In the shadow of the World Trade Center

I remember almost nothing about the morning of September 11th. It was my son's first day of school, but I don't recall thinking about that on my way to the office that morning. A huge black and silver banner hung from the face of the New York Stock Exchange; it read Blackwood. I remember the sign because my company was Blackwood. The sign, however, was an advertisement for a forthcoming truck from Lincoln. I don't recall looking at the sign that morning. I don't remember the walk up to the tower at 40 Wall and I do not recall my agenda for the day.

The first thing I remember was Adam's announcement as he came into the office, "A bomb just went off at the Trade Center!"
Adam's deep voice belies his small frame, but his accent is a true indicator of his roots. He has lived his entire life in New York City, settling down in a Staten Island townhome. It was unusual for him to be one of the first to arrive in the morning. He had side projects recording music and writing game software that kept him up late. This time he was a little early, and he got to break the news. "I saw it. It's a mess out there."

Together we rushed to the windows to look. The sky all around us was filled with paper; eight and a half by eleven sheets drifting in the air like a strange high-rise ticker tape parade. From the top of the Trade Center's North Tower, a thick black cloud rose into the bright blue sky.

Blackwood had offices spanning two floors high in the tower at 40 Wall Street. Surrounding the offices on three sides were large windows offering panoramic views of lower Manhattan's canyons. Across the length of the floors, the windows faced west toward the Hudson River. Standing at these windows you looked up at the massive twin towers standing tall and dwarfing the surrounding buildings. From our vantage on the 30th floor, the south tower was mostly unobstructed while only the top third of the north tower was visible.

I watched the smoke and flames for a minute then turned to the televisions. Blackwood had an extensive and modern trading floor including several televisions monitoring financial news. As it was well before the market open, the sets were tuned to MSNBC. That's how we discovered an airplane had hit Tower One. From our windows, we could not see the point of impact, but the news showed the tower with the impact clearly in the shape of an airplane.

"How could a plane hit the Trade Center?" I barely uttered the words, not expecting an answer.

We stared at the televisions and speculated about private planes. Probably a tourist flight.

I called my wife to give her the news. Susan had worked in the World Financial Center, just across the West Side Highway from the Trade Center. She often recalled the time fondly, describing her favorite hangouts. She loved the towers and remembered vividly the day they were bombed. I was telling her to turn on the news when the second airplane struck the towers.
The second impact made a very distinctive sound. It was higher pitched than a Hollywood explosion and only lasted a fraction of a second. Imagine the sound a large dump truck makes when its gate slams against an empty bed. I turned toward the windows as my staff yelled a collective "oh my God!" Melba, our receptionist made the sign of the cross.

I did not see the impact, and for a minute no one could describe it to me. I told Susan I had to hang up the phone and went to the windows. As I did, Dan came into the office. He was covered in debris, little pieces of glass, paper, and dust.

"It was a missile!" he claimed. "A greenish-brown missile, like it was camouflage. I was watching from the end of Wall Street when it hit."

Dan worked with our back-office systems and was primarily responsible for seeing Blackwood meet its compliance requirements. He was not prone to exaggeration, and he was clearly shaken. Our entire staff lined the windows, mesmerized.
The company's CEO was a long-time investment banker who had come from J.P. Morgan through a failed Internet startup. John hailed from the Carolinas attending Duke University along the way. He still spoke with a southern accident, occasionally peppered with New York street talk. The combination never seemed natural. He stood with his hands on his hips for a minute, then rallied the staff away from the windows. The markets opened as normal at 9:30am and for a short time it looked like it would be business as usual.

"Dmitry called in," our admin Melba came over relaying a message, "his train was held at Newark."

Dmitry was a Russian immigrant with a warm smile and freckles. He is soft spoken, intelligent, and punctual. And when his PATH train to the World Trade Center was canceled, he found another route into the city. From his commuter train in Newark, New Jersey, he could see the smoke from the Towers. He had promised to arrive at the office before the trading floor had opened, but the trains were delayed, and he would be late. He dutifully called the office from his cell phone.

