Every year around this time, folks here start thinking about September 11, and inevitably my name comes up. For example, in this current thread. I don’t mind talking about my experience that day (and afterwards) so if you have any questions, please ask.
As I said in the other thread: In short, I worked in 2WTC. I was in the lobby of that building, headed for the elevator, when the first plane hit 1WTC. It was very scary and chaotic; people started evacuating and I went with them. Ran into a co-worker of mine outside and she and I began to walk away together. That’s when the second plane hit our building. We ran for our lives, literally thinking we were about to die. I got home to Brooklyn later that afternoon. A few days later, I went back to work at the firm’s midtown offices. No one I knew (well) died.
In hopes that you would start this thread I saved the details for this early thread to link to from here as opposed to from the “Lest We Forget” thread.
Vix is okay!!!
Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
09-11-2001, 12:13 PM
BunnyGirl
If you or others have specific older threads that say a lot of what you would repeat, maybe links can save some time to those thoughts and feelings.
Once again, Vix, I’m glad you’re around. Maybe we can get better acquainted through this thread.
I want to know, at the moment you knew it was terrorism, how much hatred did you feel for those responsible. Be honest. I bet you could have killed with your bare hands.
Now, compare that to how tempered your feelings are now. Or are they?
Did you have any significant PTSD after? I can’t imagine living with that kind of “what if”…Alternately, did you consider it a ‘sign’ to change anything, live more in the moment, whatever?
Do you feel that putting an actual building at the site is “asking for it”? Not saying they “deserved it” but isn’t saying to Al Qaeda,“Hey, here’s another huge tower to hit.”
I imagine I was filled with hatred at some point, but what I remember feeling – then and shortly afterwards – were terror, shock, and numbness. The moment when I knew it was terrorism was when the second plane hit, and in that moment I was running for my life, along with everyone around me. As I was running, a man tripped and fell in front of me, and I just ran past him. I was that scared. For a few days after 9/11, I didn’t know whether any of my co-workers had survived, and that was a very scary feeling, too. I kept reliving the day, thinking of the various things that could’ve gone wrong and freaking out.
No significant PTSD, but things creep up on you. Years later, I was watching a small plane flying over a field. Its engines cut out and it went into a free fall, then the engines turned back on and it flew up again. I assume this was a purposeful stunt? Anyway, seeing a plane falling FREAKED ME OUT. I was with a friend and she thought I had lost it. Heh.
I didn’t consider 9/11 a sign or make any lifestyle changes. However, a few weeks afterward – at the end of that month, actually – I went to a friend’s wedding in Nantucket. Before 9/11, I had been a bit grumbly about how much it was costing me to attend, between airfare and hotel, etc. But once I got there, I was delighted to have spent so much. It was a much-needed escape from NYC and a wonderful weekend.
Nope. I don’t believe there are terrorists out there sitting around twiddling their thumbs, thinking, “If only the building at the WTC site were finished!” If they’re going to hit something, there are plenty of other choices.
How did things work out for your job? With the building gone, did you job even still exist? Were you unemployed afterwards, or able to work via another location/telecommute/some other arrangement? Naturally, you can answer generally if you think replying will give too much identifying information!
Thanks, vix, for starting this thread, and for your willingness to answer questions.
What did you think, or do you now think, of the domestic political uses to which 9-11 has been put over the years? Are you a member of any survivor or memorial groups? Are you reluctant or hesitant to go up in tall buildings nowadays? Do you have any friends or coworkers who really lost it in the days or weeks after 9-11?
I don’t have anything to ask just now but I do want to thank vix for this thread which will be a very interesting read. Your username has stuck in my head ever since I first read (some years after the fact) that first World Trade Center Plane Crash thread.
This is going to seem like a very strange question: If you could go back in time to that morning . . . would you rather have been somewhere else, watching it on TV?
I lived in NYC for 25 years, 1970-1995. In some ways I will always feel like a New Yorker. That morning and for the next few days, I was glued to the TV, and the entire time, I was feeling guilty and wishing I were back in New York. I felt like I really needed to be there, to witness what was happening. It felt like a loved one was injured, and I couldn’t be there with them.
I did visit the city several weeks later, and it was so depressing. The entire city was still focused on 9/11, and I felt like an intruder, because I had experienced it from so far away.
And I felt very guilty when I found out that I had lost two friends who had worked at Kantor Fitzgerald.
I had a friend who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald who was running a little late that morning. He spent the next 2 years working on the Cantor Families Fund and following The Dave Matthews Band on Tour. It was quite a radical shift for him.
At the time I was working for Morgan Stanley, and they had offices in midtown Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey as well as in the WTC. Some of my coworkers from the WTC went to work the next day. I took off through the weekend and went back (in midtown) the following Monday. At first, our entire department was crammed into a smallish room, but eventually another building was rented and we were moved across town. By the time I left that job, in September '03, Morgan Stanley was getting ready to move some of its NY staff to a new site outside NYC.
I just found something I wrote in 2002 about this topic:
I work for Morgan Stanley, and we have about 14,000 employees in NYC (I think). After Sept. 11, we had 3,500 displaced people. Immediately afterwards, some went to work in Brooklyn, some to our Business Interruption Facility in New Jersey, some to our main “campus” of three buildings in Midtown Manhattan, some to another site in Lower Manhattan, some to various vendors’ offices and so forth.
Of course, I’m most familiar with what happened to my department (marketing). Some people started working out of a conference room in Midtown on Sept. 12. There was a meeting for marketing staff on the following Monday. At that time, temporary space was still being found, so people weren’t rushed back to work. (The firm was also very supportive with peoples’ need to take time off. To my knowledge, everyone was paid a full salary through the end of November, whether or not they returned to work or took vacation days. Only one or two people in my area hadn’t returned by then. After that time, I think they were offered long-term disability…)
So I went back to work on Sept. 17, and also worked the 18th, but then I went to a friend’s wedding on Nantucket, and I took a mini-vacation of sorts from Wednesday to Sunday. The following week, we had been put in temporary space in our training facility, which conveniently already had computers. We stayed there until mid-December. Now, we work in yet another building in Midtown, on the east side.
Ok, speaking of work, I’ve gotta go work at my son’s preschool. Back after lunch.
