Post date: Nov 30, 2010 1:41:15 AM
Although my individual story for September 11, 2001 and its aftermath is neither tragic nor newsworthy, I work two blocks from what was the World Trade Center. For fourteen years, I have worked in the Antitrust Bureau of the New York Attorney General’s Office. The building where I work, 120 Broadway, is one block north of Wall Street and occupies the block between Pine, Broadway, Cedar, and Nassau in downtown Manhattan. From the corner of Broadway and Cedar, the Trade Center was only a short walk diagonally through a small one-block square park. My office is on the 26th floor of 120 Broadway, on the Pine Street side near Nassau Street, the corner opposite the one facing what was the World Trade Center.
Over my 14 years working at 120 Broadway, I spent a fair amount of time in the World Trade Center. Before my family and I moved out of Manhattan to Bayside Queens in 1995, I regularly patronized stores in the concourse. Between 1995 and September 11, I still patronized those stores periodically. While between apartments and living in New Jersey with my in-laws for a few weeks in 1995, I took the PATH into and out of the World Trade Center every working day. Since moving to Bayside, I regularly used the World Trade Center stop on the E subway line to get to and from work when my usual express buses weren’t running. The express buses I usually ride go from Queens to the Wall Street area early on workday mornings, and from the Wall Street area to Queens after 3 p.m. and before 7:30 p.m. on workday evenings. Thus, except for periods of construction on the E line, I took the E into and out of the Trade Center whenever the express buses weren’t running: when I worked late, on weekends, or when I got in late or left very early, usually because of school events for my boys.
Even beyond the familiarity bred of proximity, the World Trade Center held a prominent place in my life, as in the life of many New Yorkers. It dominated the skyline, oriented you in lower Manhattan when you weren’t quite sure where you were, and graced much of the advertising and promotional material that filled your day. This prominence was illustrated on my flight back from Jacksonville, Florida on September 7, when the pilot announced that we had a particularly good view of Manhattan and the World Trade Center outside the right side of the plane. Although I didn’t, my colleague changed seats to take in the view. Since September 11, I noticed that one of my t-shirts has the Trade Center on it, and I paused in mid-September when I got a fundraising package from the local PBS station that had the Trade Center on one the enclosed post-cards.
Like a normal day . . .
As usual, I was at my desk beginning around 7:30 a.m. on September 11, 2001. By 8:45, after some coffee, reading the Wall Street and New York Law Journals, and responding to some of my voicemails and e-mails, I was working on my agenda for the usual Tuesday conference call among Plaintiff States in the Disposable Contact Lens Antitrust Litigation.
Something made me look up, turn, and look out my window. Paper debris filled the air. The only times I had seen paper floating outside my 26th floor window before was when Broadway hosted a parade, such as a Yankee celebration of a world championship. Yet this debris was different. The debris seemed to go up as far as I could see, and did not get denser below me or less dense above me. Much of the debris was charred. (Others have written about this debris. For example, I have read about letterhead from a business on the 95th floor of Tower One ending up on a rooftop in Brooklyn.)
The debris got me moving. I walked to where the secretaries sit and asked whether there was a parade that I didn’t know about. A paralegal said he heard on his radio that a plane had run into the World Trade Center. The conversation turned to the small plane that had run into the Empire State Building. (We didn’t have that story straight. I now know that on Saturday, July 28, 1945, a Army Air Corps B-25 ran into the 79th floor offices of Catholic Charities in the Empire State building on a very foggy day. The crash killed the three people in the plane and ten in the building. Now, the exterior of the Empire State Building is illuminated at night and when visibility is poor.)
People disbursed to find out what was going on. I went back to my office and called Meredith, my wife. She told me the TV news was reporting that a plane had run into the Trade Center. An announcement came over the building’s audio system that the building was “secure.” I wanted to know more specifics, and so walked to the Criminal Prosecutions Bureau, which is also on the 26th floor, but on the Broadway/World Trade Center side of the building.
The view from Criminal Prosecutions was surreal, like the special effects of a disaster movie. Flames were shooting and smoke was billowing out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Although difficult to discern precisely, the gash in the building seemed to me to be at least three and as many as five floors wide and almost as long as the building was wide.
