|
Was working in Manhattan at the time. Heard a doorman saying something about "someone hit one of the Twin Towers with a plane" as I was walking from Grand Central to the office (2? blocks away). In the ground floor of our building (on 3rd Ave I think) I waited in line for my egg sandwich, said something about the plane to the woman waiting on me, went up stairs. I remember thinking "didn't a football player just fly his plane into a skyscraper or something?" and thought maybe it was a Cessna. Beautiful day so no way it was a visibility thing. I figured it was a private pilot that had a mechanical or a heart attack or something.
Opened the doors to the office (double doors) and it was ab-so-lute pandemonium. I thought maybe the company just lost all its money or something, like we were going under. I realized everyone was freaking out, crying, etc. A lot of us had friends in the southern Manhattan area, I just didn't realize what was going on yet. I asked someone what was happening, they yelled that a jet had flown into one of the towers. It took me a while to process that they were talking about a full size passenger plane, not a jet or a little whatever Gulfstream. Shortly after I got there the second plane hit and the whole office (100 people?) gasped in unison, swearing, crying, etc.
We couldn't see the Towers from where we were but I could see this brown smoke drifting across the otherwise perfectly blue sky. Reminded me of the movie Independence Day at the end when there's smoke drifting at a glacial pace across the sky after the aliens got shot down.
I couldn't get any .com sites to work so started randomly hitting .ca versions of the same sites. I found that yahoo.ca was working. They were doing some kind of semi-live feed (I saved a gif or or two, emailed them to myself) and I got an idea of what was happening. Radio was on super loud. Buildings burning. People jumping. It seemed totally surreal.
Then the buildings fell. I know a bunch of people at work knew folks out there. One's fiancee was a Cantor Fitzgerald (sp?) senior guy, but he was stuck in the PATH train under the river. He made it because of that, but the couple lost a lot of friends that day, lots of close ones.
A cycling friend for many years worked in one of the Towers. He was late for work, got annoyed that some police turned him away (he just wanted to get his laptop), went home, totally clueless, and I finally got through to him a few hours later. "You're alive!" "What are you talking about?" "Don't you work in the World Trade Center?" "Yeah, why?" "OMG!! Are you the most clueless person around?!"
The guy that got me my first IT job in NYC was on his way there for some training thing. He got out, bodies were hitting the ground, he turned away. He still won't talk about it, other than that one bit, his voice just trails away when he says that bit.
One of our guy's wife was in CT, TV on, and she called as soon as the train station opened up. They divided Grand Central into two - upper floor goes the Hudson line (up the river), lower floor to the Metro North (CT) line. We had to go downstairs to get on the trains. Everyone got on, jammed really tight, elderly and such got the seats. Everyone cooperated. We were squeezed in like you see in those Japanese train clips where they shove everyone on. Then we got moving.
We went pretty slowly, people trading stories at first but then it got quiet. People shuffled around so that those getting off next could get closer to the doors. Got to the first stop (I think it was Fordham), which looked normal. Then we got into the next few stops, closer to CT. The platforms were lined with EMTs and such. I think all the emergency personnel from NYC went directly to the Towers. The ones further away went to the platforms to "help the survivors". It was really sad because there were no survivors, just us. To see those EMTs frantically scanning the windows for wounded and then realizing that, wait, there were no wounded... it was heartbreaking.
Our company was indirectly involved after. We processed a lot of Verizon's supply chain orders at the time and their data center in Manhattan was destroyed, removing a lot of messaging capacity. They ordered some mobile data center things (trailers or something) through their supply chain, meaning through us, but our data center was also destroyed. The orders were delayed due to that. Since we closed that day on 9/11, and I think we were closed 9/12, it took a while to resolve that.
My mom was staying at my house, ill with cancer (she'd pass in 2003). I saw the aircraft carrier in the Long Island Sound from the train so I took her for a drive one night to see it. It was lit up like crazy, water around it was green from all the lights in the water. The beach near my house was the staging area for supply runs or something so it was closed, so we just drove to the next beach to look at the ship. Jets (F-18s I think) flew back and forth regularly. I don't remember what we talked about but I distinctly remember nothing about the actual attacks. I think for her it was a 2 hour drive in the car and being able to talk with her son.
|