I wrote this on a cruise meets thread a few years ago when I was very upset and everything just came pouring out. I wanted to share to explain why some people (me) are worried about the new threats that are on the news. It's graphic and long without proper paragraphs, so you may want to pass on reading it.
I didn't take a picture of the lights last night...I ended up getting very upset because I got a phone call from a friend who's daughter was severely traumatized by seeing people jumping. We were on the phone for 2 hours. I remember dropping the kids to school that morning, and then going to church, a usual day. After church, when I went outside, I saw one of our priests looking up at the sky, and there was a huge black/red cloud. No one knew what it was, but we knew there was obviously a big fire. I walked to mt car and my cell phone rang. It was Mel from work, asking me where I was and telling me to get home fast. I thought something had happened to one of my kids, his voice was frantic. I kept screaming into the phone "what happened???" He said a plane hit one of the towers, get home and put on the news and call him back. I raced home and saw on the news the fire and chaos. I tried to call Mel, but the landlines were dead. I then got a call on my cell from a neighbor at work two blocks away from the towers, begging me to go to the school and get her 3 kids out. Then I got another call from another friend at work asking the same thing, she was hysterical crying. That's when I thought of my kids and started to panic. I rushed to the elementary school, Jesse was in 4th grade there. The school was jammed with parents, crying, scared to death. The school handled it so well, writing down the names of the kids being called for, handing out the papers to school staff, and they went to collect the kids. I ended up taking 7 kids out, including my Jesse. I got a call telling me not to come into work, as I worked in Queens and they said the bridges were all closed. I got the kids in the car, they were all confused, seeing the big blsck cloud that was starting to smell like smokeeverywhere. I rushed to Chad's high school, but they closed off the blocks around the school to all traffic. Police said that all the kids were let out and told to go right home or to any church close to home if they didn't have a house key and if no one was home. The city busses weren't running in order to keep the streets clear for police. Oh my God, where was Chad? I followed the route that I thought he'd walk to get home, a very long walk. I got all the way home and saw people putting American flags out in front of their houses and buildings. That's when I realized we were under attack. A neighbor saw me crying and juggling the kids and looking around for Chad. "He's home, he's in the house," she shouted. Her husband was getting on his motor cycle to drive downtown to get their child out of school, he took the motorcyle because the police were trying to keep cars off the streets. I ran in the house, when I left earlier I didn't even close the door I was so in a panic. Chad had been trying to call me but the land phones were still dead. Mel called my cell again, he was on the roof of his work building and he watched the second plane hit the other tower. I later found out that my nephew, Cory's brother, also saw it hit, his class looking out their school window. I kept gtting cell calls, from friends, from my family upstate worried sick about us, everyone in disbelief even while we saw it happening before our eyes. I then remembered my friend's husband who worked on the 82nd floor of tower 1. I thought my heart stopped. I threw some cereal in bowls and sent the kids down into the basement to watch vidoe cartoons and I put the tv news back on. They were scared that the smoke was going to get them, I explained a little that there was a plane crash and we're ok.
My brother came and dropped his kids with me and went back to work, he worked with mentally disabled people and he was needed there. My SIL was in the same situation. My brother said his friend Firefighter David DiRubbrio was on his way with his unit to fight the fire and do rescue. This was the man who taught Jesse and Cory how to ride a two-wheeled bike a few years before. He died when the buildings fell. So did Firefighter John Scaldoni, a man who lived on my block, but I never really got to know him, and Tim Stackpole who was a firefighter and member of my church. He survived severe burns from a fire in 1999 only to die on 9/11 leaving behind 5 small children.
