I’ve been able to reach most friends in NYC and so far everybody I know is fine. I’m home now, it’s night outside, and if I glance South out my window over the screen of my computer there is only darkness where this morning stood the two towers of the World Trade Center, 2.5 km away. It’s eerie, knowing that so close to here a familiar place has become a landscape of horror.
I’ve watched enough television for now and so I thought I’d write to let you know what I saw today.
I work across the street from the World Trade Center towers (in the World Financial Center) but since this was going to be my last week at Bridge I was only working alternate days (the company is bankrupt) so I was not meant to go to work this morning.
I had just gotten up and was in the bathroom when around 845 ET my radio (which is always tuned to WNYC) said they had just seen an explosion in the North tower. From my window, which has a clear view of the NYC skyline, I saw flames and smoke pour out of a large gash near the 80th floor of the tower. I went to my roof and watched.
About 20 minutes after the first explosion, a huge fireball erupted out of the South tower, about 2 thirds of the way up. People screamed on the roofs around me, where everybody was beginning to gather. Most memorable is the bright bright orange of that explosion, and also the crispness of it; it’s a quality difficult to describe–it’s the quality of NOT seeing it on television, at a much higher resolution and in the outdoors, under a clear sky. The boom came later.
It was difficult to know what had just happened. I already knew from the radio that the first explosion had been caused by a plane. Was the second caused by a news helicopter accident? The plane that caused this second explosion had in fact come from behind the tower, so from my vantage point I had not seen it.
I went back downstairs, thinking that the course of these tragic events had come to some kind of end. I went online to check the news and was glancing out the window (as I’m doing now) when the South tower just started going straight down. This was probably the singlemost shocking moment of the day for me. In retrospect, it is probably also the single moment when most people died. It was shocking because the buildings are huge, because they are not meant to fall down, because I am used to walking underneath them every day. More importantly, the area around the World Trade Center is like canyons made up of buildings–I was suddenly afraid that skyscrapers were going to topple over one after the other. And this was the South tower, the one most recently hit, the one with the least time to evacuate.
Some friends (Clarice and Zed) came by to see if I was OK, as did Sveta. We went to my roof and watched more, helplessly, not wishing to be any closer, while I tried to call people whom I knew had offices in the Wall Street area. Cell phones (and land lines) were only working sporadically, probably because of overload. In the meantime, it had become obvious with the dual plane crashes that this was an act of terrorism. As we stood watching, The north tower collapsed as well. Again, we saw huge dust clouds billowing through the canyons of lower Manhattan. Again, there was that strange dread I had never felt before this day, of being very aware at a particular instance that large numbers of people were dying nearby.
I don’t have TV reception at home so we decided to watch TV at Sveta’s. Walking along St. Marks and First Avenue was strange. There were very few cars on the road by now (over 2 1/2 hours after the first explosion) but many people walking in small groups, or gathered around televisions set out on the sidewalk by merchants. Strangers were talking to each other, ambulances and buses were driving past at high speed on mostly empty streets, and people kept on looking South, at the huge, volcano-like dust and smoke cloud the blanketed the southern sky. Noticeable were small groups of people in business dress walking or huddled around payphones, their cell phones useless, trying to call home.
Then followed hours of television watching, a ritual you all no doubt participated in. Eventually I went home, took a shower, and got a bite to eat at St. Dymphnas–bars that were open were full this afternoon, and still are tonight. New Yorkers were meeting up en masse this afternoon, sharing stories, needing each others’ company, and probably taking their friends a whole lot less for granted. I know I do.
I am still amazed that the 2 World Trade Center towers collapsed onto themselves, rather than topple in a certain direction. Many more buildings could have come down and many more lives lost. In fact, when I came home I went back to my roof, and not one minute later, around 1730 ET, I saw 7 World Trade Center, a big 50-odd story skyscraper directly underneath the North tower, silently slip to the ground. This was the third and final major building to collapse today.
It is very early after this catastrophe, but one thing already seems certain: The future will be decentralized–no longer will banks and stock exchanges concentrate trading floor and clearing houses so densely. People will work more from home, businesses will value less aggregating together. I don’t think they will ever build anything like the World Trade Center again in New York.
Thanks again for your calls or emails, but don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Right now I’m thinking about the survivors that are beginning to call on their cell phones from under the rubble.