I must have stared for a while, but finally returned to a seemingly deserted Antitrust Bureau. (I found out later that when I went to call my wife, the supervisor of the support staff, Elizabeth, left the building and went towards the World Trade Center. She saw large debris falling and people jumping. She returned to the bureau for her keys and frantically urged everyone to go home right away.
Evacuation
While I was walking back toward my office on the 26th floor, the building shook. I called Meredith again, who told me that a second plane had hit the second tower. It was a little after 9 a.m. While Meredith and I talked, I thought I heard the building announce that the building was still secure, but that the Police Department had requested that the building be evacuated above the 40th floor. (I heard wrong. Weeks later during my cathartic conversations at work, many people told me that the announcement was to evacuate floors 23-40. The building is only 40 stories high.) I pondered with Meredith whether I would be safer in the building or trying to get home. While trying to gather my wits, the building announced that the entire building was being evacuated and that people should exit on the Nassau Street side of the building and go north.
I did as directed. Before going, I called Meredith, which the caller i.d. on our phone recorded as being at 9:16 a.m., to say the building was being evacuated. She urged me to borrow a cell phone and call as soon as I could. I put on my jacket, but consciously decided to leave my briefcase behind, reasoning that I might have to move quickly or far and that the briefcase would weigh me down. I joined the two attorneys who had just arrived to work, locked the door to the bureau, and went down in the elevator. Judging from the times on my office e-mails that I saw 10 days later, our internet connection at work went down a few minutes later, at 9:23.
The lobby at 120 Broadway was packed, with many people milling about. I parted ways with my colleagues, went out the Nassau Street exit, and started walking north. (One of my colleagues, Dick Grimm, went to the Trade Center, thinking he might help. When the first tower collapsed, he retreated to behind a van and suffered through at least 5 minutes of complete darkness. He was briefly hospitalized for the damage done to his eyes and lungs by the debris.)
Heading North
The usual ways home for me were not available. The out-going express bus I usually take home to Queens does not run at that time of day. (I found out later that the in-coming express buses going downtown were also not available. Those buses were told to turn around and take people home.) My typical alternative, catching the subway at the World Trade Center, was obviously walking into, instead of away from, the risk. Thus, I started walking north toward another subway line, which turned east toward Brooklyn before reaching the World Trade Center.
The flow of people going north was similar to the flow of people leaving a concert or a sporting event. Most were walking up the streets because vehicular traffic was almost non-existent. The streets were also jammed with people watching the World Trade Center Towers burn. While I passed Pace University’s downtown campus, a man with a megaphone was urging people to stop watching, to walk north, and to go home. He pointed out that nearby structures -- the City’s Municipal Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and City Hall -- might be targets of further attacks.
My usual path to my alternate subway line was blocked. I usually would walk past Police Plaza, the U.S. Attorney’s office, and the federal courts. Those buildings and the plazas around them were already sealed off.
Thrown off my path toward my third choice for getting home, I headed north on Centre Street. I was now 5 or 6 blocks north of the Trade Center and remembered my promise to call Meredith. For that thought to occur to me, I must have begun to feel beyond the risks from the attacks on the Trade Center. Once the thought occurred to me, I thought I should tell Meredith that I was fine, but would take a while getting home.
Exploring the alternatives, I saw long lines by the pay phones, but also saw many people holding cell phones. I had no change for a pay phone and so asked a woman if for a dollar I could use her cell phone. She said she would gladly lend her cell phone for free, but that she had been trying to get her mother for an hour and couldn’t get a connection. My request noticeably shook her, apparently with the thought of how worried her mother must be. I continued walking north, now noticing that most of the people with cell phones or at the head of the lines at pay phones were not talking, which indicated to me that phone connections were hard to come by.
I went into a subway stop on Canal Street. The lines weren’t long, but when I got to the platform I realized that the trains in the station were under instructions to “stop and stay.” I decided to keep walking north and not wait for those instructions to change. On the platform, I passed pay phones that were not being used. I figured that subway phones might prove to be a way to avoid the lines outside. So, at the end of the platform I asked at a newspaper stand for change, which I was given without a pause. (Usually vendors in New York make you buy something before they give you change.) Focused on continuing north and expecting connections to still be hard to get, I did not walk back to the phones.
