September 11, 2001

In September 2001, I was working at DAW Books, a science fiction/fantasy publisher, with offices them in the Penguin Putnam building at 375 Hudson Street. I am a member of a proud NYPD and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey family. I only occasionally discuss that day publicly. The New York Review of Science Fiction asked for accounts of the day. I wanted to share mine for the 20th anniversary.

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DAW's offices are only a short distance north of the WTC, and my wife Amy and I had a close up view of the Towers immediately upon exiting the subway on Varick Street.?We saw the second plane hit. At the office, Amy and I gathered with other employees to listen to the radio coverage and watch CNN in one of Penguin Putnam's conference rooms. Upon hearing that the first Tower was falling, we all raced out to the street, but it was already gone by the time we made it outside. The company's owner, who had not yet come into the office, drew a practical inspiration, and provisioned her loft (just one block north of Canal Street, about 17 blocks north of the WTC site) to accommodate the DAW staff and other friends, in case we became stranded in Manhattan.

That morning was a personal agony for Amy and myself, as my cousin worked on the 61st floor of one of the Towers. She had been there during the bombing in ’93, seven months pregnant at that time, and had gotten out, shaken but uninjured.?On the 11th, my father, less than two years retired from the Port Authority, was the only person in the family who might have known where she might have been at the time of the crash.?Unfortunately, we couldn’t contact him either.?I did finally get word around 11am from another cousin that our cousin had checked in – having run from her office as soon as the first plane hit the other tower.?Her brother-in-law (a WTC Observation Deck security guard) did not escape.

It turned out that my father had been at his part-time job driving a limo in New Jersey that morning, but he did not have the radio on.?He was completely unaware of events until some time after 10 o’clock.?I left him a message on his answering machine that my cousin was safe.?When he finally heard what was happening, he rushed home, and was very relieved to hear my message.?But, after 30 years working at the Port Authority, and several years working in the WTC, knowing so many people who would have been in the Towers, he was still very upset.

My father is not someone who usually shows signs of distress, and hearing his voice on the phone scared me more than watching the Towers fall.?Even seeing the fires and collapses close up, the whole event still seemed like a movie-like scene.?Dad’s voice brought home to me just how bad things were. He had lost co-workers in the ’93 bombing, and as of Friday, September 14th, a number of his friends were still missing, though many others had reported in safely.

Normally, our two children spend their afternoons at an after-school program until Amy and I get home from work.?That Tuesday, I asked my father to pick them up early, and take them to his house.?It was calming to know that the kids were in a secure place, and my dad would have something to occupy his attention until my mother or Amy and I could get home.?As it turned out, my mother, a nurse, was stranded on Staten Island, which the authorities had placed in lock-down.?My brother, an NYPD Detective, managed to get her back to Brooklyn late that afternoon.

Our company's owner's eldest daughter was stranded at her new high school in Brooklyn, with no way to get home. When they opened the Brooklyn Bridge to foot traffic, our owner prepared to walk to downtown Brooklyn to bring her home, if possible.?Not knowing if she would be allowed back into Manhattan, she packed overnight supplies. Just as she was leaving the house, at half past 2, they reported that the Brooklyn-bound F train was running.?When our owner went down to the subway station, she heard that they were about to start running the A train outbound.?She got onto the first Brooklyn-bound A train that was returned to service.?Wary of vibrating the disaster site, and causing more collapses or gas explosions, the packed train crept as slowly as possible through the tunnels and the closed and abandoned Chambers Street and Broadway/Naussau Street stations, not stopping until it reached Brooklyn.?As the train moved through the area perilously near the collapse site, there was dead silence on the train.?She could see through the train windows at Chambers Street that the stairwells were filled with business papers, like drifts of snow. A woman in her subway car fainted. She was able to get her daughter home on a more circuitous, and therefore safer, route.?

About 3pm, having heard the F train had been restored, Amy and I took it about halfway home before they suspended service. We had to wait in the church where my father grew up while he and the kids came to meet us.?Some staff stayed at the office until almost normal closing time, when they decided to leave, as the area was being barricaded and searched for bombs.?They headed down to our owner’s loft for refuge.?One staffer made it home to Long Island very late that night, but another could not get out of Manhattan until the next day.?It was especially wise of our owner to provision her home, since she and her family were in a barricaded zone, and for three days the air quality was so noxious that they could not leave the house.

For some who had stayed over at our owner's place on Tuesday night, the walk through the barricades and checkpoints and up to the West 4th Street subway station made the changes wrought by the destruction all too real.?The air, which had seemed breathable on Tuesday, now smelled toxic.?Due to the smoke and odors in the air, and the emergency restrictions, far fewer people were in the streets in a normally bustling neighborhood, and those who were out couldn’t keep from staring at the clouds of brown smoke that the wind shift was spreading over the city.?There were no cars around, except for emergency vehicles.?But, at least once they reached the subway, getting home proved easier than expected.?NJ Transit was running quite a few trains out of the city and not collecting any fares.

The sight of the city from the other side of the river had the most shocking impact of all – the clouds of smoke and the forever-changed skyline created an unforgettable image.?The cars still at the Park-And-Ride lot that might never be driven home by the people who had parked them there the day before really brought home the lives that had been lost and the families forever disrupted.

Though each of us at DAW know people who had close calls on the 11th, and lost some friends-of-a-friend, we were blessed in that none of us suffered any direct lose of loved ones.?Despite all of us being safe, each of us has been affected by this tragedy – whether the effect is sleeplessness, increased fearfulness, disrupted commutes and routines, potentially dangerous air quality in the area of our offices and our owner's apartment, or helping friends and relatives deal with their own responses to the tragedy.?None of us are untouched by these events.

Our best wishes, prayers and support go out to those who have not been as lucky as our little corporate family.

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May God have mercy on the souls of those we lost. May He comfort those who stayed behind. May we all, someday, know a world that doesn't need to fear another such incident.