I watched the tv, went outside to look at the black sky, back to the tv, back and forth. The streets were filled with people not knowing what to do or say. Mel called again, and as I was on the phone with him, I watched the first tower crumble down. I remember asking him "is that happening, is that happening right now???????" I could hear Mel's co-workers still on the roof shouting holy **** the building just fell, it's gone!! Then my cell went dead. I ran and got the charger, but there was still no signal. My elderly neighbor who lived alonecame over, she didn't want to be alone, and when the building was falling on tv, she put her hands up to the TV as if to stop it from falling. It was surreal. Then the false reports of bomb scares started hitting the news. Get out of the post offices, get out of the malls, get out of the subway. I found out that my friend who worked on the 82nd floor was on the subway on his way to work when this all happened. He was stuck in the subway for 2 hours, but thankfully he didn't make it into work that day, but he said he thought there was an earthquake the way the train shook. No one know what was going on for two hours until they got the trains moving and everyone out at the next stop.
Then the news on tv about the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Then the second tower fell. The kids kept coming upstairs from the basement asking what was happening. Chad then saw the f-16s flying overhead. I told the kids the truth that some very bad people crashed planes into the buildings, but that we were ok, the fighter planes were going to stop any more planes from hurting us. They were obsessed with the black/red cloud that was getting closer to us, I had to close the door and windows from the choking smell. I live in Brooklyn, across the river from the towers, but the force was so great that paper from the falling towers starting falling out of the sky right here. Cory picked up a piece of charred paper and he still has it to this day. We live 5 miles from the towers, and I could only imagine the choking air from all the ash and soot right there by the towers if we could smell it badly 5 miles away. I saw people running for their lives on TV. Car alarms started going off like crazy from the air pressure.
Days later, the fire still burned. My window screens were clogged with ash. Remember I live 5 long miles away. Imagine the people living and working in the buildings right there. It was hell.
Mel came home, and we watched the news all through the night. We were told by friends that all the Catholic schools in the 5 boroughs of NYC (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island) would stay open all night for kids whose parents didn't make it home.
Mel's boss who's cousin is a firefighter, put on his cousin's firefighter gear just to get into the site area to see for himself. He actually helped dig through the rubble, and had the bottom of his boots burned from the hot metal. I read later on that rescue dogs also had their feet burned from climbing on the pile sniffing for survivors. All the hospitals were asking for blood donations and set up triage units close to the site for the ones who would be rescued from under the pile. God help them, but their triage units were basically empty, as there were very few people who were picked up alive from under the rubble. The downtown hospitals were full with people who were able to walk there. Ambulances couldn't get through. People were frantically trying to get in touch with loved ones, but the phone lines were dead throughout the city for hours. The cell phone lines started to become overloaded.
Later that night, my direct next door neighbor came to my door. I had her 3 kids with me, and I hadn't heard from her all day. I didn't know if she was dead or alive. She was a single mom. She came to the door COVERED with white ash, and I mean covered from head to toe, except for the streaks down her legs where she wet herself. The city opened the Brooklyn Bridge so that people could walk across it to get home. She walked the five miles and it took her 10 hours. All she could say when I saw her was "it's terrible, it's terrible" over and over again. I grabbed her, held her, and we both sobbed. I kept telling her she was ok, her kids were ok, we're safe now, she's safe now.
The next day, my SIL (Fran is her name, Cory's mom) and I took Cory and Jesse down there. We wanted to see. The fire was still burning, but we wanted to see, not out of morbid curiousity, but out of anger and despair. We drove right past the blockades, and we were shocked that we sweren't stopped. We parked the car on the sidewalk 10 blocks away from Ground Zero, out hankie masks on all of us, and walked. There were military personnel with machine guns, but they let us through, I don't know how or why they did this. Chad didn't want to go, he took it very hard, and wouldn't even watch the news anymore. I wanted to show Jesse so that he may never forget. Fran took pictures, but to this day she has never developed them, she just can't, she said, but someday she will.
