An eyewitness report
By Arnold G. York/Publisher
The telephone circuits to New York City were jammed and it was hours before my sister, Matti Feldman, and my niece, Erika Feldman, were able to get through to tell us that they were OK. They both work in the West Village, only a mile or so from the World Trade Center. Karen and I knew they walk to work each morning from the upper Westside, and we held our breath and hoped.
No matter what we see on TV, the sheer horror of what you experience on foot, only a mile from the devastation, is qualitatively different.
Matti said it started out as a beautiful, sunny, cool, perfect New York City fall morning with a blue sky and small puffy white clouds. When they got to the West Village, people were standing in the street watching the fire in the first of the World Trade Center buildings that was hit, the North Tower, more curious than frightened, not yet aware that it was terrorism and not yet aware of the extent of damage. Then the second plane hit. There was an enormous blinding flash, and they all knew.
One of the buildings was burning with a flame that smoldered as if the top was a marshmallow at the end of a stick. Then one trade center building collapsed and people stood in the street, huddling together, staring in disbelief, listening to details on car radios, which people in stopped cars had turned up, so everyone could hear. The sun reflected off large pieces of the building as it fell. Then the second building went and people began to weep.
A steady stream of people was headed north, past Matti and Erika, running away from the fire, heading uptown. Matti described it as surreal. There were stockbrokers, maintenance people, office clerks and vagrants. They all had a similar look, because they were all covered with a layer of ash and their shoes were all white. But the worst was classes of school children, holding hands, being led from their schools to centers where frantic parents could go to pick them up.
People, total strangers, were talking and hugging each other. Perhaps Matti thought they were just happy to still be alive. Many headed to the closest hospital to help, which was Saint Vincent’s in lower Manhattan on 12th Street and 7th Avenue. Erika said there were so many volunteers offering help that there was a 2-hour wait just to volunteer. What they needed most were medical people, particularly plastic surgeons, burn specialists and nurses. They were running out of blood, but there were too many blood volunteers, so they were diverting them to other hospitals to give blood.
But strangest of all, said Erika, was the skyline, empty of those two giant buildings, which had been there since she was born, a familiar picture that had a large whole torn in it.