On a normal day, Dmitry would change trains in Newark, moving from the NJ Transit commuter train to the PATH. The PATH went directly to the World Trade Center where it was a short walk to Blackwood's offices at 40 Wall. But with the PATH temporarily shut down, he stayed on the commuter train to Penn Station in New York City.
From there he fought through the crowds and chaos to the Mass Transit Authority's 1 and 9 subway line. The 1 and 9 were downtown express trains with a station at the World Trade Center. He found the trains were crowded but running. Dmitry squeezed into a subway car and headed downtown.

Back at 40 Wall Street, news of the Pentagon attack spread like wildfire. For the first time, there was true fear among the employees. Adam expressed panic and a desire to leave. Immediately. John and I calmed him a little.

"You don't know what kind of shit is falling out of the sky now," John stated with some authority. "We're safer inside."

But the fear was real. Two of the tallest buildings in the world were burning, the Pentagon was under attack, and at least one more plane was unaccounted for. At that moment, in downtown New York City, we believed that rogue jetliners were screaming toward us. I became acutely aware that next to the World Trade Center, I was standing in the tallest building in lower Manhattan.

The Institutional Sales desk had the best view of the burning towers. From his desk, our lead salesman Kirk watched the flames intently. The fire was hypnotic, and once it attracted our attention, we were powerless to turn away. Kirk and I stared at the flames, commenting on their intensity, and wondering how the Fire Department would ever put them out.

I turned to speak with another executive as Kirk shouted out, "Did you see that?! Someone jumped!" I turned and thankfully, saw nothing.

I returned my attention to the other executive when he asked "Has anyone heard from Karen? She is attending a conference at the Windows on The World."

Karen was Blackwood's marketing executive. She was attractive, outgoing, and extremely effective. On September 11th she was scheduled to attend a seminar where she hoped to spread the Blackwood story.

Karen lived in Battery Park City, just blocks from the World Trade Center. Not an early riser, she had taken her time leaving home for the short walk to the Trade Center. The seminar was at The Windows on the World, on the top floor of Tower One. She reached the lobby of the north tower shortly after nine in the morning, only to discover the building was being evacuated. With no explanation she was directed outdoors. Everyone who was on time for the seminar had only an hour to live.

She started back across the West Side Highway toward home, contemplating whether to go to the office when the second plane exploded into the south tower. The explosion shook the crosswalk where she stood, but her view of the tower was blocked. Through the small windows she could see debris raining down on the street below. During the ensuing panic she thought it best to head to Battery Park. From there she could enjoy the sunny morning and watch what was happening at the World Trade Center.

At Blackwood Kirk and I were observing the fires. He was glued to the windows morbidly looking for more jumpers. We saw none.

We could clearly see the point of impact on the south tower. We could also see the areas where the explosion had blown out windows in both towers. There were few windows intact on the damaged floors creating an eerie effect where the upper floors of each building were held up by the ribs that formed the skeleton of the building. Thick black smoke poured from the open floors. Huge orange and yellow flames covered entire floors.

For a moment I thought the flames were dying down in the north tower. I pointed them out to Kirk, saying that the fire was starting to burn itself out in Tower One. But Kirk's eyes were riveted to Tower Two.

"I think bars are bending..." he was pointing to the south tower, but I couldn't see what he was pointing at. Then in slow motion the top third of Tower Two tilted directly toward us.

"My God! It's coming down!" Kirk barely got the words out of his mouth when Tower Two imploded, collapsing straight down on itself as if the bottom floor was kicked out from beneath it. Within seconds our building was covered in a thick black cloud. We could no longer see either tower.

Down in the subway tunnels, Dmitry's train stopped short of the Chambers Street station. The train did not move for several minutes when the lights flickered and went dark. Even in the blackness, Dmitry could see the train car filled with a dust cloud. Passengers started screaming.

In a brief time that must have seemed like hours, the lights came on and the train started moving. At Chambers street the conductor announced that the train was out of service. All passengers must exit. Dmitry shuffled out of the crowded train, following the flow of people through the turnstiles and up the stairs to the street.