Then the posters started all over the neighborhoods, pictures EVERYWHERE on every wall, pictures of missing people "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON? WAS LAST SEEN ON THE 50th FLOOR OF TOWER 1, CANTOR FITZGERALD OFFICE" "HAVE YOU SEEN MY HUSBAND MARTIN CRUZ JANITOR TOWER 2" Men, women, young, old, pictures everywhere, oh my God, it was the most disturbing sad thing I've ever seen in my life. There were over 100 people who jumped to their deaths, some holding hands, forced to choose between dying by fire or jumping. This was seen by my friend's daughter, the one who called me last night. Her daughter had just gotten off the subway withing the burning building and was led out by the police to the street level and told to get away as fast as they can. She said she had blanked out the image of the falling bodies, but the sound of them hitting the ground tortures her to this day. She has since moved out of the city to a suburb, and is unable to work even 7 years later, suffering from agoraphobia. She never leaves her home, her mother has to do everything for her. God I haven't thought about this all year, and now it's back again.
One last thing I need to say. All those people's deaths crush my heart every year when I remember what happened, but I lost a special friend, Fr. Mychal Judge, who was chaplain for the NYC Fire Department. He was right there on the scene supporting the firefighters, and he died of a heart attack. You may have seen his photo in the paper, when firefighters put him in a chair, already gone on to heaven, and carried him to St. Peter's Church, two or three blocks away. They removed his fire helmet he always wore when with his beloved firefighters, and laid him at the altar. Before he died, he administered last rights to many many of the dead and dying. He put himself in harms way to serve and comfort. When I was with Fran and our kids at the site, we went to St. Paul's to pray for him, and that's the first time I really badly lost control of my emotions. Fran started crying. She still didn't know if her friend David DiRubbrio was dead or alive. We, the whole city, had hope that there were people still alive under the rubble, because the towers had many levels below street level, where there were stores and restaurants. We prayed that they were there, sitting in an untouched restaurant waiting to be rescued. But it turned out that everything was caved in. Nothing was left. I had an electric bill in my pocketbook, took out the bill, and filled it with ash from the ground. When I got home, I out it in a plastic ziplock bag, and put it away. I don't want it but I don't want to get rid of it. And I'm not sure why I picked it up.
One of the MANY walls where people desperately put up photos, hoping thair loved ones were seen alive, anywhere.
I didn't take a picture of the lights last night...I ended up getting very upset because I got a phone call from a friend who's daughter was severely traumatized by seeing people jumping. We were on the phone for 2 hours. I remember dropping the kids to school that morning, and then going to church, a usual day. After church, when I went outside, I saw one of our priests looking up at the sky, and there was a huge black/red cloud. No one knew what it was, but we knew there was obviously a big fire. I walked to mt car and my cell phone rang. It was Mel from work, asking me where I was and telling me to get home fast. I thought something had happened to one of my kids, his voice was frantic. I kept screaming into the phone "what happened???" He said a plane hit one of the towers, get home and put on the news and call him back. I raced home and saw on the news the fire and chaos. I tried to call Mel, but the landlines were dead. I then got a call on my cell from a neighbor at work two blocks away from the towers, begging me to go to the school and get her 3 kids out. Then I got another call from another friend at work asking the same thing, she was hysterical crying. That's when I thought of my kids and started to panic. I rushed to the elementary school, Jesse was in 4th grade there. The school was jammed with parents, crying, scared to death. The school handled it so well, writing down the names of the kids being called for, handing out the papers to school staff, and they went to collect the kids. I ended up taking 7 kids out, including my Jesse. I got a call telling me not to come into work, as I worked in Queens and they said the bridges were all closed. I got the kids in the car, they were all confused, seeing the big blsck cloud that was starting to smell like smokeeverywhere. I rushed to Chad's high school, but they closed off the blocks around the school to all traffic. Police said that all the kids were let out and told to go right home or to any church close to home if they didn't have a house key and if no one was home. The city busses weren't running in order to keep the streets clear for police. Oh my God, where was Chad? I followed the route that I thought he'd walk to get home, a very long walk. I got all the way home and saw people putting American flags out in front of their houses and buildings. That's when I realized we were under attack. A neighbor saw me crying and juggling the kids and looking around for Chad. "He's home, he's in the house," she shouted. Her husband was getting on his motor cycle to drive downtown to get their child out of school, he took the motorcyle because the police were trying to keep cars off the streets. I ran in the house, when I left earlier I didn't even close the door I was so in a panic. Chad had been trying to call me but the land phones were still dead. Mel called my cell again, he was on the roof of his work building and he watched the second plane hit the other tower. I later found out that my nephew, Cory's brother, also saw it hit, his class looking out their school window. I kept gtting cell calls, from friends, from my family upstate worried sick about us, everyone in disbelief even while we saw it happening before our eyes. I then remembered my friend's husband who worked on the 82nd floor of tower 1. I thought my heart stopped. I threw some cereal in bowls and sent the kids down into the basement to watch vidoe cartoons and I put the tv news back on. They were scared that the smoke was going to get them, I explained a little that there was a plane crash and we're ok.
