@ExclusiveLM

7 months ago

For those that were too young, or not born yet or did not live in New York City, the worse part of us in New York City on 9/11 was the deep fear that we were going to all be bombed. I and many I know felt that because as the news progressed that morning, I had just arrived home from a midnight shift in Manhattan and I was listening to the Howard Stern Radio Show live. Suddenly, I think Stuttering John from the Stern Show ran in and said to Howard a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers (that's what we New Yorkers called the World Trade Center). Howard began to make a bunch of jokes not taking the crash seriously at all. When the second plane hit everyone stopped laughing. I saw the second plane hit live on TV after I heard about the crash on Stern. That was scary enough and I felt that we were going to be invaded by some country and bombs were going to destroy all our houses dropped by planes above. Then, the newscast said that a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. Now I was really freaking out. Everyone started calling everyone on the phone. But, the phones were all not working. That set a panic inside me. Then, they announced that a plane had just crashed into the Pentagon. At this point, I was literally in such fear that I thought I was gonna die that day. It is the saddest I've ever been in my life. It was tears and my body shaking and I could not sit down. I felt like I had to run away but I didn't know where to run. I felt trapped. Then, both buildings on ground zero collapsed and at that point I went to the roof to see and the buildings were gone. I could easily see smoke rising from miles away. I was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Then for the rest of the day every single TV station including ALL cable channels just showed the smoke rising from ground zero and showed over and over again for the next few days none stop the planes crashing into the buildings. I mean non stop. After a while, once I realized the attacks were probably over I turned off the TV from exhaustion. But, I did not even want to eat or take a shower that day. That is how traumatizing that day was. It literally took months for the fire at Ground Zero to end. Smoke continued that entire time. People for months were at Ground Zero finding body parts and for days after words looking for survivors under the rubble. They did find some. But, not many. They had posters and pictures of missing loved ones all over the city. Many in the search and rescue volunteered to be there and many got cancer and have died in the last 22 years. I heard of someone that died this year from the smoke inhalation that gave them cancer. I also worked with a guy that had asthma and died from being a volunteer there. Eventually a few years later, I returned to Ground Zero where all seven World Trade Center buildings had collapsed. By then all the smoke and debris and human corpses had been removed and cleaned up. I returned to work on Vesey Street at Merrill Lynch. I did not want to go around there because of the sadness I still felt. But, I had to go. The entire area had changed from a busy financial district I had visited just 10 months earlier when I took a class on the 93 floor of the North Tower in the same spot where the nose of the first plane hit to now like a cemetery of complete silence and walls were all around the site. Then one day I was offered a job inside the newly built Freedom Tower on the same Ground Zero place. I trained for it for a week. Then, something inside me told me do not take this job. I listened to that voice and returned my new job swipe card after a week of wasted training. But, I was happy to turn it down. I will never go into that new building. Never. The area today is truly beautiful with the two fountains representing the fallen buildings and the names of the deceased all around the fountains. The building itself is stunning and a work of art and is visited by millions of people yearly. But, I as a New Yorker will not go in there out of respect to all those who died and because when I was a kid living in Manhattan just blocks away, I could from my roof to my right side see the Twin Towers and to my left I would turn and see the Empire State Building. I will honor that memory for the rest of my life. RIP all the fallen heroes and those that lost their lives in the buildings and street that day.

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