I Sat down at the computer this morning and just wrote this whole piece. Just a stream of consciousness to the best of my memory. I have a more detailed story, but it's 55 pages. Anyway, feel free to read if you would like. There's some graphic details that I should warn you about, so if you need to, just skip those parts. I just think it's important you know the story of what I experienced that day that changed so many lives forever. The fear was palpable in the air. It was pure terror. There were several times during that nearly 2 hour period between the first plane hitting (8:46am,) and the last tower falling (10:28am,) where I didn't think I was going to make it out alive. But I did. And I am grateful for it. Because I have you guys.
Thinking back to that day it’s hard to believe it’s been 22 years. But here we are. I wrote this piece this morning 9/11/23 if you are inclined to read.
I was living in Manhattan in September of 2001 and had just moved into an apartment three weeks earlier two blocks south of the World Trade Center on Greenwich St. (about 800ft from the South Tower, WTC 2.) At the time, I was working as a production assistant on music videos, commercials, and working backstage on concerts in New York.
The night before, 9/10/01, I had just finished a week of working on the Michael Jackson/Jackson 5 Reunion Concert at Madison Square Garden, which was filmed on two separate nights: 9/7/01 and 9/10/01. That experience alone has plenty of interesting stories attached. But that’s for another time. Thunderstorms swept through NYC in the early evening of 9/10 clearing the way for a beautiful September morning with blue skies.
After the show wrapped after midnight a few of us on the show hung out in the dressing rooms and exchanged stories about how the show went. I remember standing outside the 8 Penn entrance of MSG chatting with Slash of Guns N Roses for a while he waited for his limo. Later, around 2am, I took the the subway home and decided to get off a few stops early (Chambers St) and walk through the WTC Plaza since it was such a nice fall night. The towers were mostly dark, but you could hear the traffic from the FDR Drive and just the general white noise of the city reverberating off of the towers. I remember thinking “holy shit, this is awesome.” I dreamt of living and working in New York as a kid. Now here I was.
I stopped at Cordato’s Deli on Greenwich St, because even at that hour you could get a fresh slice of pizza and a beer. So I did. I remember to NYPD officers taking their lunch break with some pizza in the booth next to me. I went back to the apartment and was still buzzing from the night’s events at MSG, so I didn’t fall asleep until around 5am.
I was jarred awake at 8:46am by an explosion, then the sound of falling debris, some hitting our building. It’s hard to describe, but it sounded like a whoosh, then a punch. Like the kind of sound you feel in your chest. I was sleeping on a top bunk and immediately jumped down onto the hardwood floor in my bare feet. Ran over to the window and opened it up to see what was going on. I was on the 7th floor, but the 55 story Deutsche Bank Building was blocking my view of the towers. Still, I could see smoke. I grabbed my digital camera and started taking pics. (I had an early Sony Cyber Shot F-505.) In the smoke filled air it looked as though thousands and thousands of sheets of office paper were floating down. I noticed sparkling in the sunlight which must have been tiny bits of glass still making their way down. Then, I saw a single sheet of office paper floating down like a feather right in front of our window. The corner of the paper was on fire. I remember seeing someone coming out of a restaurant and putting white table cloths over the remnants of a body on Washington St. I knew something terrible had happened. The sound of sirens started to swell seemingly from all directions.
One of my roomies came out and said, “Pete what the hell was that?” I said “I think they bombed the World Trade Center.” (I don’t remember saying that, she told me I said that when I saw her months later.) A lot of things are blocked out of my mind from that morning. It’s like my mind only let’s me see little moments and then immediately retracts. Like it’s just too much to relive, so it just goes back into it’s hiding place until something triggers a memory.
So I grabbed my Canon (Film) Camera, a telephoto lens, and loaded my pockets up with whatever unexposed film I had. I told the girls I’d be right back. I’m just going to document what’s going on outside. I remember feeling nervous on the elevator ride down from the 7th floor. What was I going to see? What am I walking into?
