9/11/2001 - My Perspective

9/11/2001 – 5:30 AM I had set the timer on the TV to wake me up at 5:30 AM as usual. The talking head on the news was screaming out the morning headlines at me. I reached for the remote and lowered the TV to a dull roar, then got out of bed to get ready for work. I took a shower and shaved, then headed back to my room to get dressed.  It was now 6:00 AM and I barely noticed as I passed the living room window that the sun was out and there was not a cloud in the sky. It would be a beautiful day, or so I thought. After getting dressed, I woke my son and got him ready for school. Being a single parent I relied on my mom to walk my son the two blocks to school after I left for work. I fed my son, gave him a goodbye kiss and headed out. Living on Staten Island, my commute was longer than most. I travel 1 hour and a half each way. Miraculously, the bus arrived on time. I was able to catch the 8:00 AM ferry to Manhattan’s Whitehall Ferry Terminal. The ferry arrived in Whitehall at 8:30 AM. I stopped outside the South Ferry train station and paused to have a cigarette. As I smoked, I looked uptown towards the World Trade Center. As always, they looked impressive to me. The sun was shining and the light of the sun reflected off of the Trade Center towers. It was an awesome sight. I finished my cigarette and proceeded to enter the train station. I boarded the uptown number 1 local train at 8:37 AM. The train left the station and headed uptown. At the Chambers Street station I got off of the #1 to change to the number 2 express train. This would get me to the 14th street train station faster and ensure that I would arrive to work on time.  I stood on the Chambers Street platform and waited for the express train to arrive. After a few minutes, I and the other people on the platform heard a rumble in the distance. We all looked down the tunnel to see the train pulling into the station. After looking for a couple of minutes, we all noticed that no train was coming. I looked around at my fellow commuters and we all had quizzical looks on our faces. We then looked behind us and noticed that the local was still in the station waiting. We all looked at each other confused, shrugged our shoulders, and boarded the local to go uptown.  As soon as we all boarded and sat down, the train closed its doors without warning and took off uptown without any announcement. This was peculiar, as the conductor always announced a message warning that the doors were about to close, and what the next stop on the train would be. Again, everybody in my train car looked at each other quizzically, shrugged our shoulders, and went back to reading our newspapers. A typical New York reaction. Nothing fazed us. I noticed that the train was skipping the local stops and going express uptown. This did not seem peculiar, as the MTA regularly changed its schedules mid-route. I assumed that this was just another schedule change and thought nothing more of it.  Our train pulled into the 14th street station and I got off of the train. I proceeded upstairs and out of the train station. Just outside of the station is a deli where I get my coffee in the morning. I got two cups, paid the clerk and exited the store. I was delighted to see my bus waiting outside at the bus stop, a rarity indeed. I usually had to wait about ten minutes to catch a bus. I got on board the cross-town bus headed towards 11th Avenue and 19th Street.  The bus traveled across 14th street towards my destination. Traffic was heavy, although I still didn’t have a clue why. I noticed people on the street out of the corner of my eye staring downtown. I wasn’t yet curious as to why. I kept on reading my newspaper.  As the bus reached the corner of 16th Street and 11th Avenue, its progress was stopped by traffic. I looked out of the front window of the bus and saw that all of the cars had stopped on 11th Avenue, and the drivers were all standing outside of their cars looking downtown. Annoyed, I asked the bus driver to let me off there so that I could walk the remaining distance to my workplace.  When I got off of the bus, I decided to look downtown to see what all the fuss was about. That’s when I saw it! The World Trade Center’s North Tower had a huge gaping, smoking hole in it!  “Oh my God! What happened??!!!!”, I said to no one in particular. Standing next to me was a construction worker. He said, “It was a bleepin’ accident! A bleepin’ plane crashed into the bleepin’ World Trade Center!” I looked up at the sky. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky! I looked over at the construction worker and said, “How the hell did he not see the World Trade Center?!!!” Both the construction worker and I looked back downtown at the World Trade Center. As we watched, another plane came into view. It turned right into the South Tower and crashed into it! Both the construction worker and I said at the same time, “That wasn’t no accident!” At that, everybody in the street started running in all directions. People started fighting over use of the nearest payphones. Drivers abandoned their cars in the middle of 11th Avenue.    I decided to proceed to my workstation, the Bayview Correctional Facility at 20th Street and 11th Avenue. I am a clerical supervisor for the Division Of Parole. I had to make sure that all of my people were okay. I also had to wait for orders from administration on how to proceed. Do we go home? Do we wait to be evacuated? Do we stay in the facility under lockdown? If we were released to go home, how would my people and myself get home? I needed to find out as much information as possible, and the best and safest place to do so was my workplace. I arrived at the facility a few minutes later. Everyone had a dazed look on his or her face. Many were confused, all faces had looks of fear painted on them. My supervisor was in a dazed kind of state and wasn’t sure what to do. He decided to wait for administration to call and issue orders as to what to do next. As we all waited, we watched television news of what was going on. We saw the firemen and the police enter the Trade Center Towers as people were streaming out of them. We could see that some debris from the crashes had fallen on people on the ground and they were severely injured. The paramedics on the scene tended to them. We watched as the first tower came crashing down with firefighters and police still inside. A collective gasp rose from the people around me.  “Oh my God! The firemen and police were still in there!”, many of us screamed. The scene on TV of the collapse of the first tower showed it come down in a pancake manner; that is to say it fell straight down, floor collapsing on top of floor, instead of falling to one side or another. The way it fell saved many lives. If it had fallen in one direction or another, instead of straight down, many more people would have been killed or injured, as the debris field would have probably extended several blocks in the direction it would have fallen. As it was, many people were either killed or injured by the debris that fell immediately around the tower area.  As I watched, I could see some bodies on the ground covered and burning from the fuel that had fallen from the impact area on the floor the first plane had hit. Immediately in front of where the first tower was, I saw an ambulance that had been partially crushed and buried under debris. I found myself desperately wishing that anyone who had been there was able to get away in time. The carnage was terrible.  The TV stations repeatedly show this scene over and over again. Each time I saw it, I saw something new and terrible. For example, when I watched it the first time, I saw a lot of debris falling from the upper floors of tower just before it came crashing down. Upon seeing a second time, I realized that some of the debris was actually people! Many of the people who were trapped on the floors above the impact site had apparently realized that emergency personnel could not reach them. These people lost hope, and many of them decided to jump rather than wait for the inevitable.    I felt sick watching those people falling to their deaths. I could feel their fear as they fell. I imagined I could hear their screams above the din of destruction reverberating all around. I could imagine what went through their minds just before they jumped to their deaths. The hope for rescue they felt before they became resigned to the fact that they were going to die. The fear that clutched their hearts, as they realized that their hopes were for naught. All this and more did I see in my mind’s eye. I could see in my mind’s eye them calling their loved ones to say goodbye, and to tell them that they loved them, and would always do so. I could hear in my mind them telling their loved ones not to cry for them, but to promise they would move on and prevail against all the pain life had to offer. In my mind I could hear them telling their loved ones that they would be going to a better place and that God would take them into His heart, granting them peace forever more. These things and many others I would have said to my loved ones had I been the one in their place. I wondered at the feelings of impotence and the pain of loss that their loved ones felt after receiving such a call from their loved one trapped in the tower. The children would not comprehend what had happened for a while. They would continue to ask after their father or mother, wondering why they did not come home. Some children might even think it was their fault. That they had possibly done something that made their mommy or daddy not want to come home. And later on, when they finally did grasp the reality of what had happened, they would suffer the feelings of loss and unfairness of it all. Many of them might even blame a God who could let this happen to their mommy or daddy. The pain from this one incident would affect thousands for generations to come.  We watched again as the second tower came crashing down, and we cried tears of pain and anguish for the emergency personnel still trapped inside. They had died trying to save the people still in the building and those who were trapped on the upper floors. We were all in a state of shock. I asked my supervisor if I could let my people go home to be with their loved ones. He replied that administration had not as yet released us. I called administration and inquired as to whether we could leave, and we were given the go ahead. I gathered all of the ladies who worked with me and escorted them to their respective train stations, not realizing that train service was suspended. I headed to the 14th street train station to see if I could take the train to the ferry terminal, but service was suspended. I would have to walk a few miles to get to the ferry.    At 14th street and 7th Avenue a barricade had been set up to stop anyone from going downtown. I had to get home. My family would be worried about me and none of the phones were working. I walked along 14th street to the eastside. At the FDR Drive I found no barricades blocking my way. I proceeded downtown towards the ferry, picking people up along the way that had lost their way. I led the way downtown.  When we arrived at the ferry terminal, service had been restored. I got on the ferry, tired and thirsty. I decided to buy a beer, then changed my mind and bought two. I needed them after what I had been through. Twenty minutes later, we arrived in Staten Island. I got on the bus and went to my house.  I put the key in the door and opened it. My son was at the top of the stairs with a look of relief on his face. “Daddy! You’re finally home! I was afraid you were dead!” My heart almost broke in two at hearing my 6-year-old son say that. He must have been frantic watching the television and not knowing what had happened to me. His mother was not around, and I was the whole world to him. If I had died, he would have been left alone without a parent to give him the hugs and kisses all children at that stage in their lives.  I scooped him up in my arms, promised I would never leave him, and hugged and kissed his face until we both fell over with fits of laughter and relief.