Our 9/11 Story

On the morning of September 11th, I was finishing breakfast and listening to National Public Radio when there was a sudden boom that rattled the windows and shook the floor. The radio turned to static. I went to the window and looked out to see an immense pall of black smoke filled with small squares of white (later I realized that this was office paper) around the top of the World Trade Center. The view from my window is partial, and I was unable to see the North tower, but it was clear to me that this had not been a simple fire.

Milda stumbled out of the bedroom, and I said "a bomb just went off."

We turned on the TV in time to see the networks cutover to the special news bulletin saying that there was a fire in the World Trade Center. We watched a few minutes later as an airplane flew into the second tower. Our house shook again. The reporters hadn't seen it, though it was clearly on camera. It was several minutes before they heard from a caller on the phone what had happened and replayed the tape.

Milda called her Mother to say that we were OK. Her Mother didn't yet know what had happened. Our neighbors came over. They couldn't stand being in their apartment which looks straight at the towers. From her apartment the scene was ghastly. The police had set up a triage site on Broadway below us. Only two or three people were being treated there when we looked. The buildings were burning, and someone with a large mirror was signaling for help from a few floors above the fire in the South Tower. Others were jumping to escape the fire and smoke.

Back in our apartment we watched the news flipping from network to network. None of us thought the towers would collapse, after all they had just withstood the impact from an aircraft collision. Then, as we watched, the South tower began to fall. On TV it was a quiet thing. At home it was a low bass rumble as the buildings shook. We retreated to the bedroom (which has no windows) and waited as the floor shook. I thought of earthquakes, and of the landfill that Battery Park city is built upon. As the shaking stopped and we ventured back into the living room, the light changed. First the daylight turned a murky yellow, then black as thick particles like sandy black fog rattled past the building.

It was as dark as night outside, and on TV we could see the cloud of smoke and debris we were in. This was when we decided to leave. We had been lucky with one tower, and didn't want to chance it with another. We each took a wet washcloth as a breathing filter, and some bags before descending to our backdoor onto Maiden Lane. We went East and then North out of downtown, and the following photos chronicle our trip. As I am able I will add new photos or further detail our location in given pictures

The Morning of 9/11 - Our House

The following pages are arranged chronologically as we took them while leaving our apartment on the morning of September 11th, and as we returned on September the 12th to pick up some essentials. We are still not able to move back into our home, and have been told that it might be another two weeks before we can. This is not so much from damage to our building, which escaped remarkably unscathed, but because of the immense cleanup required in the building and the neighborhood.

The photos are placed one or two to a page because some of the files are somewhat large. The map on this page is from the Times and shows the location of our building, all of the other images were taken by Lawrence or Milda.

Map of Downtown Showing Our Home (from the New York Times):

Our house is on Broadway between John Street and Maiden Lane. Look for the East River Savings Bank (#10) and then go 1 block right (East) to Broadway. Our escape route was out the Maiden Lane exit of our building. We ran two blocks to the East on Maiden Lane. At that point the second tower fell. We turned North to escape the debris in a sheltered side street.

Out of Home and onto the Street

This was where we exited our building with some neighbors. The side door from our building is on Maiden Lane - this was the view after the first tower collapsed.

The street was clean before the collapse. All of the paper came from the World Trade Centers.

The second tower collapsed while we were here and we ran East on Maiden to get further away as the second tower was collapsing. This was the second most terrifying moment for me - the first had been when the first tower collapsed while we were in our appartment. It had felt like an earchquake and we were really not sure the building would survive.

East on Maiden - 9/11

As we ran east, the visibility was very poor. We had only made it about a block when the second tower collapsed. This photo was taken just North of Maiden right after the second tower collapsed.

I think we're on Nassau Street, but this period of time is a bit fuzzy. I had been running for the last couple of blocks with a neighbor's 2 year old in my arms because she couldn't run fast enough while carrying him. An emergency worker flagged down the truck and our neighbor and her two year old squeezed in.

The truck was packed and Milda and I couldn't fit, so we walked on together.

After the second tower fell and our neighbors sped off in the red expedition, Milda and I turned North on Nassau Street (I think it was Nassau. I'll have to go back down there later to make sure). Pebbles and thick black soot and ash particles were falling around us, but larger debris was blocked by the buildings around us.

Most people were getting off the streets because the air was so thick with smoke and dust as to be unbreathable, and kept getting in your eyes. The few people we did see tended to be from the press, emergency workers, or leaving the area in a hurry.

As you can see here, you could really only see about 100 feet or so, after that it was just gray

Sheltered by Neighbors

During the collapse of the second tower we hid in this office building lobby while the air cleared. The building manager offered us water and took us to restrooms to wash the thick gray ash off.

People were kind of numb, and I remember answering a young man's questions about Battery Park City. He wanted to know it the tower had fallen onto it, and I couldn't really say.

The ash was very reactive, and burned when mixed with sweat (or when we tried to wash it off). It was also hard to wash off.
I felt dirty for days.

