My Eyewitness Account of 9-11

Like many New Yorkers, on the morning September 11, 2001, at 8:46, I was getting ready to go to work. I turned on the TV to check the weather for the day. I had a work-related dinner to attend and wanted to check if I needed to bring an extra sweater. Then, I heard a long, loud hummm coming from above, a boom, and gasps from people on the street. Not screams, but gasps.

I did not immediately look out the window. After all, it IS New York City. My street is always noisy. As I was distractedly watching the local news for the weather report, they switched to an emergency bulletin. Who pays attention to those, anyway? I went to brush my teeth. When I fixed my eyes on the images of the World Trade Center's North Tower burning on TV, I thought it was yet another movie showing the end of New York City, this time by fire instead of by a tsunami, Godzilla, King Kong... Who watches those terrible movies, anyway?

As I am watching the local news more attentively, I again hear the hummm, the boom, and the gasps from people outside, while at the same time, I see on TV the second plane crash against the South Tower. As if listening to an cruelly realistic stereo system, I heard everything happening outside as I saw everything happening on TV.  

I ran outside and stood with my neighbors in the middle of the street. We watched the billowing smoke thinking "they will be able to repair that hole in the building." When suddenly, we felt a rumble and saw a bigger cloud of smoke. Then for a moment, there was clear sky where the South Tower once stood. "Where is it?!" I heard myself ask. It was too weird to see only one tower where two always stood. Soon thereafter, neither was standing. Both towers disappeared into a cloud of dust.

Not knowing what to do was unsettling. Would there be other attacks? Should I get out of Manhattan? Rumors spread. There was panic and resignation at the same time. I knew I needed to do something, so I walked to my nearest hospital, Saint Vincent. Doctors and nurses stood beside white-clothed gurneys ready to receive the injured, but few patients were arriving. One medical resident said to me: "People either walked out of there, or are dead". Indeed, I saw people walking north, executives in suits and ties, women in skirts and heels, covered in dust, blank stares walking like zombies. 

The days and nights that followed were surreal. Traffic was stopped from 14th Street down, I lived on 12th. I saw military tanks drive against the usual traffic. A school band marched solemnly south in the middle of the night towards the site. Union Square was papered over with posters from family members looking for their loved ones. Oddly, the pictures of smiling workers on the posters would accompany text that read something like "Looking for Sarah, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, 102 floor, had a titanium right hip replacement." So terrible that these families already knew that they may only find their loved ones' bones. The posters and the smell of burning debris mixed with sorrow continued in my neighborhood for months. 

Everyone who could leave, left the neighborhood for a while to avoid the smoke. But I saw hundreds of firefighters, construction workers, and volunteers of all skills go towards the wreckage. Every day, there were more. I even saw a group of massage therapists set up a tent near the site to help the recovery workers cope. I did what I could do: I wrote an article about the environmental aftermath of the disaster. I thought it important to document the environmental implications live, as they were happening. In the years since that terrible day, more death and disease has been attributed to the disaster.

Now, 17 years later, it is difficult still to get on an airplane. But it is time to go. Back to New York City. Back to work.

 Click here to read the article: Environmental Aftermath of the World Trade Center Disaster

Dr. Luz Claudio is a Tenured Professor of Environmental Medicine and the author of How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper: The Step-by-Step Guide. In the book, she teaches emerging scientists how to publish their research. Her website is DrLuzClaudio.com