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Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 11:51:56 EDT
Subject: A page of my journal; a first-hand witness account of a disaster...
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From: PowerFlame@aol.com
I keep a journal online and this is something I thought I should share with
the group. My best wishes of hope to all that are still alive, and my
condolences to all who have suffered such a misfortune.
Eric Cheung
ericlc@stanford.edu
===========
Title: And then there were none.
--------------
It was pretty noisy this morning. 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.
Anyway, this must have all been at about 9:00 this morning. Nothing too out
of the ordinary, I thought, and since I have been getting up at 11 or 12
every morning, I wasn't going to make any such exception today for what I
believed was early morning traffic.
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. I thought to myself, this was horrible.
My mom saw it as an interesting opportunity to take pictures so she headed up
to the roof with her camera. Indifferent to this idea, I went back to sleep,
rudely awakened by this explosion but equally concerned as to the condition
of the people and of our city.
About eight or ten minutes later, as I was finding it difficult to fall back
into any sort of deep sleep because of the seemingly endless police sirens
that overwhelmed the downtown streets, I heard a huge explosion as the legs
of my bed and the floor of my 9th floor apartment shook. This prompted me to
get out of bed without any further instruction. I headed back out to my
living room and on my big screen TV, it had been reported that a second
airplane had crashed into the second World Trade Center building. I felt the
shocks of this and even though we are close to the World Trade Center, I
could not possibly see anything from my apartment.
My mom ran down to my apartment and was crying hysterically a minute later.
She had gotten the second collision on her camcorder. 11:51 AM, I am watching
the footage now. I wish she did not show it to me.
I am going over to Gail's apartment right now as I've just been phoned by my
mother to see some sort of wonder...or in my presumptions, some firsthand
witnessing of a millennial disaster.
Be right back. 10:08 AM.
10:28 AM, back in my apartment. In the course of the last twenty minutes I
saw nine people jump out of the building from at least the 80th floor, among
metallic debris and other trash. The first world trade center collapsed down
to the bottom, which must have meant that it had been detonated, with a huge
bomb, from the base of the tower. The plane collision couldn't have caused
this because it would have exploded sideways if that were the case. Minutes
later, from the building that was left standing, I saw nine people over the
course of two minutes (about 10:15 or so) jump out of at least the 80th floor
of the upstanding building. At first I thought this was huge metallic debris,
but then debris doesn't wear red shirts and blue pants or khakis. This is the
most disturbing thing I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing in my
presently short life.
I just headed back to my neighbor's place because I heard more rumbles so I
wanted to see if anything new had happened. Nothing that I could see. 10:38
AM.
Back in time, back to 10:25 AM...I was at my neighbor's place where Gail and
another woman in our apartment building observed frantically. I wanted to
head back to my apartment because it had appeared that the debris was
beginning to settle from World Trade Center 1 and there were a few things I
had to take care of here. 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. One instant I saw the crash of the World Trade Center 2
in pure lucidity out of my neighbor's window. Then I could see nothing out of
my neighbor's window.
We saw one man doing construction on a roof across the block. As the building
came down and the air filled with smoke and ash, he dashed for cover back
into the emergency stairwell. As the air became dark and through which one
could see nothing, the pigeons flew around and about hoping to escape the
poisonous air. It seemed like they knew no direction and no retreat as they
fluttered about aimlessly.
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.
The two buildings were standing up straight before they crashed to the
ground, meaning they must have been wired. I've been told also that there
have been hijackings and crashes at Boston and Pittsburgh. Where next? We
have received about twenty phone calls this morning of all sorts of nature,
but in one way or another it need not be explained as to what they reference.
I was just in World Trade Center yesterday night shopping with a friend at my
favorite stores. I picked up a few items, not too many. I did not realize
that this would be the last time I would ever set foot in this building.
It angers and saddens me as to why anyone would do this, and it is as obvious
as anything that these were deliberate attacks. At the moment my mother and I
have been filling tubs and tanks of water because we know what such an
explosion can do to the city. We have salvaged a bit of clean water so that
we can wash ourselves later today, or for the next few days or until anyone
knows when, but before we could fill all the tanks, it was clear that the
water supply had been affected by the dirt and aftersock debris.
I normally like to think that every day that I live is a good day, some
better than others. This seems to be a good way to think, and I am grateful
to the forces above for letting me live on this earth each and every day.
But not today. Today is a very bad day.
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