09/11/01 - WTC - I was there - Part III

(continued from here and here)

The stairs are covered with smoke, we can't breathe, it stinks, the air is heavy. In one of the floors we meet other office workers who give us some wet paper towels to put around our mouth and nose, to avoid breathing that directly.

We make our way down the stairs.

The lobby is packed with people "The police doesn't let us leave. They say we can't get out, no one can leave the building" We freak out. We DON'T WANT to stay here! Are they nuts? We want to run away! Are they crazy?? But the smoke outside was too dense, and the debris too dangerous to let us leave.

There was (conveniently enough) a bar attached to our lobby. We open the door and go into the bar.

Cable TV is working there. The bar is packed, we see the news on TV. It's early morning and people are drinking heavily already. Trisha, Mike and Paul all order some beers. I decide not to drink "if I have to run as fast as I can, I want to be able to."

We sit down on the steps inside the bar leading to their private room. Everyone looks gloomy. Eyes are glued to the TV.

Then on the TV we see the second building collapsing. Instantly, all eyes move to the windows. People are running away faster than I have ever seen people running before. You know when you put a movie on fast forward? THAT fast. Within seconds, the windows get covered with smoke, we can't see anything out, as if someone had blocked the windows with a huge piece of cardboard. People around me are sobbing and crying. So am I. The waiters come out and puts down the night gates and they cover the glass around the windows with paper towels to prevent more smoke from coming in.

Paul desperately tries to call his brother who worked at building 5. "I hope he's ok, what if something happened to him??" Cellphones still don't work, and the payphone barely gets a call through, but everyone keeps trying to get in touch with their loved ones. "Thank god I talked to my mom, she knows I'm ok." I think.

There were other news on TV. The Pentagon was attacked. A plane crashed in PA. There were reports of another half a dozen plane crashes (am I the only one who remembers this?) that later came out to be untrue.

By then we are too scared to leave. Our "little" 14-story building downtown was tiny by NY standards, definitely not at risk. Who knows what might happen if we walk out there?

I talk to other people in the bar. The woman who worked at the post office across the street. Remember how I saw people falling off the building? She was across the street, she saw them hitting the ground. Another one was in tears "how am I going to get back home? I left my office because they told us to evacuate now the building is gone, it's gone! I have no ID, no money, no cellphone, I left my purse in the office. We were supposed to come back, but it's gone."

At around 1pm that day we finally decide to brave it and leave.

We leave the building and the ground is covered in powder. A whitish powder, at least an inch or two deep. There are papers all over the street. A lot of it half burned. One I remember to this day. It was an online printout from Yahoo Vacations about the Bahamas. My first thought was “will that person ever get to go on their vacation? Did the person who printed this survived?” I still wonder about that sometimes. I don’t remember a single one of the papers that I stepped over that day. But I never forgot the yahoo one.

The city was empty. We saw uniformed people with riffles at every corner. But New Yorkers? There weren’t a lot of them. I lived in the NYC area for almost 7 years. Even at 3 in the morning I never saw the city that quiet, that empty. I hope to never see it like that again.

Passing the Brooklyn Bridge, there were tons of people crossing over. Trisha said “maybe I should cross there” but Paul and I convinced her it was not worth it. What if there’s a bomb? Another attack? A bridge with hundreds of people would surely be a good target.

So we kept on walking up. Every few minutes or so, a jet would fly overheard. We’d freeze, heart pounding in our chests and slowly look up. It was one of us, one of the good guys. Nothing to worry about.

(to be continued)