September 11, 2011

Ten years. Wow. I was there when it happened. Here's my story, originally posted on another blog of mine back in 2006:

" I have a deeper connection to the attacks than most because I was there. I worked a block away from the Trade Center and stuck around long enough to get immersed in the mayhem and have to run for my life up Church Street when the towers collapsed.

“On the morning of September 11, 2001 I and a number of other newly hired City attorneys were due to have our picture taken with then Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the steps of City Hall. We were all supposed to meet on the second floor of the Law Department and then proceed to City Hall as a group. I was running late that morning and didn’t get to 100 Church Street until shortly after 8:30am. The first plane must have struck the tower when I was in the elevator because I don’t recall hearing any explosion. When I arrived on the second floor, I was somewhat surprised that no one else was there yet. Apparently the folks who were on the floor at the time the first plane hit had immediately gone downstairs to see what was happening. I grabbed a co-worker and went back to the lobby of my building. As I was pushing through the front door of the building to go out into the street, the second plane hit the tower. There was a tremendous explosion and flash of light reflected in the windows of the building across the street which promptly shattered due to the explosion. A piece of the plane’s engine (I could see the flywheel clearly) tore through a section of roof of the next building north of 100 Church and landed with a tremendous thud about 20 yards from where I was standing. It was still there, smoking, when I ran up Church Street later on that morning.

Immediately after the second plane hit I bolted back into the lobby which was already full of FBI agents who were screaming at everyone to evacuate the building because it was about to collapse. For the first time that day, but not the last, I sincerely thought that I was about to die. At this point I still didn’t know what had happened; my first thought was that someone had blown up the Federal building next door. That was true terror-not knowing if a bomb was going to obliterate you at any second. I have never felt such mindless instinctual fear in my entire life.

It was only when I exited the lobby into the street that I saw the towers burning for the first time. Instead of leaving the area immediately as many of my colleagues did, I bummed a cigarette from a co-worker and stood in front of my building watching the buildings burn. I saw  many people jumping to their deaths from the holes where the planes went in. Fortunately, the Federal building blocked any view of them landing. The streets were full of paper blowing from the Trade Center offices like it was a perverse ticker-tape parade. Fire trucks and police cars were racing downtown in the direction of the towers. I have often wondered over the years how many of those young firefighters I saw hanging on their trucks on their way to rescue people were killed that day.

There were a lot of people gathered on Church Street and Park Place. The rumor mill was grinding out information every second; there was a third plane, the Met Life Building had also been hit, etc. It was a pretty chaotic scene. At some point before the first Tower collapsed a fighter jet appeared in the sky and looped around the Towers. I was pretty relieved to see him but his presence started a minor panic because people initially thought it was another hijacked plane. Any time something set off the crowd, small groups of people would start running and that turned into a stampede. Being in that crowd was like being in a herd of very confused animals. No one knew what to do or where to go.

When the first Tower collapsed I was standing on the corner of Church Street and Chambers Street. There was a loud rumbling sound, like thunder,  and I ran for my life up Church Street with other New Yorkers as the cloud of smoke and debris came racing towards me. For the second time that day I thought I was a goner. I got dusted up pretty good and ended up throwing out my suit a little while later because I could never get that smell out. If you were downtown at all in the aftermath of the attacks you know what smell I'm talking about. It was the smell of death; burning plastic, human bodies, wood, paper. I'd imagine hell must smell something like that. I will never forget that smell.

I was much further away when the second tower collapsed; I was standing in a parking lot on Canal Street staring downtown and I could only see the top of the building as it disappeared. I then walked home to my apartment in Brooklyn in silence with thousands of others. I had 10 cents in my pocket and no way to get any money because the ATM networks were down. The bars in Greenpoint extended credit generously and I spent the better part of that night drinking beer and shaking like a leaf.

We were shut out of our building for eight months as it was inside the frozen zone. We returned in April of 2002. Meanwhile life changed for me and for everyone else in the world. Anyway that’s the outline of my story. Hopefully many of you were a lot further away and only had to watch it on TV because, frankly I have had a difficult time processing all of that destruction."