12 September 2001

Terrorism in New York - One New Yorker's Impressions

As you may know, I work for the NYPD.

I was on the train into Manhattan when the first plane hit - but I didn't hear a word of it until the train arrived at GCT at 9:00, just as the second plane was hitting the second tower, when a passenger sitting near me finished a call with his wife and remarked 'a plane hit the WTC'. He sounded puzzled, like it didn't quite make sense. There was no general knowledge, and the remark was so casual that most passengers didn't hear it or take notice.

When I got to the precinct, the entire block was cordoned off, and I had to show ID and allow my bags to be searched. I was then allowed in, and attempted to call my headquarters desk to check in. It still was not clear to me what had happened; the precinct was in chaos due to a full mobilization of all on-duty uniformed personnel. I stuck my head into the operations office, and found out what had happened, just minutes before the first tower went down. As I was finding out what happened, the order came from upstairs to mobilize all third-tour personnel not on RDO - that is, anyone that works evenings and wasn't on a day off. Immediately after the first tower came down, that changed to a full mobilization, all personnel, twelve hour shifts.

The city was sealed off. All bridges into Manhattan were closed; all tunnels were closed in both directions, and the arterial highways were blocked inbound at the city line. Mobilized emergency workers could get in only by showing ID. An evacuation of the area below Canal Street was arranged, though calling it organized would not be quite accurate; much of it was simply a case of "the WTC is that way; you go this way, and don't stop until you're out of Manhattan". Large scale panic was, surprisingly, absent. The Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges were evacuation routes for pedestrians; vehicles that managed to make it out of the closed area - usually by evading the police - were only permitted to go uptown - downtown avenues were blocked, open only to emergency vehicles. Later, ferry service was arranged to get people from lower Manhattan to a staging area at the old Erie-Lackawanna freight terminal piers in New Jersey.

The police radio network was chaotic. Every channel had most traffic devoted to the response to lower Manhattan, but it was nearly impossible to assemble a coherent picture of what was going on. Shortly after the second tower went down, I heard a female officer calling for help, abruptly cut off. In retrospect, I cannot liken it to anything other than the plaintive sound of a cat, trapped and in horrible pain - which was likely exactly the situation that the officer was in. I hope that she survived, but I do not believe she did.

Some time after the collapse of the second tower, the precinct I am stationed in was evacuated. A block away, a man was caught with a knapsack full of explosives, and apparently told the arresting officer that there was a bomb in the precinct.

Much of lower Manhattan was and is covered in ash and debris. There is still smoke rising, higher than the Empire State Building, from the rubble. Communications, electricity, everything is massively disrupted. The devastation of the WTC and the immediate surrounds is matched in pictures only by such places as Berlin, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

Communications were disrupted. Many phone lines were severed; it was difficult to call anywhere in the city, and impossible to call into the area below Canal Street. The New York National Guard was called up, and were responding to the scene.

There has been, surprisingly, no reported civil disorder - no riots, no looting, not even significant amounts of price gouging on high-demand supplies.

Throughout the entire episode, and even now, there is a sense of unreality about the whole thing. This is not something that human beings can cope with; it's just too much to comprehend. One sees TV reporting, and the images are familiar - people crying, emergency crews helping the wounded and moving the dead, piles of rubble - a typical scene after a suicide bombing in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Then you see the other cues in the background - the emergency vehicles lettered in English, the accentless speech of the interviewed victims, the horribly altered, but still familiar scenes - and you realize that this isn't Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, but New York. Then it begins to sink in - the World Trade Center. Those huge buildings. And you realize that the devastation that you are seeing is here, and it's far worse, in a single stroke, than has ever been shown on TV - or could ever be. There is no way to describe the sheer magnitude of this disaster. As yet, there have been no formal estimates of the toll - but it will almost certainly, barring miracles, reach into five figures. Within the NYPD, there are already 80 deaths estimated; the FDNY may have lost as many as 200 - and both of those numbers still could rise.

