And another...
'New York is crying': The scene at
Trade Center
Associated Press
Sept. 11, 2001 16:55:00
NEW YORK - Investment banker Mark DeAndrea crouched behind a
pillar, watching a fireball engulf the World Trade Center, trying to figure
out what to do.
"One minute everyone was casually walking, next there was this huge
surge," said DeAndrea, who works in an office beside the Trade Center.
"It seemed like 10,000 people were rushing toward us, running like a
herd of gazelles, crying, "Get out, get out!"
"It was so unreal," he said. "People were jumping out of buildings. It was
horrifying."
Frantically, DeAndrea tried to call his wife, but his cell phone wouldn't
work. So he joined the surge heading back toward the ferries to New
Jersey. At Pier 11, he said, "Boats were just filling up, taking everyone.
Some people were threatening to jump into the water if they couldn't get
on."
Finally, the overloaded boat pulled away. "It was so scary. Everyone on
the boat was just staring at the buildings. And then, as we passed the
tip of Manhattan, they were there no more."
The city looked and felt like a war zone today. Armed guards patrolled
outside government buildings. Mass evacuations sent ash-covered
pedestrians streaming across bridges. Ambulances screeched through
Manhattan. A city skyline - and psyche - were forever scarred.
At a triage center in lower Manhattan, Police Officer Tyrone Dux paused
before heading back to the horror. "New York is crying," said Dux,
himself in tears.
He was taking a break from shuttling medical supplies from St.
Vincent's hospital to triage centers near the scene of the World Trade
Center collapse.
"It's like nighttime there," he said of the scene in lower Manhattan,
which by early afternoon was a hive of rescue efforts. "I didn't hear any
screaming, just dead, dark silence. ... Dark. Frightening."
After the initial shock, after the nightmarish scenes of people on fire
jumping from buildings, came the rescue.
A few blocks away from the World Trade Center, about 120 doctors and
people with medical training traveled in a convoy of pickup trucks,
ambulances, a dump truck and SUVs toward the wreckage. Their job:
To find survivors and try to save them.
Paramedics waiting to be sent into the rubble were told that "once the
smoke clears, it's going to be massive bodies," according to Brian
Stark, an ex-Navy paramedic who volunteered to help. Ad-hoc medical
crews formed to accept blood donations.
Barbara Kalvig raced to a triage center with a car full of colleagues from
the New York Veterinarians Hospital. "We closed the hospital and
brought a bunch of doctors and nurses," Kalvig said. "We just drove as
far as we could."
Nearby, a construction crew hauled two-by-fours and plywood to the
emergency teams to be used as makeshift stretchers.
Craig Senzon, 29, a neurologist volunteering at the triage center said of
rescuers, "We felt a heaviness inside us that none of us have ever felt
before."
Before rescuers were mobilized, scenes of horror unfolded around the
devastated buildings.
"Everyone was screaming, crying, running - cops, people, firefighters,
everyone," said Mike Smith, a fire marshal from Queens, recovering at
the fountain outside a state courthouse, shortly after the second tower
collapsed.
Workers from the Trade Center offices wandered lower Manhattan in a
daze. Looking down West Broadway, brown and black smoke billowed.
Ash, two inches deep, covered the streets.
Police and firefighters gasped for air as they emerged from the sealed-off
area. At least three explosions were heard, perhaps from gas lines.
Kenny Johannemann, a janitor, described seeing a man engulfed in
flames at One World Trade Center just after the first explosion. He
grabbed the man, put the fire out, and dragged him outside. Then
Johannemann heard a second explosion - and saw people jumping from
the upper stories of the twin towers.
"It was horrendous," Johannemann said.
Donald Burns, 34, was being evacuated from a meeting on the 82nd floor
of One World Trade Center when saw four severely burned people on the
stairwell. "I tried to help them but they didn't want anyone to touch them.
The fire had melted their skin. Their clothes were tattered," he said.
Boris Ozersky, 47, computer networks analyst, was on the 70th floor of
one of the buildings when he felt an explosion rock it. He raced down 70
flights of stairs, and outside, in a mob in front of a nearby hotel. He was
trying to calm a panicked women when the building suddenly collapsed.
"I just got blown somewhere, and then it was total darkness. We tried to
get away, but I was blown to the ground. And I was trying to help this
woman, but I couldn't find her in the darkness," Ozersky said. After the
dust cleared, he located her.
As most people fled the area, others were drawn to it - desperate for
information about friends and relatives who worked there.
"I don't know what to do," a weeping Alan Rivera said as he stood
behind barricades, hoping for word about his niece, who worked in the
Trade Center. "I can't get through to her on the phone. ... No one can tell
me anything."
Nearby a crowd mobbed a man on a pay-phone, screaming at him to get
off the phone so that they could call relatives.
Throughout lower Manhattan, rescue workers and police officers wore
surgical masks to protect them from the dust.
At the city's hospitals, hundreds lined up to give blood, after hospital
workers yelled on the streets, "Blood donations! Blood donations!"
Thousands fled the city, streaming across the Brooklyn and Manhattan
bridges on foot, some sobbing, others covered head-to-toe in gray soot
and ashes.
With no buses, taxis or subways, the throng was left with no way home.
"How do I get to Queens?" a woman shouted.
"Start walking," a police officer yelled back.
Businessmen who'd walked across the Brooklyn Bridge had stripped to
the waist, their button-down shirts pressed over their faces.
Passing cell phones back and forth when the rare call went through,
desperate strangers called to each other: "Can you get out?"
A woman pleaded: "Can you call my mother? This is her number." |
