Posted on by rjonakait · 2 Comments

My September 11

I was in my office in lower Manhattan early on that beautiful day, with late-summer temperatures and crystalline blue skies. I was looking over notes for teaching a law school class later. I took a break to deposit a check and get some cash from my branch bank. When I crossed West Broadway, I heard a plane and said to myself, “Boy, that is low.” I was a blasé New Yorker. I did not look up, but I heard the crash a few moments later. I saw no remnants of a plane, but I did see a hole and flames high up on a World Trade Tower. I watched mesmerized for a few minutes but then went to finish my errand. When I returned to the street, I stared some more at what I assumed was a terrible accident. I realized that I was watching people die. I saw objects plummet out of the Tower. I could not tell what they were from my distance, and I shut my mind from speculating what they were.

I decided that I wanted to see what the Tower looked like from the other side. When I was two blocks from the World Trade Center, the other plane hit the far side of the other tower. Flames shot out in my direction. People on the street started screaming. Some collapsed sobbing in doorways. Someone leaned out a window and said the Pentagon had been hit. Wailing increased.

I went back to my office and called the spouse. She had driven across lower Manhattan’s Canal Street earlier in the day from our Brooklyn home to her lab in Newark, New Jersey. From a window there she could see the Towers. I reassured her that I was okay, but I babbled on and on. I may have been crying. I finally realized that the phone line was gone and that she was no longer there. I could not see the Center from my office, but I went to the street corner where I could normally see the Towers. One was now a ghost. Only dust and other debris hung in the air where a Tower had been. I decided it was time to leave lower Manhattan.

I had driven to work. My usual routes home to Brooklyn were over the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridges, both a few blocks from my office, but they had been closed. Picking up and dropping off people along the way, I drove to the next bridge over the East River. I was in line to cross the Williamsburg Bridge, with but two cars in front of me, when traffic officials signaled that this structure, too, was now closed. I went to the next crossing, got in line, and had it close just in front of me. That happened at the next and then the next. There was no way to drive to Brooklyn. I turned around and headed south. I parked my car on a Chinatown street and walked with hordes of others over the Manhattan Bridge roadway three miles to my Brooklyn home.

The mind operates on curious levels. Although I had driven over that span many times, I found myself thinking in the midst of the horror and shock of that day about the only other time I had crossed it on foot. In those days, no walkway on the Manhattan Bridge was open to pedestrians, but I once ran in a “Courthouse to Courthouse” race. It started by the Manhattan federal courts, went over the Manhattan Bridge, which had been closed to vehicles for the event, wound on local streets to a Brooklyn courthouse, and then reversed course to Manhattan. It was not a long race, but a tough one, all uphill or downhill. Now, on 9/11, it was not an organized run of a few hundred, but a solemn trudge by tens of thousands, as if we were extras in a Biblical epic movie, except this was all too real.

In mid-afternoon, a news report stated that some East River bridges were again open. I walked a mile from home to the Manhattan Bridge where one bus stood to ferry passengers over the river. I got to my car and quickly doubted the accuracy of the news report since I kept finding bridges closed. About to give up again, I found I could cross the Tri-Borough Bridge into Queens, which, of course, abuts Brooklyn, but then I found my usual way home from that Bridge was closed. Normally I would merge off the span on to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, but traffic officials were blocking the entrance to the elevated roadway. An officer told me that I would have to take local streets. I prided myself on knowing my way around New York City, but Queens was always a mysterious labyrinth. I literally drove in circles, seeing one particular building at least three times. Finally, I came upon a familiar intersection and was able to find a route home. In my wanderings, which were less than twelve hours after the first attack, I passed many entrances to elevated roadways. Every one of them was blocked by government officials. I can’t imagine how many such entrances there are in New York City, but I thought it was an amazing logistical feat to have closed every one of them so quickly. The City was effectively on lock-down.

Of course, this was one of the many feats, and one of the more minor ones, that New York City quickly accomplished in response to the terror. When I had gone to my car, I could see that Manhattan south of Canal Street, where my office was, had been effectively cordoned off—once again, a remarkable logistical feat. And in the coming days, I would learn about the efforts and coordination of emergency medical personnel and school guards and sanitation workers and firefighters and housing officials and welfare workers and many more. Volunteers stepped forward as New Yorkers pulled together, but New York would not have recovered as well as it did without the effective performance at all levels of government.

