9/11 . . .not yet a day off
I was thinking of doing a 9/11 post this year but then realized I’d already said pretty much everything I wanted to say in a pretty decent post from 2021 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary. That is I thought the only value my talking or writing about it could provide, especially because I now live in Ohio, was as a sort of every man firsthand witness, and as a tiny rebuke to the more insane 9/11 truthers who are denying things I saw with my own eyes.
It occurs to me that one thing I haven’t done is to tell my narrative of exactly what I experienced that day in lower Manhattan. This will probably be the last time I feel compelled to do a 9/11 post but I feel like my very average story should be entered into the public record to give folks an idea of what average people experienced that day first hand. (In fact I did verbally tell the story for a documentary my friend was working on but I don’t know what ever became of that) Don’t worry this isn’t going to be come like Ari Fleischer’s bizarre ritual of saying what he was doing minute by minute in real time.
So on the morning of September 11, 2001 I was taking the subway from where I lived in Brooklyn to my job working for the New York County (Manhattan) DA’s office at 80 Centre Street. If anyone reading this knows me personally now but didn’t know me then you probably think it’s crazy that I ever worked in a Prosecutor’s office but that’s not the point of this story. I got out of the 4,5,6 City Hall subway station at what must have been some point between 8:46 when Flight 11 crashed into the north tower and 9:03 when Flight 175 hit the South Tower. The stairs where I emerged from the subway into the famously clear and bright day were about a mile from the World Trade Center.
The mood at street level was strange but no one was freaking out yet, because only one plane had hit. People from all walks of life were pretty much not going to work and just standing around looking up at the huge fire coming out of the north tower. We were talking about how it must’ve been a really bad pilot or something. This just unlocked a memory that because I hadn’t been there to see the first plane’s impact I assumed it must’ve been some kind of small hobbyist plane, not a commercial airliner, to give an idea how outlandish crashing a commercial plane into a skyscraper seemed at the time. Also, for any very young people reading this, bear in mind that in 2001 cell phones were already ubiquitous but smart phones were nonexistent. There was no way to check news sites without going on an actual desktop computer. Nothing like twitter or whatsapp or anything like that existed and texting was in its prehistoric form. So there was no way to get updates on a breaking news story unless you had a radio a TV or a computer, which no one had just standing around outside at that time.
But the mood quickly shifted at 9:03 when Flight 175 hit the South Tower. Seeing this happen very clearly in real time was by far the most intense part of my experience. I couldn’t have been in a better spot to see it if I’d intentionally tried to pick one. Again as a rebuke to truthers there’s simply no conceivable way anything happened other than that plane running into that building.
At that point some portion of the crowd started screaming, freaking out etc. I instinctively ran away from the explosion, not even realizing what I was doing. At this point I made the to me now bizarre decision to just go into the office. I think I may have been thinking I could check news on the internet and call my mom in the off chance that this was my last day on earth. (Cell phones were already not working at that point I think) Also because I worked for government/law enforcement at that point I still had faith that the people there might “know what to do.”
I was able to get my mom in Indiana on the phone for a brief call and somehow she hadn’t heard anything yet even though she’s always been a huge news consumer and she didn’t seem to think anything was a big deal so that was disappointing. I’m pretty sure by this point both cell service and the internet were out throughout lower Manhattan. The only media to be hand were terrestrial radio and over the airwaves television. Somehow these old school “portable” television sets and smaller like 10 inch non portable started materializing throughout the building. We watched news on these with terrible signal and talked about leaving/not leaving, whether there would be a general evacuation, what was actually going on etc. Rumors flew wildly both on TV and among us about dozens of planes that were accounted for, possible other targets etc. Virtually everyone assumed that the attack wasn’t over.
I remember watching with several people as on some TV channel they showed live footage of the South Tower while debating whether or not it was going to collapse only for the debate to be ended by the tower collapsing and causing an earthquake under us because we were close enough to it, watching the image on TV but feeling the effect physically. The first tower collapse seemingly triggered some kind of instinctive response. Everyone just all of a sudden decided it was time to evacuate, not in any kind of hysterical or chaotic way, but everyone just started briskly walking out of offices into hallways then down stairways and then out into the streets where everyone just continued to briskly walk home I guess. I followed a huge crowd to the Manhattan Bridge which I then walked over and walked all the way home deep in Brooklyn. There seemed to be no cars anywhere. All of the streets were filled with people walking.
And that’s it. That’s my very non-remarkable story about a remarkable event. But after 22 years I think all that’s left is to tell it, to affirm that it actually happened and that I was there.