I am writing this about 25 hours after the first impact. New York City will never be normal again, but we are starting to pull ourselves together, and carrying on. What has struck me today is the gruesome juxtaposition of the normal and prosaic with the abnormal. The trains this morning were on their normal schedule - but there were many more empty seats than normal. As my train crossed the Harlem River into Manhattan, the skyline looked just slightly wrong, with the absence of the WTC, and the presence of the clouds of smoke rising from the rubble. The normal chatter between passengers was absent, replaced by silence broken only by the occasional sound of a newspaper page being turned. Movement through Grand Central was restricted; emergency service personnel and supplies were stationed at choke points, and some entrances and exits were closed. The subway seemed normally crowded, but again, the normal chatter was largely absent, and even the rumble of the trains themselves seemed subdued. The streets are eerily empty, but most stores that normally would have been opened seemed to be open as normal. Walking from the subway to the precinct, the near-silence on Broadway in the upper 90s was broken briefly by the unmistakable sound of a military jet on patrol. I had to show ID to enter the block that the precinct is located on, and allow my bag (laptop) to be searched before I could enter the building. The police are no less friendly and polite than usual, but there is a grimness underneath that made me shiver.

It is now 36 hours, almost to the minute, since the first impact. I was 'held over' again, until 20:00, and expect to be held over daily indefinitely. It is wearing, but I am not a police officer, and do not have to face, first hand, what thousands of police officers, firefighters, and medical personnel are facing, for twelve hours at a stretch, or more.

I'm writing this on the train home for posting when I get home. Since this morning, the wind has shifted, and as I leave the precinct, I can smell the distinctive odor of fires fought and unfought. I think that perhaps I smell Death, but perhaps only because I know how thoroughly the pale horse has trampled on my city.

I am noticing things that I failed to notice before - the West Side IRT trains that I ride from 42nd Street to 96th Street sports a thin layer of grime not visible on the 42nd Street Shuttle, grime of a color unusual in the subway, yet recently familiar - because it has been shown across the world in inches-thick layers.

There are no stars tonight, not even the brightest, the ones that can be seen through the light pollution. The silence that gripped the city this morning still holds, though not as firmly - occasional snatches of music can be heard, usually of a violent theme, or grim and foreboding. The grimness I felt behind the police this morning has spread; you can see it in the eyes of many people on the street - when it is not masked by the haunted or lost look of one who simply cannot comprehend the magnitude of this disaster. It is not the grimness of dealing with adversity; it is the grimness of anger. Thirty-six hours ago, the wind was sown; one can see that all New York - and probably all America - wishes not to wait for them to reap the whirlwind; they want to be the whirlwind.

The city is closed from 14th Street to the Battery. The Holland Tunnel, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, and the Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridges are all still closed, though other bridges and tunnels, and the arterial roadways, are open.

So far, there have been ten people pulled alive from the rubble, all people who went in to get others out. Forty-one bodies have also been recovered. This is either the first slow drip of what will become a raging torrent, or the first sign of an inarguable miracle. I hope and pray for the latter; I expect and fear the former. What is left of the south tower (One, if I recall aright) has shifted and further collapsed, complicating efforts. Additionally, Five has now collapsed, and so has One Liberty Plaza.

Oklahoma City is half a continent and five? years from New York - but the two tragedies are inextricably linked: The New York firefighter who led heroic efforts there died in this tragedy, along with the First Deputy Fire Commissioner and the Chief of the Fire Department.

13 September 2001

Forty-nine hours. Surprisingly, the city is beginning to feel more normal. Crowds on the commuter train from the suburbs were still lower than normal, and conversation levels are still below normal, but there is conversation. Crowds on the subway seem almost normal. Today, entering the platform for the 42nd Street Shuttle, I noticed a small American flag taped to the barrier protecting the end of the track. It occurred to me that I have not seen a single subway performer since Tuesday morning.