Two gasps
I came out of the subway and joined the flow of people walking north. I was now in Chinatown-Little Italy. Like most of Manhattan south of 14th Street, most streets in this area are named, and the few numbered streets are jumbled. (The Village is a little further north and is particularly confusing for me. In the Village, West Fourth Street intersects with West Tenth Street. Before that day and like many New Yorkers, I had used the Trade Center Towers to orient me amidst the jumble of the Village streets.)
Walking west on Spring Street and about 200 feet before the intersection with West Broadway, I heard a loud collective gasp. I had turned onto Spring in an effort to avoid getting lost while getting home. The E line has a stop on Spring, and I figured the trains might be running again. West Broadway provided a particularly good vantage point of the towers, and the gasp was from people on the street looking south. When I got to West Broadway and looked south, I saw only a huge brown cloud of smoke. I didn’t realize until hours later that the gasp was from those who saw the first tower collapse and the cloud I saw was the aftermath.
I concluded that my best chance to get home was a midtown express bus to Queens. I checked out the subways and found the trains were not running. The Queens Surface express buses to midtown Manhattan run at all hours and the first stop in Manhattan toward Queens is at 35th Street and Sixth Avenue. Thus, I turned north on Sixth Avenue. (Maps and tourists refer to Avenue of the Americas. New Yorkers refer to Sixth.)
Walking north on Sixth somewhere in the 20s, I heard the second gasp. I turned around to see another huge brown cloud. I still only had a vague sense that something was missing from the view. Apparently like many others, I did not even consider the possibility that the towers had collapsed. I could have stopped and listened to the radios blaring in the street or out of parked cars. I could have watched the televisions playing in stores along Sixth Avenue. I could have read the news ticker on one of the buildings on 34th and Sixth. In a fog, I just kept walking north.
The bus ride home
When I got to 35th & Sixth, I saw three or four orange Queens Surface buses lined up. As I walked north traffic had reappeared on the streets, but was still quite light. As I approached the first bus to determine which route it ran, the dispatcher announced that buses were not being allowed over the bridges or through the tunnels into Manhattan, and that no more buses were expected. Without knowing where in Queens I would end up, I got in and took a window seat in the back of the bus. The bus was full before it left that first stop.
Like other passengers, I began the bus ride in a daze. After a while, people started exchanging reports and rumors. Planes had hit the towers, the Pentagon, the White House, and Harlem, where Bill Clinton’s offices were. I preferred to just stare out the window.
Once I got on the bus, the trip out of Manhattan was comparatively quick. Because it was full, the bus didn’t stop to pick up passengers along Sixth Avenue. Traffic was light until we got to 57th Street. By then, passengers’ cell phones started to get connections. I borrowed a cell phone and called Meredith. Because of the noise in the bus, I could not understand what Meredith was saying, but told her I was on a Queens Surface bus and would figure out how to get home once I figured out where this bus would take me. The caller i.d. showed that Meredith got this call at 11:16 a.m., two hours after I left 120 Broadway. The bus went through a security check point and out of Manhattan on the Queensboro Bridge.
I determined the bus would get me near home. A woman a few rows in front of me reported that this was a QM2, which ended near Bay Terrace shopping center, which is about three miles north of home. I could easily walk from there and so settled back for the ride.
Yet, the bus’s route through Queens was circuitous. Some people on the bus were just trying to get out of Manhattan, as opposed to getting to Queens. Apparently for those people, the bus detoured to the Woodside Station of the Long Island Railroad. Moreover, various subway lines were nearby and apparently running. After that stop, nobody on the bus needed to stand.
To get back to the normal route, the bus took the Grand Central Parkway, which buses usually do not use, past LaGuardia airport. I had never before seen nothing moving at LaGuardia in the middle of the day. LaGuardia had always before been frenetic and crowded until late at night.
