11-Sep Öffentlichkeit Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 4, Number 38, September 16, 2001, Article 2
SEPTEMBER 11
A firsthand account of Tuesday's tragic events was posted
to the internet (and copied to the Colonial Coins mailing
list) as the day unfolded by E-Sylum subscriber Eric Cheung.
Some excerpts:"I haven't yet gone off to Stanford yet but I will be doing just
that in a week and a half. I live down around City Hall in
Manhattan and it's a pretty commercial area; at this time in the
morning there's normally quite some commotion down here
particularly since everyone is trying to get to work.I just heard a rumble that was about twenty seconds long. ...
A couple minutes later, my mom came into my room and
told me a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.In utter disbelief, I kicked out of my bedsheets and looked
out the window and saw lots of people running around in the
streets heading up Broadway away from the explosion. I
also checked out the living room and saw CNN extensively
covering this disaster.About eight or ten minutes later, ... I heard a huge explosion
as the legs of my bed and the floor of my 9th floor apartment
shook.The first world trade center collapsed down to the bottom...
I walked not ten feet from my neighbor's apartment when I
heard an even louder rumble. My neighbors summoned me
to return to the apartment, and in the last second as I dashed
to the window, I saw the final section of World Trade Center
2 tumble straight down into the ground. My neighbors and
mother were hysterical. Moments later the debris and ash of
the aftermath rose into the blazingly sunny sky.I returned to my apartment about 10:28, the hallways in my
building filling with smoke. I continued down the hallway
where there are windows every ten feet or so, four or five in
all down about a hundred feet corridor. There was white dust
atop every roof I could see, and it looked like a snowstorm
had just hit us, or radioactive waste from a nuclear explosion
had just rained down upon us. After a while, the two look
the same, and are both frightening and frustrating in equal
magnitude."Eric's full journal may be found at this address:
http://www.livejournal.com/~chopin The journal entries
appear in reverse chronological order. To follow events as
they progressed, first scroll down to the [11 Sep 2001|11:02am]
entry. Be warned that portions are disturbing, though not
graphic.Electricity and phone service to their apartment was lost
later in the day, and his family split up to stay with friends
elsewhere in the city. Eric walked 20 minutes to a friend's
place. As of Friday the 14th there was still no word of when
his family would be able to return home.Eric recently won the ANA's Outstanding Young Numismatist
of the Year Award. We wish him and his family all the best,
as he heads off to Stanford amid this tragic backdrop.- 2001-09-16
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