The city is still closed from 14th Street to the battery, but there are news reports of expectations that the segment from 14th Street to Canal Street could be open late today or early tomorrow. There is optimism that the Financial District - a few short blocks from Ground Zero - will be able to resume operations as early as tomorrow, and no later than Monday.

The odor of fire, as last night, lingers in the area where I work, fully ten miles uptown.

The body count is rising slowly - it is up to 94 now, with 46 of them having been identified. But there's another, grimmer category: 70 body parts have been recovered as well. One Liberty Plaza is still standing, though endangered; the reports last night were confused and erroneous. There are 3,700 people named as missing and unaccounted for; I expect all of these numbers to rise.

Today's New York Times printed a map showing the extent of the damage. Incredibly, a small church in the shadow of the World Trade Center, dating back to the earliest days of settlement in Nieuw Amsterdam, has survived, undamaged.

Also in today's New York Times were a pair of pictures.  One was taken 28 years ago.  One was taken yesterday, from very nearly the same spot on the New Jersey shore. Yet another small thing that brings home the enormity of what has happened.

Still, it seems like the city may actually be coming out of shock. On the subway this morning, I was standing near three young women, apparently college students from one of the campuses that were closed due to being in the Affected Area. They were discussing their evacuation, and how they didn't have time to grab basic necessities. Still, they seemed upbeat, and were able to laugh at their reactions and their inconveniences. Music can again be heard on the street, though the themes are still mostly grim and violent.

I've been writing on and off as I can, between dealing with the petty annoyances of balky computers.  It's now nearly noon, and the news, while still grim, is focusing more on the positive - the beginnings of the resumption of commercial air travel, expectations of the reopening of parts of Manhattan and corridors to the Financial District, the resumption of Broadway shows, museums, and tourist attractions, and so on.

14 September 2001

Sixty-seven hours. I woke up about an hour ago, I would guess, wrapped around my own pain. Real, physical pain. Gut-wrenching, literally. I thought it was my own mind trying to pull a fast one on me; G-d knows I'd seen enough, in the newspapers alone, never mind TV, to give me nightmares for the rest of my life - nightmares that I've managed to escape so far. I just got back from the bathroom, feeling loads better, for having unloaded from both ends. I never get sick that way. I suspect that I have been in shock for most of the past 67 hours, and I'm finally coming out... the enormity of what has happened may just be beginning to penetrate the stone block I claim to think with. I wonder what other people - people whose lives have been disrupted far more than mine - are feeling right now.

I wasn't held over yesterday, and I was able to get through to headquarters on the phone. It wasn't the regular number - not even an exchange normally allocated to the NYPD - but it's a sign that we - as New Yorkers, as Americans - cannot be stopped. Just as we picked up the pieces from the San Francisco earthquake of 1989, and from the Oklahoma City bombing of 1998?, we will pick up the pieces from the terrorist attack of 2001. It did feel odd, though, coming home in daylight.

I have been seeing police officers and firefighters in New York City who do not wear the patches and other symbols of the City of New York. Some are disgusted at being assigned to what in normal times would be called normal duties, but I think most realize that such duties are necessary, and that doing these duties, however much they think they want to be helping pick through the rubble, is still helping out. I hope that Hizzoner Rudy remembers to thank these folks, preferably publicly. I, for one, would not complain - I would applaud, in fact - if the city of New York covered the salaries and overtime pay of these volunteers. At the higher of their normal rate or the rate paid to New York City personnel.

The fire department is badly demoralized. The three top people from the department, below Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, are all confirmed dead in the collapse. Finding the five firefighters that survived - almost uninjured - against all odds for two days had to be a big lift for them.

We are still losing buildings in the adjacent blocks. It is believed that most, if not all, will have to be taken down when we get the chance - if they do not take themselves down, first, as seems likely for some of them.

