There is no image for this diary. No image exists that is appropriate for what happened eighteen years ago.
It was a beautiful, clear, fresh autumn day. I had arrived in Manhattan via PATH train to 33rd Street precisely because it was such a gorgeous day — walking across town to get to my East Side midtown office building was both good exercise and a pleasure. Had it been bad weather, I would instead have taken the PATH to the World Trade Center in order to take a 4, 5, or 6 subway uptown to Grand Central Station. In other words, had it been bad weather, I might very well have been arriving at the World Trade Center PATH station when the first plane hit.
So, without the delays imposed by bad weather, I walked across town, arrived at my office, and started work, only to be interrupted by my wife calling to tell me that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. I thought she was talking about a small plane like a Piper Cub. Then the second plane hit and we became suddenly aware of the nightmare into which we had descended.
All public transport was immediately shut down pending investigation. We sat in our mid-town cubicles, but nobody did any work. We all sat there, numb, looking at whatever scattered news came in — the vast majority of TV, radio, and cell phone infrastructure had just died with the collapse of the Twin Towers.
We were finally released in the middle of the afternoon, to try to get off the island of Manhattan in the wake of the greatest terrorist attack against the US in history. The only transportation available was the Manhattan to New Jersey ferries, since the bridges and tunnels remained closed due to fear of additional attacks.
I spent nearly four hours standing in line to get a place on a New Jersey-bound ferry. When I finally was able to board a ferry, the pilot did NOT take us straight away from Manhattan to New Jersey — instead, he/she hugged the west shore of the island, taking us south to get the closest possible look at the smoking hole that had once been two massive skyscrapers, before finally taking us across the river to Hoboken. At Hoboken, we were confronted with both uniformed police armed with automatic weapons and FBI agents urging anyone who had witnessed the WTC attack to provide a statement. They were looking at our SHOES (there was characteristic greyish-white dust on the shoes and clothing of everyone who had been in the vicinity of the disaster) and asking us to freely provide statements rather than forcing them to detain anyone who was a witness to the attack.
From Hoboken, I was able to ride (for free) to Jersey Square, pick up my car, and drive home.
The most horrible thing about being/living/working in Manhattan during 9/11 was the aftermath. Every available vertical piece of real estate in the city was plastered with posters with pictures of people and begging anyone who had seen the person in the picture to call the number provided — and it was very, VERY clear that the pictures provided were of people who were never, ever coming back. Those images haunt me till this very day, and always will.