I live 2 miles away from the ex-World Trade Center and my street has a clear view right down to the financial district. The towers were one of my favorite sights while walking to work. My dentist was actually in WTC 2, and I had actually been trying to reschedule a morning appointment for a while. Yesterday morning, I was woken up by a strangely loud popping sound coming from outside, but decided that I wasn't going to worry about it for at least another 15 minutes of sleep. Cars are always backfiring in my neighborhood. Then my roommate rushed in and woke me up. She was screaming something about a fire downtown. I ran out into the street in my pjs and saw the WTC in flames. There were huge black clouds of smoke, but both towers were still standing. People were milling around, and nobody knew what was going on. Obviously, I went in and turned on the TV. This must have been around 9 am or so. By around 10 am or so we saw the first bedraggled survivors staggering down Henry Street. And they were definitely staggering. My street really does run as a clear shot from the financial district, so I assume panicked people just started walking along it and kept going because they didn't know what else to do. The subways were down; bus service was erratic. You could tell immediately who was from Wall Street because I live in a lower-income neighborhood; I've never seen so many men in chinos walking down Henry Street in my life. Their shirts were open; their faces were flushed. They looked dazed. Some of them had this thin layer of white dust all over them; one man's black briefcase was almost completely white. I stayed outside for a bit to try to direct them to transportation, or even just in the right direction. My part of the Lower East Side can feel like a maze of streets that twist and turn very unpredictably. Most of the shell shocked people were walking in completely the wrong direction (ie, right into the East River) . I saw this one woman in very high heels limping slowly along, carrying her blazer and an enormous briefcase I asked her if she knew where she was -- she did. I asked her if she knew where she needed to go, and she replied, "I don't know. I just don't know." I directed her to the nearest bus stop, and from there which bus to take uptown. She looked like she was going to cry. I went back in, then, and watched TV for a while. I missed the first tower falling, but I ran out and saw the second. It was horrible. There was smoke everywhere, thick and black. It blocked out the horizon south of me. The air smelled terrible -- not like burning, but like industrial chemicals. Very acrid. People stood in the streets, crying. For a while, I couldn't look, either. I was crying too hard. It was impossible to deny that anyone who had been in those two buildings was dead now. There were lines of businesspeople at all the payphones trying to call home. But the phone lines were impossibly busy. In my neighborhood (of about five blcoks square) alone, there were at least 5 impromptu water-and-direction stands, and all the churches had opened their doors to the survivors. I went to my local hospital with my roommates to try and donate blood, but they didn't have facilities ready, so Gouverneur Hospital shuttled us off to Bellevue, 30 blocks away, where they were accepting blood. We took a special hospital shuttle up FDR. It was eerily empty, with more unmarked and marked police vehicles than I'd ever seen driving in the opposite direction, lights flashing. There were cops everywhere, both in the familiar uniforms and some in strange gray uniforms with army caps. Those must have been the National Guard. They were mostly just directing traffic, which in New York, with the major arteries closed, was a considerable task. People were pretty pleasant, all things considered. When we got to Bellevue, we were told that they were so swamped with blood donations, they couldn't handle any more. A doctor also told my roommate that things were pretty much under control. We couldn't get a ride home from Bellevue, so we just walked. It was still very hot, and people milled about the streets trying to figure out what to do, especially those who had walked all the way up from the financial district. That would have been a walk of about 4 miles. The busses were up and running, but they were jampacked with people. And anyway, the traffic was in near gridlock. So we walked home through the East Village, which looked... almost... normal. Except that some of the hipster cafes were crowded with business people, there were long lines outside ATMs, and many people had posted homemade signs with directions to the nearest hospitals accepting blood donations. I live near the Wmsburg Bridge, and when we got close to it I saw yet another surreal sight: the bridge had been closed off to vehicular traffic, and was crowded instead with what looked like hundreds of people, all trudging slowly to Brooklyn in a mass migration out of Manhattan. The fruit ice vendors were doing great that day, let me tell you. But it was so bizarre: everybody was in various stages of shock, but they were still walking. In the East Village, I saw a man who must have just been released from Beth Israel (on 12th and 1st) slowly wandering downtown. He was wearing hospital pyjamas, had his arm in a sling, and carried a clear garbage bag on his back that was filled with what must have been all his clothes, including his shoes. He himself was wearing hospital slippers. He was anomalous, to be sure, but I bet there are a lot more like him all over downtown. I have to say, though, that New York is one hell of a city. Things were still pretty functional, even as close as three miles from the explosion. The busses were running, the subway were sort of back, and the wine bars haven't even paused in operation.


Back to Stories

Back to Ideas