My brother came and dropped his kids with me and went back to work, he worked with mentally disabled people and he was needed there. My SIL was in the same situation. My brother said his friend Firefighter David DiRubbrio was on his way with his unit to fight the fire and do rescue. This was the man who taught Jesse and Cory how to ride a two-wheeled bike a few years before. He died when the buildings fell. So did Firefighter John Scaldoni, a man who lived on my block, but I never really got to know him, and Tim Stackpole who was a firefighter and member of my church. He survived severe burns from a fire in 1999 only to die on 9/11 leaving behind 5 small children.
I watched the tv, went outside to look at the black sky, back to the tv, back and forth. The streets were filled with people not knowing what to do or say. Mel called again, and as I was on the phone with him, I watched the first tower crumble down. I remember asking him "is that happening, is that happening right now???????" I could hear Mel's co-workers still on the roof shouting holy **** the building just fell, it's gone!! Then my cell went dead. I ran and got the charger, but there was still no signal. My elderly neighbor who lived alonecame over, she didn't want to be alone, and when the building was falling on tv, she put her hands up to the TV as if to stop it from falling. It was surreal. Then the false reports of bomb scares started hitting the news. Get out of the post offices, get out of the malls, get out of the subway. I found out that my friend who worked on the 82nd floor was on the subway on his way to work when this all happened. He was stuck in the subway for 2 hours, but thankfully he didn't make it into work that day, but he said he thought there was an earthquake the way the train shook. No one know what was going on for two hours until they got the trains moving and everyone out at the next stop.
Then the news on tv about the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Then the second tower fell. The kids kept coming upstairs from the basement asking what was happening. Chad then saw the f-16s flying overhead. I told the kids the truth that some very bad people crashed planes into the buildings, but that we were ok, the fighter planes were going to stop any more planes from hurting us. They were obsessed with the black/red cloud that was getting closer to us, I had to close the door and windows from the choking smell. I live in Brooklyn, across the river from the towers, but the force was so great that paper from the falling towers starting falling out of the sky right here. Cory picked up a piece of charred paper and he still has it to this day. We live 5 miles from the towers, and I could only imagine the choking air from all the ash and soot right there by the towers if we could smell it badly 5 miles away. I saw people running for their lives on TV. Car alarms started going off like crazy from the air pressure.
Days later, the fire still burned. My window screens were clogged with ash. Remember I live 5 long miles away. Imagine the people living and working in the buildings right there. It was hell.
Mel came home, and we watched the news all through the night. We were told by friends that all the Catholic schools in the 5 boroughs of NYC (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island) would stay open all night for kids whose parents didn't make it home.
Mel's boss who's cousin is a firefighter, put on his cousin's firefighter gear just to get into the site area to see for himself. He actually helped dig through the rubble, and had the bottom of his boots burned from the hot metal. I read later on that rescue dogs also had their feet burned from climbing on the pile sniffing for survivors. All the hospitals were asking for blood donations and set up triage units close to the site for the ones who would be rescued from under the pile. God help them, but their triage units were basically empty, as there were very few people who were picked up alive from under the rubble. The downtown hospitals were full with people who were able to walk there. Ambulances couldn't get through. People were frantically trying to get in touch with loved ones, but the phone lines were dead throughout the city for hours. The cell phone lines started to become overloaded.
