Six months later: The Long Walk Home
Written: Mar 11 '02 (Updated Mar 11 '02)
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Pros: Again, the tallest building in Manhattan.
Cons: Again, the tallest building in Manhattan.
The Bottom Line: The Empire State Building has taken on new significance in the months since 9/11. Be sure to appreciate the views from the tallest building in Manhattan.
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| kboo's Full Review: Empire State Building |
Today I sent my husband off to war. Today marks the six-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks that turned me into a refugee in my own city. Today is the second-hardest day of my life.
After seeing both planes crash into the WTC from only a few blocks away, I fled uptown to my office, just in time for it to be evacuated. I had nowhere to go, and no one to lean on. Some people decided to sit in Central Park until the bridges, tunnels and subways began running again. I decided to try to go home.
Lexington Avenue was choked with buses and taxis and private cars. It looked like any other morning rush hour, except for the dazed and crying throngs of people on the sidewalks, evacuees from all of the office buildings in the neighborhood. I found a bus that seemed to be going downtown, and piled on. The human contact felt comforting, even though we were all so shocked we couldn't speak. The bus stopped at 23rd Street, still over two miles from home. I got out and decided to walk over to the West Side highway, and to approach my apartment from upwind.
When I got to the West Side highway, I had a clear view all the way down. On any other day, I would have seen the Twin Towers straight ahead, with the Amex building to the right, and my apartment building to the right of that, on the Hudson River. Instead, I saw a horrific cloud of smoke billowing from Ground Zero to the left, away from my building. I remembered that I had left my windows open that morning because it was such a beautiful day, and I thought about my dog, Boo, listening to the sirens and the crashes and the sounds of death. I was thankful that the prevailing wind blew away from my apartment.
As I trekked down West St. toward Ground Zero, I saw surreal, unreal scenes that made words and thoughts impossible. The closer I got to Ground Zero, the stranger it got. The sun beat down, as I made my way through crowds of people headed away from the site. The farther south I went, the dustier the people were. I felt lightheaded, and gulped some water from a firehose propped up in a chain link fence. City buses sped down West Street toward Ground Zero, filled with uniformed police. Construction and fire trucks from New Jersey and the suburbs of New York City had begun to arrive. I ran into a neighbor, Mark, with his two dogs, friends of Boo. We traded stories of where we were when IT happened. I don't think either of us listened to each other; we just had a need to tell our stories to a familiar face. He was still trying to find his wife, I had just managed to speak to my husband, who was at work at the Air Force Base in New Jersey. The base had been locked down to its highest alert and he had been told to pack a bag to be ready for travel. Since he is a doctor, there had been talk of flying them to New York or to DC to help with the wounded. We didn't learn until that night that there were so few wounded that their services were not necessary.
I saw our dog walker, still with the dogs and the puppy I had seen this morning when I had started my walk to the subway at the World Trade Center. My cell phone was one of the few that would work (intermittently) after the collapse of the towers; I lent it to a woman who used it to call her father to tell him she was ok. We reached our first barricade, where I met a man who was trying to get to Battery Park City to find his girlfriend. Together, we climbed into a construction area and walked around our first barricade. His dress shoes were dusty, his blue dress shirt was opened to the chest and stained with sweat. He was smoking a cigarette and talking a mile a minute about his girlfriend. He wanted to find her, get in a car, and leave the city.
We managed to slip through a few more police barricades, somehow. The stream of people walking uptown, out of the site, was still thick, as family and friends pressed at the barricades trying to see their loved ones. I got through one of the barricades by walking with a press crew and passing myself off as one of them, and managed to get within a block of my apartment building before being stopped. There was a gas leak, I was told. Any of the buildings this point could collapse, or explode without a moment's notice, the police said. Seven WTC, which would collapse later that evening, was visibly smoking, and One World Financial Center looked like it was on fire as well. I decided to wait, since I had nowhere else to go, and leaned on a concrete barrier to think about what I would do next.
