the firehouse there on Amsterdam, and relight some of the candles that had gone out overnight. Getting checked in as a volunteer was a little hectic, but once I did I got to work rather quickly. There were 20 or 30 of us (I think, there were multiple computer rooms) entering volunteer applications, and other teams had been working in shifts since Thursday. I had to leave at 3:30 or so to make room for the next shift (and believe me, NO one is to be deprived of their opportunity to volunteer) which was staying till late in the evening. They need 50 more people to continue this work this Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (I scored Tuesday and Wednesday late shifts). Remember these are just the volunteers who are entering the volunteer applications into a database; and this is just the Red Cross volunteers. If that gives you any idea how many people are coming out to volunteer. When I left the Red Cross building Saturday afternoon, the lobby was a madhouse. People leaving had to turn in their nametags (I assume lest someone else try to sneak in with their tag).  There was a line outside just waiting to get in and fill out the volunteer forms.

Did I mention I had a horrible cold by Saturday morning? We’re talking full-on stuffy head coughing sneezing aching blah blah blah so I went home and crashed. I had my sources searching out drop-off sites, so on my way back I veered past the Salvation Army on 14^th Street to try to drop off my bag of boots and t-shirts. Not only could I not even get near the place, but I could also see heaps and heaps of bags and boxes, mounds at least 12 feet high against the walls. Any hope that some fire chick would end up wearing my Georgia boots was dashed, and I lugged it all back home.

This morning—Sunday—I woke up still feeling like hell. But my roommate had reported a trip to 3 blocks south of Canal Saturday evening, so I was resolved to get down as close as I could to try to make the whole thing sink in. As close as I am, it still seems so far away. Anyway, my roommate had a volunteer fire-person escort, which may have helped her get so far, and I hear security was tightened up today after they found a passport belonging to one of the suspected hijackers. Suffice to say, I didn’t get near anything but Canal street, which doesn’t thrill me on a regular day, but with the police barricades and the veeeeeeery slow moving throngs of people, well, let’s just say it was a frustrating walk from West Broadway to the Manhattan Bridge. Which bridge I pretended I intended to walk over, hoping to slip around the police, but they had two stationed right at the end of the walkway. DAMN!

Actually “frustrating” sort of sums up the whole thing. I’m frustrated that there are people who believe this was a righteous thing to do. I’m frustrated that we can’t do more faster to help the people who might still be alive, and I’m frustrated that none of them have come out. I’m frustrated that we seem to be pointing the finger awfully quickly, and I’m frustrated that our government is not capable of honestly reviewing the attitudes and actions and policies that brought our world to this point, and particularly our country’s hand in them. I’m frustrated that people keep saying “I can’t believe this is happening in America!” like we’re some impenetrable fortress of purity and goodness. I’m frustrated that further death and suffering seems inevitable. As a New Yorker I’m particularly frustrated that it’s so hard to pitch in, though I’ve been luckier than most with my data entry assignments. I, like most people I suspect, feel a manic need to channel my shock and horror and sadness and grief and fear and guilt into anything that might repair some bit, however miniscule, of the damage that’s been done.

Those are just my feelings. But there’s one thing that I feel qualified to say on the behalf of New York, and that’s “Thank you.” New Yorkers are overwhelmed by the deluge of kindness and concern from the rest of the country and the world. We talk about it a lot, so you know, and how comforting it is. It is a very weird time to be here, but I feel in some way fortunate to have been so near a witness to these events and a part of this cohesive city. If you feel helpless for being far away, you should know that your support and love are making a real difference to people here.

Tomorrow I go back to work. There will still be a big cloud of dust and smoke where there used to be enormous skyscrapers a mile south of my office. Everyone in the city will still be just a little too quiet and a little too nice. My nose will likely still be running, but at least I’ll probably be able to get a cab. I probably still won’t be able to make long distance calls from home, and some of my friends across the country will still have to try 50-100 times to get through to my cell phone. Hundreds or thousands of firefighters, police, and volunteers will still be hauling bucket after bucket after dumptruck after flatbed of pulverized building out of the financial district. The world will still be hoping, ever more faintly, that someone will come out of that rubble mountain alive. Pakistan will be bribed, war will be planned, and I’ll be doing….e-commerce marketing.