I was at work and had just gotten off the phone with my friend Craig. I was working on projects when a co-worker got the call from her son.
I immediately tried to go to cnn.com, couldn’t access it. Spent the day on every major news site. Normally I get 100+ calls a day, that day 24.
I did call Craig back. He was watching the news and filled in me a little as well.
Spent the day in a state of shock, looking frantically for more news. Got home and saw the footage…
I was in my lab working away, running a gel or something when Elena, the wife or my boss Thanos, comes in saying that Nabil, a former lab member now living in New York, just called saying a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We quickly scanned the radio until we found NPR’s news feed. The situation of my entire lab just standing around the radio was as surreal as the reports from the radio. We were given permission to leave but none of us did, though I got precious little done that day. I kept searching the web checking the boards and looking for news feeds but on our computer it was grainy and choppy. Still movie like to me. Then I finally got home and saw the footage of the plane crash for the first time. That’s when it hit home.
I always listen to NPR on my way to work. I pulled into the parking lot at about 7:55 (central), got to my office, logged on, had OJ, and was pounding out a quick e-mail to our local daily complaining that they dropped the wonderful “Liberty Meadows” from their comics page. Roxanne came by at about 8:15, asking if I had heard about New York. Assuming I had heard all the news there was to hear up to about 20 minutes prior, I answered “no,” with a funny look. She said one of the towers had been hit by an airplane. Mental image: dozens of office workers injured by idjit in Cessna. Just that second, my left nipple tingled. It was my cellphone, set to vibrate in my shirt pocket. “I bet that’s [Cavewoman] calling to tell me the same thing.” Sure enough. But she says both towers have been hit. Mental image: entering serious denial, two business jets which have been, along with dozens of dead WTC folk, failed by NYC’s air-traffic control system; mind plays clip from Pushing Tin. I flip on my office radio (also set to NPR). Airliners? Oh my! Hijacked!? WTF? My boss comes by to tell us its on the TV in the upstairs confrence room. I first see it on NBC. My stomach does some interesting tricks. Bad reception, as we’re using good 'ol “antennae” (remember those?) to pick up a “broadcast” signal, make it even harder to watch. I try to get back to work. I go talk to my boss about the next step in the project. One of the engineers runs by on his way back upstairs. A few minutes later, everyone is in the confrence room again. The first tower had collapsed. Not much work gets done that day…
That’ll teach me to miss a second of NPR. Turn away for a few minutes and BAM! everything goes to hell…
I had gotten up at about 0845h EDT, and was walking my dog while listening to the NOAA weather broadcast on my hanheld scanner.
The forcast was non eventful so I hit SCAN. I have the air traffic frequencies for Atlanta Center and for the Chattanooga and Knoxville airports in and the info being passed to the pilots from ATL center was instructing them out of the flyways and to contact the closest airport approach immmediately. Then I heard a call to a delta flight that there was a terror attack in NY that involved a United flight.
[sub]Oh God[/sub]
I scooped up the dog and ran back home, it was 0901h EDT when I turned on the TV. I called my wife at work and told her what was going on and spent the next three hours as a witness to this act of war.
The most vivid memory for me (Besides images of those innocent people forced to choose burning to death or falling 800 ft, and the collapses) is that there was nothing but unprecedented silence over ATLCNTR’s comm frequency after about 0940. All the planes were on the ground.
As I walked into my building in Midtown at about 8:55 there was a small group looking up at a TV tuned to CNN in the bank in the building’s lobby. I asked what was going on and someone said a plane had hit the World Trade center. I took the elevator up the 30th floor and stood looking out the window as the second plane hit. I can’t even describe the feeling of watching those towers burn–the images on TV don’t begin to convey the horror of seeing something that big in flames. More and more people arrived and we were watching in absolute horror as both towers collapsed.
Our building was evacuated at about 11:00 but no one had any way to get out of the city. No subways, no trains, no nothing. A group of us walked over to 34th street and 1st avenue to see if we could catch a ferry to Long Island City, but at that time there were no boats in the East river. Even the cops we asked had no idea what was going on, e.g. what bridges were open, etc.
At that time, too, rumors were running rampant that there were more hijacked planes in the air, that other targets in NYC had been hit–my wife emailed me on my Blackberry that she had heard that NYU Medical center had been blown up, when I was about 10 blocks away on 1st avenue and could see it standing.
We decided to walk over the 59th street bridge, as did thousands of others. Once we got across three of my co-workers had their cars parked in Long Island City, so we all managed to get rides to our homes in Queens, Brooklyn or Long Island. I then proceeded to spend the rest of the say watching TV and wiping the tears from my eyes.