The last stop was on Bell Boulevard, near the Bay Terrace shopping center. I called Meredith with a quarter I had gotten from the newspaper vendor in the subway, told her where I was, and arranged for her to pick me up. Our phone recorded the time as 12:48 p.m. I waited outside a branch of the Queens library, which like many city and public buildings, was closed. Meredith came with the boys, who she had already taken out of school. I was glad to see them; we were back home by about 1:15, four hours after I left 120 Broadway. The usual commuting time is 60-90 minutes.
Work Loose Ends
When I got home, I was still on automatic pilot. I set about tying up loose ends from work. Remote access to my e-mail did not work. My voicemail did. I retrieved my voicemail and changed my outgoing message to say that the building was evacuated and that I had been the last to leave the bureau. I called those who had left me voicemails.
I even called in to the usual Tuesday at 2 p.m. conference call among Plaintiff States in the Disposable Contact Lens Antitrust Litigation. I reported on what had happened at 120 Broadway and how I could be reached. I welcomed the distraction of reporting on the court appearance on the motions for final approval of the settlement, which had been held the prior Friday, and the other developments in the litigation.
By getting and making calls, I found out that everyone in the bureau was accounted for. Elizabeth told me her story. I heard from the bureau chief, Jay Himes, that everyone was fine. Jay had been taxiing to take off from LaGuardia when the airplanes were grounded, and was now home. Jay told me Dick had been hospitalized, but was fine.
Adjusting
I turned to the television and the internet to try to get my brain around what had happened. I thought of little else the rest of the week. I could not have gone into work if I had wanted to. The building was closed; neither voicemail or remote access to my business e-mail worked. I got few calls, and did not focus very well on even those few.
Yet, by the second week, I was looking forward to going back to work. More and more work came to me via my home e-mail and my home phone. I was hogging our home computer and phone. The boys’ schools reopened on Thursday, September 13th, and I began to feel like a slacker.
Returning to 120 Broadway
I was not allowed back into 120 Broadway until Friday, September 21. The Department of Law did not officially reopen until Monday the 24th. By that time, the streets had been cleared and cleaned. The building had passed environmental and structural tests and electricity and water had been restored. A video-conference line had been converted on September 19 to use as our internet connection. Wholesale cleaning of the building had begun.
The vistas were changed. The changed skyline was evident miles away, and can be seen for large parts of my daily commute. For me, the most jarring change of view was when I looked right just before entering 120 Broadway. From that Cedar Street entrance, I could now see the World Financial Center. Weeks before those buildings had been blocked from view by Tower 2 of the World Trade Center.
Scaffolding encircles 120 Broadway. Before I arrived, workers had tested the structural integrity of the building’s facade above that scaffolding. After my return, workers vacuumed up debris from the window ledges and other places where debris had accumulated. The windows on my side of the building have now even been washed.
On September 21, the bureau looked much like how it looked on September 11. Unlike other Department employees, no antitruster had left a window open. But, of course, much had changed. Those first days back, we spent hours conveying our stories. Being at home, we had been shielded from work stories that illustrated how the attacks impacted our lives. Social workers were available for counseling. The Attorney General and his First Deputy personally and separately welcomed back each employee.
The offices at 120 Broadway slowly approached full capacity. Only one bureau telephone line, for a telecopier, worked on September 21st. We figured out how to use that line as a telephone and lined up to use that single phone. On Monday, we were issued cell phones. On September 27th, the first regular phone rang in the bureau since our return. That was the only line that worked for a while, but slowly other lines returned. Voicemail returned on October 15th and for me picking up my messages from late afternoon on September 11 was jarring. My individual line returned on October 24th, although the quality of the connection has ebbed and flowed. By mid-November, only one or two phones in the bureau still did not work.
I have grown to accept, even appreciate, the tourists. At first, I considered tourists visiting a disaster area to be macabre. Over time, I came to realize that for many there was no substitute for seeing with your own two eyes and smelling with your own nose. I have paused on the streets to gawk and have gone over to the conference room on the other side of the building to see the developments at ground zero from 26 floors up. Tourists make the streets feel more like downtown Manhattan felt before September 11. Indeed, the tourists made me realize that I was a witness to events that many wanted to try to understand.
