From: JVoelcker@aol.com
12 Sep 2001
Subject: thoughts from Manhattan
Updates
– 202 firefighters and 57 police officers & Port Authority police officers are still missing as of 7 am this morning.
– Rubble is as much as 10 stories high
– The Mayor’s “situation room,” a reinforced concrete bunker with redundant communications capabilities, completed several years ago at a cost of $15 million, was in 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed about 4:30 pm yesterday.
Along with the rest of the nation and the world, I’m watching the sun rise over a Manhattan that has been changed forever. The light at dawn is beautiful, as it usually is, but the news is not.
As their slogan says, “More people wake to 1010WINS than any other station in the nation” — me included. It was still surreal and unbelieveable to wake to radio news that the twin towers are gone. As one commentator said, “No, it was not a dream. It is real.”
Gramercy Park has had power and water throughout the events — though the neighborhood around the former WTC has no power, no water and no phones. This being Manhattan, we were able to order Chinese food delivered just two miles from the heart of the devastation yesterday as we watched TV for hours. I spent much of yesterday afternoon and evening with my friends Bruce and Dick, who live a couple of blocks away and have a large flat-screen TV.
As many as several hundred firefighters are missing, including two entire engine companies that responded to the plane crashing into the first tower. One firefighter died when hit by a WTC tenant falling from dozens of floors above. At least three people trapped in the rubble have called out on their cellphones. There is apparently a 10-story section of one WTC tower remaining. A television image I saw looked like the remains of Dresden during WW2.
Access to Manhattan is still strictly controlled. Only emergency and rescue vehicles are being allowed over the bridges and through certain tunnels; other tunnels remain closed, period. Commuter trains are running into the city, though regional residents are being told not to enter Manhattan unless absolutely necessary. Subways are running, bypassing the WTC area, and at least one station (Rector Street) has been heavily damaged. 14th Street and Houston Street are borders to controlled area of lower Manhattan, where IDs are checked for access. Buses are running from Houston Street north.
Vignettes from yesterday include F-15s and F-16s overhead, and a river of hundreds of ambulances from all over Long Island streaming thru the Midtown tunnel. It was a beautiful sunny day, and though I saw the fire in the north tower, I hurried off to a business meeting held in a Starbucks — until the staff closed all Starbucks locations around 10 am. In the office, I listened to news radio as the second tower collapsed, and that’s when it really hit that this was a catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions. Without looking south at the missing skyline, though, you wouldn’t know what happened. All the dust and smoke blew south and into Brooklyn, and continues to do so.
As one commentator said, This terrorism was low-tech and high-concept. That seems as good a summary as any. I guess I’d urge you to keep in touch; the Manhattanites you know may need some extra friends in days & weeks to come.
love, jv.