The day America was attacked

The morning of September 11 was clear and cool, cloud free and blue. One couldn’t help notice the sky because of the rarity of such days after the classic long, hot, hazy, humid summer. The window was open, the air mercifully fresh.

While dozing I was startled by the erratic sounds of a loud low-flying jet and I wondered what insane jock was buzzing the city? I listened but didn’t look, which is unusual.

The jet sound ceased, supplanted by a single booming round bubble-like explosion.

Then it was very quiet.

I bolted to my south-view windows and saw a blackened smudge one third of the way below the top of one tower. No smoke, no flame. I dialed 911. It was busy. I immediately found my camera and the first photo was taken within a minute of impact.

I went to the rooftop, which had a clear view of the twin towers. My first logical impression after the initial impact was that it was an amazing accident and that the situation would soon be under control, as the streets were audibly alive with emergency vehicles.

I further speculated that citizens would be exposed to a lengthy clean up and restoration project and all would be back to normal.

Oh, yeah.

I watched with many others from the rooftop as the tower smoldered. Then the second explosion! A ball of flame bloomed huge off the east and northern face of the other tower. I recall hearing no plane and hearing no explosion.

From my viewpoint the second plane out of Newark flew into the south face thereby obscuring the plane from my view. I saw the explosion.

Once again the mind froze, and the tongue retired.

Screams and gasps could be heard from the surrounding rooftops. This was the moment, indelibly demonstrated, that these events were fiendishly calculated and no accident. The lady next to me began to cry and left. I tear now just at the recall, an expression long delayed.

Neighbors watching events on television came to the rooftop and announced incredulously that the Pentagon had been hit.

Then, as though the preceding series of unprecedented shocks weren’t enough, the unimaginable presented itself once again as the second tower hit began to melt. A gentle tilt, and it collapsed, “pancaking” into itself, its crown a mass of boiling debris that showered coiling tendrils from the center out until all disappeared from view only to rise again nearly to its predecessors height, a rising cumulus of evaporated debris, a ghostly tsunami that ran like flood waters down the streets and avenues as though they were sluices from which more pulverized debris rose.

I knew then it was only a matter of time before the first tower hit was doomed to follow its counterpart into a mirror event. It stood there isolated, blue sky and smoke where its twin once stood.

Then it too expired.

Incidentally, and I do not think I exaggerate, this was probably (among several to choose from) one of the most toxic clouds known to man, a quick inventory of what makes a modern skyscraper and what goes into it and what those items are composed of vaporized and catalyzed in fire and dispersed upon the wind is a toxic concoction unprecedented and too elaborate to imagine.

This tragedy is not over yet. So, please, do not readily consign the New Yorker too quickly to their previous status as a collective band of curmudgeons, for they have become unwittingly victims for all citizens, and the repercussions of this event include us all and are far from resolved, if ever.

I would like to emphasize that when I first moved to New York City, the Twin Towers site was a very large and impressive construction site, a hole in the ground.

That is now, regrettably, true once again. Strange. I still look for them. Whenever flying into NYC or driving, one searches for these familiar landmarks.

They were my Stonehenge, my Colossus of Rhodes, my bellwether by day and by night, sometimes in the clouds, sometimes invisible behind mists. During sunset their shadows would reach La Guardia Airport, miles and miles away.

At certain times of the year the moon could be seen briefly between the towers, at other times they were sheets of light reflecting sunrise or sunset. Nightly they were erratically lighted as cleaning proceeded through out the night on various floors. They were my friends and neighbors.

Their continuing drama will be one of the centuries defining moments. I miss them, and to this day look for them like an old dog searches in familiar places for its missing master.

The skyline has been trimmed and a new perspective is required. The site has become a political showboat, which is as embarrassing as it is predictable.

Here I would like to emphasis a statistic rarely cited, and that is nearly 15,000 escaped this cataclysm.

I wish all those who perished that day may they rest in peace, and the world likewise.

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