I remember last year I had computer training with a woman, we’ll call her DC, and she mentioned 9/11. We swapped stories, with me going first. Then she began her story and I immediately felt shamed. Shamed for thinking that my day was in any way traumatic compared to her. Because my 9/11 story is NOT one of drama at all – there’s no drama when your question of the day at some point becomes “how on earth am I going to get back to Jersey?” So I’m going to tell her story, and hope that I remember it correctly.
Her apartment was one block away from the South Tower and she left her windows open when she left for work because it was such a nice morning. She commuted to midtown to her office and just as she arrived the first plane hit.
When the second plane hit the second tower, she rushed back downtown from her office because she wanted to get her dog, who was in the apartment. But some of the barricades were already up by the time she got down there and police wouldn’t let her through. She called her brother in a panic and begged him to get her dog (he worked downtown nearby and had keys to her apartment). He agreed and said he’d meet her at her office in midtown.
He was able to get past the barricades and upon entering he found some debris in her apartment – papers, folders, various office supplies that had flown a block away after the plane impacts. The dog was cowering under the bed, so her brother picked him up and left the apartment. As he made his way up the street, a deafening sound erupted – the first tower was falling. He began to run, to get away, when a storeowner came out and begged the brother to come in to his store. He quickly moved inside just as the wave of ash came around the corner. The storeowner shoved DC’s brother into the cold storage room, followed him in then slammed the heavy metal door shut. There were another dozen or so people in there – customers, people off the street – whoever the storeowner could grab when he heard the sound. When the deathly silence descended, they forced open the door to find the store destroyed – covered in several feet of ash and glass and debris both from the tower and from the store itself.
Everyone left the freezer, dug their way out to the street where people’s cries could be heard, but barely seen because of the heavy layer of ashy fog that had taken over the area. The brother thanked the storeowner and began making his way to midtown, still clutching onto DC’s dog.
An hour later, having walked all the way to midtown, he was so numb from the experience that he kept on walking, holding DC’s dog tightly in his arm. He eventually ended up at his and DC’s parent’s apartment on the Upper West Side. He called DC’s office and told her he was safe, as was her dog. She left her office and went to her parents’ apartment where they four of them huddled for the next two days watching the news in horror.
One month later she was finally allowed back in her apartment, only to find everything destroyed. Because her windows had been open that morning, her apartment was coated in ash – every nook and cranny. Even closets whose doors were shut were filled with ash. She walked away with nothing left to her name, but she didn’t care, because her dog – and more importantly – her brother, had been spared.