Smoke and Debris from the Second Tower's Collapse

This is right outside of the lobby we sheltered in (above), but I'm honestly not sure what street we're on here. We had decided after about forty minutes to leave the office building and make our way North towards my Mom's house.

What's odd is how calm most of the pedestrians seem to be. I guess because both towers had already fallen - and shock.

The smoke was being blown East down every side street like mist through canyons.

Fruit Stand

The walk North out of the downtown area was surreal. This fruit stand vendor was trying to decide what to do about his ash covered fruit.

Walking North on Nassau

Most of the stores we passed were already closed by the time we passed them. Our cell phones only worked sporadically, and I was worried about my Mother, who works on Wall Street and had called after the first explosion to say she was going to try to come over to our house. She didn't make it to our house, but was fine, and didn't leave her office until later in the afternoon.

The Lower East Side

After we crossed under the Brooklyn Bridge we went up the Bowery. This is the view from downtown and was the first really good view we had of the devastation.

A lot of people were stopping here to watch, and the traffic trying to get out of the city became evident to us. Most of the bridges, and a lot of the Avenues were being closed to all but emergency traffic.

A Police Truck on 9/11

Somewhere around the Brooklyn Bridge we saw this police truck. What was eerie to me was how much it looked like a scene from winter. This could just be street salt.

We eventually made it to the Upper East Side where we stayed with family.

The next posts are from our return to our house on the 12th to pick up some things.

Mural Memorial - 9/12

On Wednesday the 12th of September, Milda and I decided to try to get some things from home. We had left with nothing but Milda's purse and my office bag on Tuesday, and given the scale of the destruction it seemed unlikely that we would be going to stay at home soon.

These photos chronicle our return trip past numerous Police and National Guard checkpoints into downtown Manhattan.
We decided to take a Second Avenue bus as far South as we could, and then to walk along the East side of Manhattan before turning West by the Seaport.

The bus stopped at 14th Street and we were directed over to Avenue A before we were allowed past a security checkpoint. The street was closed to vehicular traffic (except for emergency vehicles), but there were a lot of pedestrians.

We passed this mural that had been painted overnight.

Mural from 2000 - seen on 9/11

After another block or so we came to this mural, seemingly from New Years in 2000.

This far from the scene of the crime, it felt like a Sunday Morning. There were people on the streets, but no cars.

Cooking Outside at Jubilee

Here's Something you really don't see every day. The power was out in a lot of the buildings in Downtown. These folks needed some lunch. It made the area feel like more of a war zone.

We met up with a National Guard patrol when we tried to get closer to home. After we showed them ID with our address, they agreed to escort us to our appartment. They were very tired looking - we didn't take any pictures of them... too wierd.

Maiden Lane - 9/12

The walk up Maiden Lane was a bit depressing. This view used to show the South Tower. When we left the apartment on the morning of the 11th we ran down Maiden Lane (one of the pictures from the 11th looks East on Maiden). This is the view from Maiden and Nassau looking West.

Our building is the one with the green roof on the right. There's some scaffolding at the base of the building (the second set of scaffolding on the right). The side door to our building is under that scaffolding.

Approaching Home on Maiden Lane

This is from a bit closer, but still on Maiden Lane. The scaffolding on the right is where the side door to our building is. The broken structure you can see in the center of the photo is actually the top of the South Tower.

Our Lobby - 9/12

We went up to our apartment and grabbed some things before coming back downstairs and leaving. The lobby was full of broken glass and thick with ash which swirled around our feet as we walked.

Approaching Broadway on Maiden Lane - 9/12

From our corner on Maiden Lane and Broadway, we could look down Cortland Street past the Odd Job Lot into the smoking remains of the South Tower.
The jagged wreckage you can see in this picture is actually the top of the south tower which landed at Cortland and Church Street. The remaining structure of the South Tower is concealed in this view by the smoke.
Our building is the one with the scaffolding on the right, and this picture is taken from the same spot (more or less) as the first picture in the series from the 11th, when we were leaving. The ash on the street has turned to mud.

The Corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane on 9/12

From the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane, this was the view down Cortland Street at the remains of the South Tower.

While we were at home we went up to the roof to look over the site.

The View from Our Roof

From the roof of our building this was the view...

The rescue workers, tractors and trucks in the foreground help to provide scale. Note that the top of the South Tower is on Curch Street about a bl;ock from our house.

View from our Roof #2

This view shows the remains of the base of the South Tower. Though this photo does not show it, you can see the Hudson river through the building where the holes are large. The remaining structure is about 14 stories tall.

View from our Roof #3

I've zoomed in a bit here. You can really see the Financial Center and North Cove behind the building's remains.

View from our Roof #4

At the right edge of the picture you can see part of the front buildings of the WTC. Milda used to have coffee every Tuesday morning in the lobby of that building with a friend. Luckily she had cancelled for that day.