The Trade Center debris still burns and some days the smell is worse than others. As debris is cleared, oxygen finds more materials to burn. The smell is strong, particularly when the wind blows toward 120 Broadway. The Department of Law is filled with large air filters to address the environmental concerns. The Department also has been subjected to a thorough cleaning, and the building is still surrounded by scaffolding. Fortunately, the smell and the burning is noticeably decreasing.
New security checks have become routine. I now wear my state i.d. and building pass around my neck to get through the checkpoints quickly. I open my briefcase for inspection whenever I go into a building. People opening the mail wear masks and gloves.
Recovery downtown continues. The last week in October, for example, Liberty Plaza partially reopened. Liberty Plaza is over 50 stories tall and is on the perimeter of ground zero. Its first floor was used as a makeshift morgue in the aftermath of the attacks. Many feared that Liberty Plaza was going to collapse from the fire and other damage it suffered. Yet, firefighters rushed in to put out the fires, even after both World Trade Center towers had collapsed. The building has now been repaired and cleaned. Scaffolding has been taken down from around some buildings.
My express bus is starting to fill up again, but is still far from full capacity. The express bus’s downtown route used to be a loop passing by the World Trade Center. Now the bus makes only three stops, all on Water Street, five blocks east of what was the World Trade Center. As buildings have reopened, the bus has gotten fuller and fuller both in the morning and at night. Yet, office space for about 100,000 people was lost in the attacks, and I don’t expect full buses anytime soon.
For me, the bus ride is a daily reminder that we are moving beyond September 11. Yet, to paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, I am only getting used to not being used to it. Although who was on a specific bus varied somewhat, most people on commuter buses like mine are regulars. Over time, I have had conversations with many of the regulars, while waiting for the bus or sharing the ride. Before September 11, the conversations were rarely about where we worked. Rather, we talked about the idiosyncrasies of drivers, the specifics of traffic flows, current events, or other details of getting to and from work or living life. I can’t remember ever exchanging last names or mentioning the World Trade Center during those conversations.
Often these days, I quietly rejoice when I see another familiar face that I had not seen since September 11. I have not seen many of the regulars. Maybe I will soon. Maybe we just have had different schedules. Maybe their building has not reopened. Yet, some of the regulars will probably never return. For most of those not returning, their commute is probably now to offices in midtown, New Jersey, or elsewhere. But, of course, the explanation for an individual not returning to the bus could be far more tragic and final. I suspect I will never know.
The Toll
I am often struck by the realization that thousands of people died only two blocks from where I work, and I can specifically identify only one who I knew personally. He also used to work at Skadden Arps, the large law firm where I worked in the early 1980s. Maybe that speaks to the large scale and relative anonymity of living in New York City. Maybe that speaks to my having become somewhat insular and a homebody.
I at least came close to knowing a few more. Two of the missing and presumed dead lived in our development. The first was a firefighter who had just moved into an apartment on our courtyard. The second lived further away and worked in financial services in Tower 2. He was last seen telling people, after Tower 1 had been hit but before Tower 2 had been, that he would wanted to make sure everyone in his office was out before he evacuated. My business school, the Stern School at N.Y.U., lists 25 alumni among the missing, including 2 who graduated the same year I did. None of those names ring bells for me. I am still trying to find out what happened to some of the regulars on my express bus.
I also personally know many people with stories to tell. When I was talking with one regular express bus rider, I found out another regular worked for AON Corporation, which had offices high in Tower 2. She was evacuating and changing elevators on the 78th floor when the second plane hit Tower 2 and got out. The only other person who I know worked at the Trade Center is a lawyer, who had not gotten to work when the attacks struck. Other express bus regulars or colleagues at work tell harrowing stories about their personal experiences on September 11.
The long term health effects on those I know are harder to gauge. Dick Grimm, my colleague who was caught in the debris of the Tower 1 collapse, has not been well since September 11. The effect of breathing the air downtown has been probed by many, including scientists with the Environmental Bureau of the Department of Law, and I am optimistic. The mental health effects of the attacks are harder to gauge.
I will leave for others discussion of broader impact of the attacks. I have more parochial milestones in mind. I hope the fires at ground zero are put out soon. I would prefer not being able to smell the air. I long for the cleaning to be complete and for the scaffolding to come down.