Later that night, my direct next door neighbor came to my door. I had her 3 kids with me, and I hadn't heard from her all day. I didn't know if she was dead or alive. She was a single mom. She came to the door COVERED with white ash, and I mean covered from head to toe, except for the streaks down her legs where she wet herself. The city opened the Brooklyn Bridge so that people could walk across it to get home. She walked the five miles and it took her 10 hours. All she could say when I saw her was "it's terrible, it's terrible" over and over again. I grabbed her, held her, and we both sobbed. I kept telling her she was ok, her kids were ok, we're safe now, she's safe now.
The next day, my SIL (Fran is her name, Cory's mom) and I took Cory and Jesse down there. We wanted to see. The fire was still burning, but we wanted to see, not out of morbid curiousity, but out of anger and despair. We drove right past the blockades, and we were shocked that we sweren't stopped. We parked the car on the sidewalk 10 blocks away from Ground Zero, out hankie masks on all of us, and walked. There were military personnel with machine guns, but they let us through, I don't know how or why they did this. Chad didn't want to go, he took it very hard, and wouldn't even watch the news anymore. I wanted to show Jesse so that he may never forget. Fran took pictures, but to this day she has never developed them, she just can't, she said, but someday she will.
Then the posters started all over the neighborhoods, pictures EVERYWHERE on every wall, pictures of missing people "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON? WAS LAST SEEN ON THE 50th FLOOR OF TOWER 1, CANTOR FITZGERALD OFFICE" "HAVE YOU SEEN MY HUSBAND MARTIN CRUZ JANITOR TOWER 2" Men, women, young, old, pictures everywhere, oh my God, it was the most disturbing sad thing I've ever seen in my life. There were over 100 people who jumped to their deaths, some holding hands, forced to choose between dying by fire or jumping. This was seen by my friend's daughter, the one who called me last night. Her daughter had just gotten off the subway withing the burning building and was led out by the police to the street level and told to get away as fast as they can. She said she had blanked out the image of the falling bodies, but the sound of them hitting the ground tortures her to this day. She has since moved out of the city to a suburb, and is unable to work even 7 years later, suffering from agoraphobia. She never leaves her home, her mother has to do everything for her. God I haven't thought about this all year, and now it's back again.
One last thing I need to say. All those people's deaths crush my heart every year when I remember what happened, but I lost a special friend, Fr. Mychal Judge, who was chaplain for the NYC Fire Department. He was right there on the scene supporting the firefighters, and he died of a heart attack. You may have seen his photo in the paper, when firefighters put him in a chair, already gone on to heaven, and carried him to St. Peter's Church, two or three blocks away. They removed his fire helmet he always wore when with his beloved firefighters, and laid him at the altar. Before he died, he administered last rights to many many of the dead and dying. He put himself in harms way to serve and comfort. When I was with Fran and our kids at the site, we went to St. Paul's to pray for him, and that's the first time I really badly lost control of my emotions. Fran started crying. She still didn't know if her friend David DiRubbrio was dead or alive. We, the whole city, had hope that there were people still alive under the rubble, because the towers had many levels below street level, where there were stores and restaurants. We prayed that they were there, sitting in an untouched restaurant waiting to be rescued. But it turned out that everything was caved in. Nothing was left. I had an electric bill in my pocketbook, took out the bill, and filled it with ash from the ground. When I got home, I out it in a plastic ziplock bag, and put it away. I don't want it but I don't want to get rid of it. And I'm not sure why I picked it up.
One of the MANY walls where people desperately put up photos, hoping thair loved ones were seen alive, anywhere.
Thank you for sharing your story.
