September 11, 2001
story and photos by Jeff Gamble

The sirens that howl down our street right now only mean one thing. For a while it seems there are no burglaries, no shootings, and no one getting hurt in car accidents. Outbound ambulances surge with their cargo past our apartment to an unknown destination, and police heading into the city through the closed tunnels are escorting large trucks that are transporting heavy demolition equipment. Army rigs full of cargo and soldiers ramble through as though we are in a police state. The sounds of jets overhead are not the sounds of commercial airlines, but rather the sounds of patrolling F-16’s. People on the street make eye contact without knowing what else to do. My usual impulse to ask shopkeepers in the neighborhood how they are doing has temporarily been put on hold. It really seems like an inappropriate thing to say right now.

Up until Tuesday morning, you could stand on the corner of Christopher Columbus Avenue where I live and see the Twin Towers surging skyward. They were a little less than two miles away, but their presence was inescapable and unmistakable. Of course, even after what happened in 1993, there was no reason to think that this would ever change.

•••••••

I arrive to work early on Tuesday, and am one of the first people in the office. I have some things to catch up on and want to get started in the relative silence of the empty office. I check my email. In the office next to my cubicle, Eric turns on his TV as he speaks on the phone. “ I can see it!” he says. “ I can see it!” I get up to walk in and check out what he’s talking about. With Eric, I figure it has to be something sports related. On the screen however I can see smoke billowing out of World Trade Center Tower One. “Holy shit!” I yell. “Holy shit! Holy shit!” An airplane has crashed into one of the Twin Towers! I run out of his office, but then I run back in. Other people come in to see what is going on.

Outside of Eric’s office window, we can look out from our perch on the 17th floor and see the top portion of the towers, and the smoke, in the distance. More people come in to see what is going on. It’s a terrible accident. How did this happen? What about the people inside?

I move to Claire’s office and turn on her TV. Gwen comes and says she knows somebody working on the 101st floor of Tower One, and then rushes out to try to make a phone call. When she comes back in, there are more people watching the TV, and she is crying. She can’t get a hold of the person she knows. I am looking out the window at the burning building in the distance. As we continue to watch, Tower Two suddenly explodes into flames. What has happened? Did the flames from the first tower jump? What has happened? It was an explosion though, so this couldn’t be an accident now - could it? Is it? I’m shaking. I’m numb. I’m pacing. “That was no accident!” somebody says. Somebody else says, “It couldn’t be!”

The TV station runs the tape back and it appears as though another plane has flown into the building. This is no longer an accident. I don’t know what to do. I go to my desk and finish my previously interrupted email to Jorgen. “The World Trade Towers just exploded!” I write, and I walk away from my computer and head for the elevator, leaving my work bag behind. I fail to call my girlfriend, or anyone else.

Down on the street, most of the morning commuters seem to have no idea what is going on. Their faces are as they were the day before, and the day before that. I run across 7th Avenue and into a pharmacy where I buy a disposable camera. For whatever reason, I’m going down there. Two planes have hit the Twin Towers, and I am going down there. At this moment you can not convince me that both buildings will eventually collapse. If you can, I will go nowhere near the area. But you can’t convince me of that now.

I try to catch a cab, but there are none to catch. I run down 7th Avenue in my work clothes. I make it past 23rd, past 22nd, and so on. I chug thirteen blocks before I find an available cab. I get in and the driver has the radio on. “Two airplanes have hit the Twin Towers!” he says, discomposed. The woman on the radio is describing things from her vantage point on Bleeker Street. “Take me to Bleeker,” I say. We make it ten blocks before we become stalled. Sirens from behind us are trying to squeeze through. I hand the driver five bucks. “Here, here,” I say, and get out in the traffic.

I am in front of Saint Vincent’s Hospital now, and the exterior is buzzing with ambulances and people preparing for a storm. Someone is shouting instructions to people through a bullhorn, and pedestrians on the street are creeping southward to get a view of the blazing buildings. Many people have cameras. As I rush farther down, a clearing opens up and I spot the Towers and the black smoke billowing out of the top of them, blowing to the east.

A man wearing a pair of shorts and carrying a backpack is running across the street. He has a camera in one hand and a tripod in another. I am headed towards SOHO, but my route happens to coincide with the direction he’s running in. We weave through traffic and gawking pedestrians as the towers peek through any north/south running streets not blocked by other buildings. Cars and cabs are heading uptown, attempting to clear the area. Ambulances and undercover black police cars speed the wrong way down one-way avenues, in the direction of the wreckage. On the sidewalks everyone is out, and anyone with a cell phone is trying to reach someone else to no avail. The lines are all tied up with people trying to do the same thing. Cues for landlines are a dozen deep.