I was home alone. The crossings from New Jersey to New York City were closed. The spouse could not get home. She went to our summer house in Pennsylvania, but with the New York telephones out and in those days before cell phones, we could not talk. And I could not talk with my son who was then at a New England college.

Many details of the ensuing days have now been lost to memory, but I do remember waking up from a large crash that first night. I thought the City had been struck again, but it must have been only a vivid dream. I don’t remember when the spouse and I could be together again or when I drove to Massachusetts to see the son. I don’t remember when I returned to work in my office south of Canal Street. I do remember that when I could go to my office, I could no longer take the subway to my usual stop because it was under the World Trade Center and no longer open. Now I got off one stop earlier. When I emerged into the daylight, I was a hundred yards from the wreckage. Every time I set foot on the sidewalk, I got a headache and was confronted with the smells that I only hoped was smoldering plastic. In the evening when I went home in the dark, the lights from the nonstop work at ground zero were in front of me and the smells, which I did not have in my office, returned, along with the headache. I cried almost every day. The scope of the destruction was hard to believe.

I don’t remember how long it was before my routine began to feel somewhat normal, but there were long-lasting effects. Every time a low flying plane went over my head, no matter where I was, my heart began thumping. I still cannot watch footage of that day and have to turn off the TV. If an old movie shows New York City with the intact Towers, I have to look away. The aftermath of the attack lives on.

Posted on by rjonakait

The Anniversary Approacheth

The anniversary, as anniversaries inevitably do, comes again. The events themselves have now reached what used to be legal age. Twenty-one years ago planes exploded into towers and the Pentagon and crashed in Pennsylvania.

          That day may be emblazoned in the memories of many of us, but now up to a quarter of the nation’s voting age population was not yet born or were mere toddlers or had not yet finished grade school when 9/11 happened. However, whatever you recall of that day, we all live with the consequences of decisions this country made in response to that terrorism.

          Because of the events, we went to war and invaded Afghanistan and, bewilderingly, Iraq, but there were many other military actions in eighty countries in what was proclaimed the Global War on Terror. The costs have been steep. American lives have been lost, but we seldom think of the other deaths. A recent estimate suggests that 900,000 people have been killed and uncounted refugees created as a direct result of the war on terrorism. And of course, there were many other consequences—PTSD, sundered families, educations lost, addictions, and much more.

          We don’t discuss much the monetary costs although a recent report states that in the last two decades we have spent more than $8 trillion to fight terrorism. “Patriots,” however, did not want to pay for it. They did not suggest that we increase our taxes to pay for what was to make us freer and safer. Instead, we reduced taxes for certain segments of the population, and of course, deficits increased. We decided that for our security, our children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren, born and unborn, should pony up the money. If you rail against our national deficits and debt, you should think about how successful the 9/11 terrorists were.

          Our present military budget sucks up more than half the federal discretionary budget, and much of that is the result of our actions started in response to those attacks a generation ago. When politicians and pundits claim we don’t have money for needed infrastructure, healthcare improvements, education, childcare, and much else, think again to 9/11. Terrorists died on that day, but their actions live on.

          Another immediate response to the September 2001 attacks was increased “security” in the nonfederal sector. This continues. We require identification or special procedures to enter places that we once entered without fanfare. For an ordinary business meeting in an ordinary office building this past year, I had to stop at a desk. One of the two men there verified I had an appointment, which meant that someone had to inform him of the meeting. He took and printed out my picture on one of those sticky badges. He called the office where I was going, and someone from upstairs had to come down to collect me since the building required a card to use the elevator. And after what was maybe a five-minute delay, I was in the meeting. I have never seen expense figures put on this and similar kinds of security, but the equipment, personnel, and time spent all impose costs. Perhaps that amount is small for any one transaction, but there must be at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps even tens of millions, of such encounters every day, at a total cost of…..???

          Of course, all these actions that came in the wake of the Twin Towers may have been worth it if they have led to a safer and freer America. Perhaps some things have been done that achieve these goals, but we are not good at assessing our actions, even the ones we continue to do. Do you feel freer and safer? Does the world? Perhaps the 9/11 terrorists accomplished more than we realize.