Anniversary of 9/11

[nycwriters]

Friends on another board were talking about this, I thought I'd share my thoughts here too:

The sky was so blue that day. Unbelievably blue. Not a cloud in it. It was the perfect wind-down-from-summer kind of day.

I was awoken by my friend in Chicago frantic to find out if I was there. I work nights so groggily I switched on CNN. I actually dropped the phone. Hers was the last phone call to get through to me that day and for the rest of the week. Funny though, Internet was still working and I managed to send off an email to my folks to say I was ok.

I was living in Astoria at the time and jumped in my car and drove down to the 59th Street bridge. Even flashing my credentials, cops wouldn't let me through. I was desperate to get INTO the city -- spent the next six hours trying to get in -- only to finally get on a 7 train going back into Manhattan at about 2 pm. Me and three other people.

I got off in Times Square. Not a single person around. No cars, no cabs, no people. Not a soul. Everything was so still. I walked the next 10 blocks to work with my sweater over my mouth -- we had heard there was asbestos in the WTC buildings. I can only imagine the spike in cancer patients New York will endure in the coming decades. I saw three people on my way in. Each of them had this same numb expression on their faces -- as I'm sure I did, too. We worked until 5 am. And we continued that pace until mid-November. I put in 3 weeks of overtime that I never saw compensated.

But the worst part was the smell. It was unbearable. Burnt metal, burnt bodies, just this permeating cloud that hung over the city for the next month or so as NYC's bravest tried to extinguish a fire that just didn't want to be put out. Even with your windows shut, you could still smell it.

I remember the euphoria as they dragged that one firefighter out of the debris -- how it raised everyone's hopes that more would be found. And in the week after we prayed that they'd find more alive.

But there weren't any more.

And all the images. All those people who flocked down to the site in droves, doing anything they possibly could to help find people. Pulling buckets of body parts and earth and metal all twisted together, out of that pile of smouldering rubble. Chain gangs of people from all walks of life passing bucket to hand to bucket to hand.

And the stories. There were so many heartbreaking stories. Of loss of life. Of women pregnant with their first child, now widowed. Of children suddenly left without parents.

The worst part was the youth of so many of these young men and women who died. They were the best and brightest and now they're gone.

The couple who clasped hands and held them all the way down as they jumped -- choosing their "freedom" over being consumed by flames.

The crazy woman, who two days after it happened claimed she got a call from her husband on her cellphone and that he was still alive -- sending mass groups of rescue workers to one area of the site, only to find out that she was crazy and had no husband and wasted valuable time digging in the wrong area.

And stories about how, after the planes struck, they all ran to the roof to try to flee, only to come up against a bolted door that they couldn't get through because WTC security had deemed it necessary to lock and bolt the roof door because of potential suicides with stock market drops. Three hundred people trapped in the stairwell, hoping to get onto the roof and freedom.

And then the towers fell.

I'm crying now as I'm typing this. It was three years ago tomorrow, but it's still as fresh and as real to me as if it happened yesterday. I have a WTC security pass card for when I went in to do my drug testing for my job. It's just about the most valuable thing I own.



March 2001. That's when I moved to New York. Six months later the sky caved in.

And they are going to rebuild down there. I understand in a way, you cannot give in to terrorism, you have to be strong -- but I defer to Giuliani who said the whole area should be made into greenspace -- a park for people to reflect and heal.

I've been kind of bummed out the past couple of days. Now I realize why.