On the street was pandemonium. Sirens wailed, people were running, and the ground was covered with light gray dust. There was only one tower at the World Trade Center. A policeman shouted at him to leave and to run, so he ran. He ran and ran, not stopping until he reached the lawn of City Hall. There he turned to watch.

In the office, Blackwood was still trading stocks, but we were huddled around the televisions as we could not see through the foggy cloud surrounding us.

"I can't believe there is only one tower" Melba was almost crying, or she was too shocked to cry.

"If one came down, the other is probably going to come down too," I replied. I called my wife one more time to let her know I was safe. From my office I watched the live news as Tower One collapsed. Then the phone went dead.

The cloud surrounding us changed from gray to black. Pure pitch black. Blacker than coal and blacker than night. I could not see more than an inch out the window. For the first time I felt a real pang of fear as I checked the air conditioning ducts to make sure the dust was not pouring into the office.

"Give it a couple minutes, it will clear up" the CEO tried to be reassuring. "Maybe the dust will snuff out the fires."
We held a short meeting of executives to plan for the inevitable closing of business. The CEO wanted a clear plan for shutting down our computer servers, but first we needed to create reports on the customer's trades and positions. I suggested we plan to provide the staff with housing for the night. Those living in the city volunteered their apartments for those living in New Jersey or Long Island.

For Karen, Battery Park was becoming a problem. Crowds of panicked people flowed into the park by the thousands. She found herself forced deeper and deeper into the park to avoid the throng. At the furthest point she ran out of space and became pinned to the barrier that prevented the crowd from being pushed into New York harbor.

There was no escape or moving from her position. One man nearby climbed over the rail, briefly considered jumping into the water, then perched himself on the narrow ledge. There were boats nearby, only twenty feet away, but the water was dangerous and there was no mooring. She had to wait.

Shortly after our meeting, the New York Fire Department made it official. The building was being evacuated. The CEO and General Counsel were the first out the door, rushing to make a morning ferry back to Long Island. Most others quickly but orderly packed their things and headed for the stairs. The elevators were not running.

I stayed behind with Mike, the Director of Operations. He started shutting down our computers and I made sure the office was empty. Sure enough, on the trading floor, a trader remained at his workstation furiously banging at his keys. He was trying to close his positions before he left the building. When Mike shut down the system, the trader packed up his things, slung his backpack over this shoulder, and made for the stairs. I locked the doors behind him.

Mike and I were the last to leave the offices, making sure everyone was gone, and every door locked. By the time we left, the stairwell was mostly empty and was very easy to descend. We quickly descended ten to twenty flights before reaching a pack of stragglers. Together our little group slowly made our way to the first floor, exiting near the rear of the building. Security ushered us out the back door.

Outside, downtown Manhattan had been transformed into a surreal moonscape. There was a strange and total absence of color, only shades of gray. Looking west down Pine Street, toward the Trade Center, the streets were black as night. We trudged through the ankle-deep dust, making our way to the FDR highway. There, we were told, were shuttle buses to take us out of downtown. It was eerily silent.

I caught up with Mike, and we explored our options for getting off the Island of Manhattan. We could go to the FDR. Or we could make our way to the Village where one of our executives had offered his apartment for the night. On a whim, Mike suggested the ferries at Pier 11, so we turned right at Water Street instead of following the crowd uptown.

The dock at Pier 11 was busy, but not crowded. For me, the Seastreak ferry was docked and idling its' engine. The shipmates were calling all comers; there would be no charge for the trip. As I boarded the ferry for Atlantic Highlands, Mike found the New York Ferry to Jersey City waiting. In little more than an hour, I was home.

Everyone at Blackwood survived that day, but unfortunately, the company would not. Those of us in the office remained safe during the attacks, and everyone returned home that day. Dmitry and Karen, whose lives were spared by little more than 10 minutes, escaped their ordeal. Karen could not return to her apartment for weeks and eventually moved to New Jersey. By the following summer, none of us worked at Blackwood or even downtown Manhattan.