Aside from the smoking buildings, there is not a cloud in the sky, and it’s warm out. As I run, I take off my button-down shirt and wad it up and wrap it around the camera I’m carrying in my left hand. I’m down to my white t-shirt and khaki’s. Nobody is paying any attention to me, but there is still something that tells me not to let anybody see my camera. I have to take photos of this, but it seems wrong. People are likely dying. Don’t I have to take photos? Should I? I shouldn’t. But I have to. And I am.

I reach Canal Street, and the crowds are quite large now. There is an unabated view of the towers from here, but I want to move farther Southeast where I might get an even better shot of the burning buildings. Thousands of people are on the streets as I cross over near the Tribeca Grand Hotel. I am about twelve blocks from the buildings. Suddenly I pause on the corner and look up. Tower Two is collapsing before my eyes. People shriek and women are screaming and there is a collective sound of panic, and people are covering their mouths in shock, and some people are stuck and some are running and I am standing still, and it is at this very second that I am – for the very first time in my life - experiencing what it is to know horror and terror.

Like a sandcastle too dry from the sun, the building gives without pause. It disintegrates like powder. Grey smoke explodes up in plumes that remind me of when I watched Mt. Saint Helens from the roof of my house in 1980, and I step out into the street to take photos. Everyone that I will later tell the story to will be shocked to hear how close I was, and will ask me what it sounded like. I won’t be able to answer them properly. It’s loud and echoes like construction, but I’m not sure. I hear a crash, but mostly what I hear is just the frantic people.

An ambulance races up the street, and does so in between people running in the same direction as they realize that the smoke is coming our way. Women are crying. Men are crying. Other people are shooting video or taking pictures. As the smoke advances, everyone retreats. I move around a corner and look down on the sidewalk. There is nothing to think right now – no digesting it and no comprehending it. There is no thought process.

As I stand and watch the remaining building burn, a woman named Barbara starts speaking to me. Barbara is from Chile. “This is karma,” she says. “One hundred percent karma. I live here now too, and this is my home. But what’s happening up there is something that the United States has brought upon itself. And the mistake of people here is that they won’t be able to see it.”

As Barbara speaks, something falls from the building. I want to believe that maybe it’s debris, like maybe some glass or siding, but these things don’t flail. Somebody from over seventy floors up has fallen, or jumped. People around me look around without changing facial expressions. If perhaps on another day – a normal day - one person jumped from the same building, we would react differently. We would cry out, or run to call some authorities, or do something with haste. But under the circumstances, we stand in place. This is what is happening. Then two more people jump, and all I can think is, “This is what is happening.”

I recede two more blocks, back up to Canal, and the second tower begins to crumble as easily as the first. It takes less than ten seconds. Women crouch down on their haunches and touch the street. People sob. But mostly you see people with the thousand-yard stare. We are numb and we can see through anything. We can see everything, and at the same time we see nothing. Both of the Twin Towers have just collapsed. Hundreds – possibly thousands – of people have just died before my eyes.

I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know if I am safe back at work. I don’t know if I am safe on the street. Random thoughts start crossing my brain like a Times Square ticker. “Should Bush step down? Should I go back to Portland? Should I leave the country for good? This is all the beginning of something much, much bigger than The Twin Towers.”

Above my head, F-16’s begin circling Manhattan. And at that moment, my roommate Jason is running down the middle of 5th Avenue in an attempt to locate me at my job. In Queens, my brother Mark is watching the entire surreal scene from his perch on top of Arthur Ashe Stadium. Everyone I know in the city has some vantage point. I don’t know how to reach them. Phone lines are down, or occupied. Marta is attempting to call her parents in Spain to let them know that she is okay. The subways are closing, the airports are closed, the bridges and tunnels are being shut down, offices are being evacuated, and people are scrambling to find either a way home, or a way to some place safe. Buses are being mobbed by scared citizens, and a huge crowd is assembling in the middle of 7th Avenue and 32nd Street as they wait to see if they will be able to catch a train leaving from Penn Station, which has also been closed. Some stores put their TV out on the sidewalk to let people crowd around and watch breaking news.

I pass through Washington Square Park on my way back uptown. A man who is dressed as though he is homeless begins to yell at those collected in the commons. “You people better wake the fuck up!” he yells. “You are not safe in this country! It’s time for you to wake the fuck up!” I look up at the Empire State Building in the distance, which has been evacuated. I wonder if that place is next.

My mind flashes more random thoughts. “How am I going to get home? Is everybody I know okay? Will I have a job tomorrow? Are we safe? Should I buy water?”

"Is any of this real?”

 

- September 13, 2001