Another sign that we can't be beaten down is the expected reopening of the area between 14th Street and Canal Street tomorrow morning, and the expected resumption - at the regular address - of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

I have to get up in an hour, when I'll decide whether I'm feeling well enough to be able to function at work. I think I'll close this and try to get back to sleep.

16 September 2001

I had a dream last night.

I was walking through a rebuilt World Trade Center. I don't remember any details, except...

...when I came to the center of the plaza, there was a model of the World Trade Center as it stood on September 10, 2001. It was no less than 25' on a side. In the exact center of the model, there was an Eternal Flame with an inscription around it. I couldn't read the inscription.

I want to go some day to that memorial. I want to read what the inscription said.

17 September 2001

I didn't go into work on Friday. I spent most of the day sleeping, interrupted only occasionally to empty my already-empty stomach. That was no fun. I also hid from the news all weekend; I've heard and seen too much.

This morning, routine reigned. Trains were running almost normally, crowds and chatter were normal. I still have not seen a subway performer - but at one usual location in Times Square, there was ... I guess a shrine is the best way to describe it.  Many flowers, some flags, a few candles, pictures of victims. I'm not sure why that location was chosen, but I stood there for a few minutes, anyway. I wasn't the only one.

I no longer smell fires walking along the street - three days of dissipation and rain have taken care of that. With the subways running, though, and going through the area, the train smelled of smoky steam, so there are still reminders.

They're no longer searching bags, but I still need to show identification to get onto the block where the precinct is. When I came in, the Precinct Desk was covered in letters from school children thanking the police for helping to save people from the World Trade Center. There was also a hand-drawn and -painted flag over the door.

Last Friday was payday. I have direct deposit, so my absence didn't affect my getting paid. But I am going down to get my deposit acknowledgement this afternoon. I'm going to go as close as I'm permitted to see what I can. In an era of high-grade special effects, I don't think seeing it on TV provides the necessary impact to allow one to connect with this, to realize just how real it is - there's still an unreality about it, even though I can see the secondary effects all around me.

18 September 2001

I got closer than I planned, yesterday. Just before I left to pick up my deposit acknowledgement, I got called and ordered to report to headquarters. At headquarters, I was briefed for an outstanding minor problem and sent to the precinct nearest the site. I had the wrong location marked on the map; I was about six blocks closer than I needed to be. You see pictures on TV, and it doesn't convey the enormity of what has happened. The 'good' shots lose too much to give scale to what they show.

There are no words to convey it. The efforts of the cleanup and rescue teams only serve to impress the size of the task ahead on one. And there is a haunted look in their eyes, something that says that this has made an indelible mark on them. When I looked in the mirror to comb my hair this morning, I saw that same look in my own eyes.

For many years, it has been said that there are two New Yorks - 'Downtown', the commercial center of Manhattan - the financial district and the central business district - and the 'Outer Boroughs', which just happen to include upper Manhattan. That division means nothing any longer. There are still two New Yorks, though - those that have seen it up close, and those that haven't. I am now part of the New York that has seen it up close. I envy the other New York.

20 December 2001

One Hundred Days.

That's how long ago the world changed.

Today, one sign that the city, the nation, and the world will recover from the damage inflicted that day: The fires at the site of the World Trade Center, burning since the first plane hit the Towers, are officially out.

Today, alongside the sorrow that has been and will continue to be there, there was a palpable sense of relief among New York's Finest and Bravest - one more hurdle overcome. One more step along the road to recovery.

Today, I went down to Police Headquarters to pick up my payroll deposit notice, as I do every alternate Thursday. As I exited the subway, I noticed a difference in the air: I could not smell the burning rubble. Not even the odor of old burning and hot steam. The air was what passes for clean in the heart of New York City.

Others could sense the difference; I could see it in the way they moved and talked - somewhat more buoyant than previously, and often curious - as though they could detect the difference, but couldn't identify it. Which may well have been the case; it has been part of us for so long that maybe we've forgotten what its lack is like.

