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.