The first thing that struck me was the eerieness of the silence. Since the wind was blowing away from us, there was no sound from Ground Zero. But even stranger was the lack of the ambient noise of the city that I'd always taken for granted. There was no hum from the car traffic, no horns, no sirens, no subterranean rumblings from the subway. The people around me were solemn, silent, trying to go home, or looking for friends and loved ones. Worst of all, there was no sound from the sky. No traffic helicopters, and no jet planes. All that replayed in my head was the scream of the first jet's engines as it plowed into Tower One.
I watched as city buses covered with inches of white dust drove out of the closed zone, the powder on the roofs streaming off like powdery new snow. Buses filled with recue workers continued to enter the zone. Office workers in shock trudged out, some shoeless, all of them covered in dust, with dinner napkins as makeshift bandanas and dust masks, looking for all the world like characters in a strange, Wall Street western. Their tears left the only clear marks on dusty, ageless faces.
After about an hour, I decided that it was unlikely I'd be spending that night, or many of the next nights, in my bed, and decided to try to find a place to rest before trying to get my dog again. I started walking uptown, realizing that all of my friends lived several miles away. I passed a silver-haired man named Frank, who was sitting on a pile of rubble with his briefcase next to him. He was working on a Blackberry handheld. His navy blue suit was ruined, covered with dust that he'd made no attempt to clean off. I noticed he had monogrammed shirts with French cuffs. I used his Blackberry to send a horribly mistyped email to my friend Matt, where I would try to stay the night. Frank was kind enough to offer his place outside of the city. Barely two minutes later, a return email arrived - I had mistyped Matt's email address, but another "Matt" from Frank's address list, someone I didn't even know, sent an immediate email offering his apartment in the city. At almost the same time, my friend Matt, who had been trying to call me for hours, managed to get through to my cell phone, and I told him I'd be coming over. A woman walked over, too, asking to use Frank's Blackberry. She had two bottles of water and offered them to us. After a few minutes of comforting each other, Nina and I decided to continue our walk uptown. We talked about everything but what had happened that morning, looking for cars that might be willing to give us a lift. I told Nina about my plan to return later in the evening to get my dog, and she offered to lend me her bicycle (I'd already walked about 7 miles that day.)
E-mail, water, a bicycle, a cell phone, these were the valuables we shared that day.
Eventually, we flagged down a car and another generous stranger gave me a lift the remaining 30 blocks to Matt's apartment. When I finally got there, I collapsed in the arms of my friends and finally let myself cry again. I was exhausted, sweaty and dusty, and it was only when I arrived at Matt's apartment that I saw the full extent of what had happened that day. When the passenger lists on the planes were finally released, I scanned them feverishly - I had a friend who was a flight attendant for United who flew to San Francisco on weekday mornings. I didn't see Jay's name on any lists, but I did see the name of a friend from college, who had been on the first plane to hit the World Trade.
Matt, his girlfriend and I felt the need to do something besides watch CNN all day, so we went to the Red Cross to try to give blood or volunteer. We were turned away, but I did find an NYPD officer who told me that the gas leak in our building had been taken care of, and that the National Guard would be coming in to seal the area that night. My best chance to get the dog, he said, would be to try going back downtown at night, when responsibility for the barricades switched from the NYPD to the National Guard. "Once the Guard comes in, no one's getting in there," he said. We went back to Matt's apartment to wait for night to come.
7:30 p.m. Some subway service had been restored. Matt insisted on going with me. We took two flashlights, cell phones, my military ID and proof of address, and my now-empty book bag. We walked through a deserted Times Square - lights still blazing, but no people on the street, to take the subway. I walked right down the middle of Broadway, and saw not a single car. The subway stopped in SoHo, still a mile away from my apartment. Unlike the brightness of Times Square, SoHo was dim and silent. By the time we crossed into Tribeca, it was dark - much of the electricity had been turned off (due to worries about gas leaks) or was cut off. We walked around groups of NYPD in the midst of a shift change. Volunteers and fire rescue workers sat on the steps of the Travelers Building, making stretchers out of cloth and broomsticks. All along the walkway where I had stood earlier in the day, firemen sat in dusty gear and watched us with tired eyes. At some points, we stepped carefully around resting rescue workers. I finally got within a block of my apartment building and was stopped at the same place where I was stopped before.