The New York Times today printed a picture of Ground Zero. While it is unmistakably the site of the attack, it is beginning to look less like a twisted mass of rubble with people picking futilely at it, and more like ... a construction site, where they are taking down a building to clear the site for new construction. Which is, after all, what it is.

I think we're going to make it.

24 December 2001

It's Christmas Eve.

The first Christmas Eve in over 30 years that there isn't a World Trade Center in New York.

It was previously announced that the workers at the site were going to be working 'as normal' on Christmas; there were implications and undertones that suggested that most of not all of those that will be working on recovery and cleanup are doing so voluntarily.

After I was 'turned loose' early - it's Christmas, after all* - I opted not to beat the crowds, and went downtown to pay my respects once again.

There are makeshift shrines in several locations near the remains of the WTC - flags, banners, teddy-bears, shirts and caps from police and fire departments from all over the world, ribbons in all colors. Some with signatures and messages of goodwill and remembrance, in all languages (I've said that in NYC, you could hear any language in the world spoken, including a few spoken nowhere else. The shrines seem to display the written equivalent).

Today, there was something new at every one of those shrines.

Candles. White candles of all shapes and sizes, all lit, and protected from the wind as best as could be done. All glowing their message of peace, and sorrow, and goodwill, and remebrance.

And of hope. May that hope spread world-wide in this and every season.

*I'm Jewish, but the early release on Christmas Eve is a traditional general amnesty for all civilians. It's nice to beat the crowds home.

11 March 2002

It is six months to the day since the terrorists united us in saying 'enough'.

It has been treated citywide as a day of remembrance. Twice this morning, at times corresponding to the two impacts, the NYPD and FDNY held public moments of silence - they assembled in front of every facility used by their respective agencies to commemorate those who lost their lives while trying to save others. At more than one NYPD location, the moments of silence were followed by a 'roll call' of the twenty-three officers that went in, but never returned.

Down in Battery Park, the Mayor dedicated 'The Sphere', a sculpture that formerly stood in the plaza of the World Trade Center, and symbolized free trade, now damaged and symbolizing the thousands of lost lives, as a memorial to the victims of September 11.  Later, as dusk was falling, another memorial, at Ground Zero, was also dedicated - 88 bright lights, aimed upward, forming two towers of light where two towers of steel previously stood. Pictures of these towers will be the main pictures of all of New York's daily newspapers on March 12.

The mood of the city has been somber all day. We are moving forward, but we still feel the pain of that day.

11 September 2002

Some things can't be forgotten.

In the past year, New York has gone from fear and sadness to cautious hope. But what happened on 11 September 2001 will be remembered for a long time.

At 8:46 this morning, one year after the first plane hit the Towers, I was on the train, as I was on this day a year ago. We were passing the Harlem-125th Street station, and the train came to a stop as the conductor asked for a moment of silence. We then continued to Grand Central, arriving at 9:02, as usual - just exactly one year after the second plane hit the Towers. At that point, a year ago, few people knew what had happened. Today, we were all very aware of it.

A year ago, I went uptown, away from the disaster whose magnitude was not yet known. Today, I was heading downtown, to One Police Plaza, just a few short blocks from the sixteen-acre excavation that represents the unintended graves of nearly three thousand people.

For the past year, there has been a 'memorial wall' in Grand Central, with pictures of the missing (including the now-missing Twin Towers), with flags, with ribbons, with wishes of goodwill from everywhere... Today, it had been removed. I am of mixed feelings about this; it had to go, eventually; we must move on - but was the early hours of today really the right time to do this?

Traffic in the subway was light, and far more subdued than in recent days. A year ago, one could look into faces and see pain, and rage, and loss... today, looking into those same faces reveals ... memory.

