2001-09-11 - 11:02 p.m.

The Falling Towers

I woke up this morning, and groggily sat down at my computer.

I was fiddling around with some stuff, when I happened to notice a conversation in one of the Planetarion channels.

An airplane ran into the World Trade Center? What were they talking about?

At that moment Lily came home from her early morning class.

"Baby," I said, "I think something terrible has happened. We should turn on the TV."

She turned on the TV and flipped to NBC, and there it was, that ghastly image: the island of Manhattan with smoke pouring out of the twin towers like ash out of an angry volcano.

It was a terrible shock to see that: a smoldering stake driven into the heart of that proud city.

The city we live in is over 100 miles from New York, but even here people were walking around like they were in shock. Later in the day businesses and schools were closing early all over the area. The streets were eerily empty, even at rush hour.

My brother Harry lives on Long Island, but he works in the city. I was trying to remember whether or not he worked near the World Trade Center when news came that both of the towers had collapsed.

I tried calling his business and his home but all the long distance lines were busy. I kept trying every 20 minutes, but was unable to get through.

A couple hours later one of Harry's friends called. He'd had word through a mutual friend that Harry was fine, but trapped on the island of Manhattan.

About eight in the evening, Harry got home and called me and told me the story of his day.

Just before nine a.m. Harry was at his desk, getting his papers squared away for the beginning of the day, when one of his co-workers stuck his head in the door and told him that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Their office building was about a half mile away from the WTC, but since they were on the 35th story, one of the offices had a good view of the towers.

Harry and his co-workers goggled - there was a huge hole in one of the towers! The people in the office wondered what they were looking at and they said: "Look behind you!"

And while they were looking at the scene a low-flying airplane came in close and circled around behind the towers. Harry was waiting for the plane to emerge on the other side when a huge fireball erupted from the side of the building. Everyone in the room gasped in horror.

"It was the worst thing I've ever seen," he told me.

Shortly thereafter a Fire Marshall came by and told them that all high-rises were being evacuated. Harry's boss was trying to get them to stay a while longer, but the employees decided that getting out of Manhattan alive was a better idea.

Harry and some of his co-workers were walking north in Manhattan, and the going was slow. They decided to stop at a shoe store because one of the women needed some better shoes to walk in.

When they exited the store, it was so smoky it was like night had fallen. What happened? Harry and his co-workers learned, to their shock, that the towers had collapsed and lower Manhattan was shrouded in dust.

After wandering around looking for a way off the island, Harry and his co-workers finally got off the island by walking over the 59th street bridge. Even though far from the disaster site, the traffic in Queens was utterly snarled.

One of Harry's co-workers had parents who owned a factory in Queens. When they got there they all eventually got rides home, but all told it took him over eight hours to get from his workplace to his house.

This whole story sounds kind of matter-of-fact, but I could tell that Harry was very shaken up by this. However, he was impressed that nearly all of the New Yorkers that he ran across didn't succumb to panic.

"However," he concluded, "I now know what will happen if a disaster ever hits New York: everything will stop cold."

He didn't know if he would be going back to work tomorrow.

And that's pretty much the story of Harry's day, his front-row view of this terrible occurrence.

It's still too soon to say what will happen because of this. There still are only very vague estimates about the number of killed and injured. However, already I can tell that this is going to be one of those watersheds in modern history, and in twenty years' time people will ask each other - "Where were you when you heard about...?"

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Folks, I know I am dreadfully behind, but I wanted to put this up now, while it was still immediate. I will fill in the missing days (some of which are already written) in the next few days.