Twin Towers (WTC) - The Way They Were

In the future it will become common for people to ask "Where were you on September 11, 2001?" It happened for Pearl Harbor, for the day President Kennedy was assasinated, for the first man to land on the moon..
I was close to the World Trade Center Tuesday, September 11, and I saw the buildings in flames.
I had a 10 am meeting with a journalist who works for a company located on 5th Avenue and 16th Street which is about 15 or 20 blocks (i.e. around a mile or so) from the WTC. I was looking south and the two buildings were right in front of me.
I saw the enormous sideways volcano like cloud of smoke going left towards the east where the wind was blowing it.
There were pieces of debris falling from the buildings.
I could see them fall.
Was that "debris" just metal and glass or were there also people falling? I don't know, but I would not be surprised if I was told that there were.
The past week has turned out to be very different from what I had planned and I can only say that, being in New York, I both witnessed and experienced the sorrow, anger, fear and wish to regain control over one's life that pretty much was the situation that was experienced by all those who were there.
I am pretty sure that most people in the western world felt similar things too.
The meeting I had earlier went "sort of" well. Both the news person and myself were looking for a way not to think of the tragedy that was
taking place so close to us. We had heard screams from the street twice during the meeting even if the window glass was double and
reinforced. I realized afterwards that the screams coincided with the collapse of each tower.
Once the meeting was over I left the building only to see that the towers were no longer there. As soon as I was outside I realized that no form
of transportation was running: no taxis, buses, subways or trains. I had to walk 53 blocks back to my hotel (which is in Midtown).
While walking, it was surreal to see how I and the scores of people in a similar situation, were talking to each other as if we had been acquainted for a long time. Possibly huddling together in times of great tension and stress helps you maintain some degree of confidence.
During that somber Tuesday walk, there were numerous bomb scares too that caused useless waste of energy to evacuate buildings and
stores. Some have said that such scares were part of the scheme. Then there were convoys of ambulances, City of New York supply trucks and other vehicles all headed south towards "downtown" while I was heading north towards "midtown".
Needless to say practically all stores and shops had shut probably more because of sheer shock than of fear of looters.
I heard that all the hotels in town were full and that the restaurants that stayed open were full as well. But what I noticed most was that nobody
wanted to be alone.
Starting Wednesday, the air in New York City often had a terrible smoke impregnated odor. The dust was everywhere even around my hotel which was over 60 blocks away from the WTC.
I wear contact lenses and I could feel that dust as well as sense or smell it.
This was a catastrophe because it reached all of us near and far. When I say this I am fully aware of similar or larger death tolls in numerous
cases that have occurred elsewhere in the world.
Deaths are deaths everywhere and the location of such tragedies really makes no difference.
But this happened right in front of us.
Mass communications brought the sight of the planes crashing into their targets into our homes repeatedly making us re-live the experience time and time again.
The knowledge that there were thousands of people inside those buildings trapped and doomed made things even worse.
The public services of New York: the Mayor, the firefighters, the police were as good if not even better than TV and written reports have
shown to you.
I am one of the many who lit a candle on Friday at Union Square.
Yet another aspect of this tragedy are the number of home made "posters" with a name, a photograph, a brief description and "Missing since September 11, 2001.. tower ..." that are literally all over the city. Not just at Union Square but everywhere.
I am an American. I am proud to be one but truly I have noticed that the out reach of people no matter what their citizenship has been
enormous. This episode has hit us all.
Technically speaking this attack was brilliantly organized.
It would be silly to underestimate these adversaries now.
But life goes on and my feelings and hopes go out to everybody I know as well as to those that I did not know before last Tuesday.

All the best to you and yours,

Claude H. Ostfeld