One Police Plaza is in an area of the city that is dense with government buildings - courts, offices, and so on - and as such, there is a large number of flags, of the city, of the state, of the nation... today, all are flying at half-staff. Uniformed personnel from all services - police, US Marshals, Court Officers, and so on - are all wearing their respective services' mourning symbols.

Formal remembrance is not limited to the ceremonies officially planned. Even at 9:30, there are people at various locations calling the roll of those who died in New York, in Washington, and in Somerset County. One person near the World Trade Center excavation has been reading for many days now, and will be reading for many more, the full text of each of the New York Times "Portraits of Grief". Overall, the mood downtown is somber.

Many commands are operating with minimum manning. Because of the heightened state of alert, many officers have been assigned to security details at sensitive locations. Those who remain on normal duty will attend short memorial ceremonies organized by their respective commands, scheduled and repeated as needed so that none who wish will be unable to attend, but also so that the city will not be deprived of police service. As long as there is a New York City, as long as there is a New York City Police Department, the police shall serve the city, and that service shall unceasingly go on.

As the ebb and flow of police work in this city, the nearest thing to a capital of the world, goes on, so too must life go on. We have learned
that our place in the world does not confer invulnerability - but we have also learned, once again, that we have an inner strength, one which has allowed us, again and again, to rise as a community to face adversity, to rise as a nation to meet our challenges - as we did throughout the 1980s and 1990s, in such shattering events as the San Francisco earthquake, the Oklahoma City bombing, the midwestern floods, the Florida hurricanes, and so on. This event has reached us, galvanized us, in a different way than those other events - but we still responded... we still came together.

We are now at a cusp - a point where we must make decisions, decisions to place mourning the dead in the past, and to look to the future... the future of New York, and the future of the nation... No - the future of the people. It is as the People of the United States that we must respond to this newest challenge, respond in such a way so that the principles upon which this nation was built are upheld.

Our leaders have declared a war on terrorism. This is an idea which has the support of the people, and well it should - terrorism represents an assault on freedom of all sorts, a fundamental assault on freedom. Yet there is much debate over measures taken to actually implement that war on terror, and much concern over their impact on the very freedoms that they purport to defend, and over the selectivity of the war, and over our actual conduct of it.

Our response should not be to restrict our freedoms in the name of security; it should be to enhance them at home, and promote them world-wide. If we restrict our freedom in the name of security, if we give up the rights that those who came before us gave their lives for, then the terrorists have won - because they want to destroy what makes us strong. Our strengths all lie ultimately in our freedoms, and the easiest way to sap them is to remove the freedoms. Removing or restricting our freedoms will lead to a restive population, resentful of the government - the same kind of environment, differing only in degree, not kind, that breeds the terrorists we are trying to destroy. Can we really want this? We are trying to fight this war with the tools that won the last one - but the rules have changed, and the enemy knows how to exploit those tools to his own benefit. We must not allow this; we must invent new tools to fight a new kind of war - and the best way is to encourage the creativity that comes with the freedom we are doing our best to give away.

Our response should not be unilateral, nor based on secret evidence. Instead, we must lay out our evidence for all to see, and build support from the international community and take action as a community. The burden of proof is upon us to show that a given state is rogue, and a haven for terrorists, or a danger to the international community; it is not for that state to prove that it is not. Our actions must be beyond reasonable reproach; any justification we use to take action against a terrorist organization could be seen as a justification for other regionally-dominant nations to take action against their "terrorists", who we might not agree are terrorists. We may even find that some of those regionally-dominant nations are in fact our allies - can our actions be used, for example, as precedent and justification by the UK to take action in Ireland (or Boston, Massachusetts)? Spain in the Basque region? Turkey in the Kurdish region?

We, as a nation, are still angry about what was done to us a year ago, and  with reason. But that reason is not and cannot be sufficient for lashing out at anyone; we must instead act calmly, but with evidence, in the public eye, and with resolve not to take vengeance, but to protect and promote the freedom that has been a beacon to the world.