Some lights had been set up on the pile, a gleaming, smoking, stinking mass of twisted metal. The wind had slowed a bit, and occasionally I caught a whiff of the acrid smoke, which made my eyes tear. I felt like crying again. We got a police escort to our building. I walked into our lobby, which normally was a bright, open space with two-story windows looking onto Rockefeller Park and the Hudson River. This time, I heard voices at the concierge desk, and low voices coming from an AM radio. "Who's there?" called a voice, as a flashlight shined into my eyes. I recognized our building superintendent. Since the power was still off in the entire neighborhood, I had to climb seventeen stories to my apartment. The stairwell and the halls were stuffy, hot, and pitch black. I was glad that Matt had come with me, even though I had wanted to make the trek by myself. After all the walking I had done that day, the stairs almost did me in. I could feel blisters on my feet, and my knees cracked with each step. I was thankful that I only lived on the 17th floor.
Boo had been huddled up against the door to the apartment, away from the windows. He welcomed me back as if he'd thought I was gone, jumping and writhing and crying. I ran my finger along our tabletop, where there was a thin layer of dust. The lights from Ground Zero cast an eerie light into the apartment, and I glanced out the window, briefly, to see parts of the steel framework reaching into the sky like skeletal fingers through the smoke. I couldn't bear to look any longer - if I did, I would sit on the couch and not be able to get up again. I shut the windows, closed all the blinds, and grabbed the items on my list. Together, the three of us started back down the stairs. Boo made his way slowly, arthritically, in the dark, and eventually we ended up in the cool night. I hugged him tightly, thinking about the hugs I wanted to give my husband, but couldn't. We walked out of the devastation, past rows of hundreds upon hundreds of exhausted rescue workers. As we retraced our steps from the restricted zone, into Tribeca and then SoHo, we slowly saw more lights, and a few more people. I felt thankful but guilty to be alive, but still unable to comprehend all that had happened in that single day.
Epilogue: I didn't see my husband for nearly two weeks, since he was at the base on standby. When they created a second morgue at the base for the dead from the Pentagon, we realized he would not be treating any survivors of either attack. I stayed with Matt for a week, at a hotel for another two weeks, and then moved back to our apartment.
Life was unbearable, however. The park visible from our bedroom had been turned into a 24-hour helipad. One night I tried to count the number of helicopters, and lost count when I reached six in the two hours between 11pm and 1am. Our living room windows and our terrace looked onto Ground Zero. We could see the remains of the towers and the smoke. By day, our apartment was unnaturally bright now that the towers were gone. By night, the lights on the smoke cast a blue-white glow. From our dining room we could see the two cranes that had been set in the river, and a line of truck carrying debris from the site. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the cranes picked up the debris and dropped it, like so many matchsticks, into barges that would take it out to be sorted and sifted. The trucks lined up, dumped their loads, and returned to the site to pick up more.
We learned to get used to constant security and ID checkpoints. I learned not to cringe and shake when planes flew overhead. Boo was unusually clingy for weeks afterward, and when we brought him back to the apartment three weeks later, he did not want to go back in. Despite three air filters running constantly, we got used to teary eyes and a dry scratchy cough. Back then, there wasn't a name for it. By the time I knew that I had "World Trade Center Cough," we had already decided to move.
We were lucky because we had been saving to buy an apartment, and we had renters' insurance. We lost our security deposit, but we still had enough money to buy an apartment. We left, stayed with another set of friends, put our furniture into storage, and moved to our new home in December 2001, after being transient and homeless for nearly three months.
Shortly after that we learned that Dr. Kboo would be deployed. We've spent the last three months trying to make the most of our time together. Today, I sent him off. Tomorrow, I begin counting the days until he comes home.
Would post in a general New York category if I could. But I can't. Give me a "Not Recommended," if you want. I don't care.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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Epinions.com ID:
kboo
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Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 130
Trusted by: 283 members
About Me:
De-fezzed in two topics. Ask me if I care. Hey, what happened to my picture?
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