When I stepped out the door onto Greenwich St, it was a scene of debris and chaos. Some people were running, some seemed impossibly calm, just looking up at the buildings. So I started walking ups Greenwich St towards the World Trade Center. As I got to Albany St just behind the Deutsche Bank building, a man saw me with my camera and yelled, “You got a camera? Document everything! Those bastards!” On Albany St I noticed a man on one knee examining a seat cushion from the plane. Clearly shaken. (This photo is now in the permanent exhibit in the 9/11 Museum) I’m starting to realize the seriousness of the situation. I’m starting to see plane parts, office paper, books, luggage, parts of the plane, and yes, shredded body parts. I remember seeing part of the leg still inside of a shoe. It didn’t seem real. As I got up nearer to the World Trade Center plaza at the base of World Trade Center 2, there small fires on the ground and the overwhelming smell of jet fuel. I took another photo of a woman crossing the Greenwich St in a dress, hat and sneakers. A shaft of sunlight between the buildings seems to be focused on her, on her cell phone, seemingly unaffected by the chaos around her. (That photo is also in the permanent exhibit in the 9/11 Museum.)
World Trade Center 1 came into view once I reached Greenwich and Liberty, right next to FDNY Engine 10 Ladder 10. The view didn’t seem real. About 80 floors up, deep orange flames, and thick black smoke bellowing from World Trade Center 1. There was debris falling occasionally which I think may have been the aluminum sheathing on the outside of the building. I continued up Liberty onto Church St. I am now directly across from the World Trade Center Plaza in full view of both buildings. I remember a Coca Cola delivery truck stopped in the middle of Church St as though the driver abandoned it. (This became important later because there’s photos of large pieces of the facade impaled in the ground right next to the Coke Truck.)
It’s about 9am, maybe a few minutes before. There’s a loud bang and everyone starts running. I instinctively run even though I didn’t know why they were running. I ran down the loading dock ramp of the old US Steel Building. There was an overhang near the rolling garage door that offered me a little protection from falling debris.
It instantly became clear why people were running. There were people jumping from the highest parts of World Trade Center 1 near where the fire was. People were jumping at a terrifying rate. Sometimes several at a time. I remember seeing one man jump and I could see his suit and tie flapping in the wind. I could hear it from where I was standing. It sounded like a flag whipping in the wind. I heard him scream all the way down and then he must have hit the roof of one of the lower WTC Plaza buildings. Some were hitting the ground in the plaza. I do not want to describe it completely, but every time someone hit, it did sound like an explosion. I did see the the man an woman holding hands. I can’t recall if they held hands all the way down. I saw so many people jump, that in the months after, the falling leaves reminded me of it. I was as terrible as you could imagine. Probably worse. I can still hear the screams clearly in my mind.
All the chaos was sharply cut by the sound of an approaching jet. I wasn’t sure if it was one of our fighter jets at first. The sound grew louder and louder until I saw UA Flight 175 pass over Deutsche Bank at an incredible rate of speed. Then for a brief moment, silence. The asshole terrorist must have let off the throttle to pitch the plane to the left and cause maximum damage. I saw the underside of the jet as it slammed into World Trade Center 2 sending a massive fireball and debris out of all sides. The tower seemed to sway like a tree as a wave of debris came crashing down on the streets below. When the plane hit, I remember seeing dozens and dozens of people jump out of World Trade Center 1 all at once. People that were caught out in the plaza came running down the loading dock ramp to where I was. I remember a man pounding on the metal bay door, “Let us in! Let us in!” I don’t think there was anyone there to open the bay door. It became a crush situation briefly, so I decided to get out of there.
I ran up the loading dock ramp and onto Church St. My intention run back to the apartment and evacuate with the roommates. The second plane had hit, now there was even more debris strewn all over, some of it on fire. I remember an NYPD Officer seeing me running and he started yelling at the top of his lungs, “Get out of the street! Get out of the street!” (I hope he survived.) The towers were still standing but crippled and burning. I continued sprinting down Church St then made a sharp right on Cedar St which was a narrow alley and the buildings offer protection from falling debris. I fell pretty hard at some point because I landed on the palms of my hands and my knees. (Months later, small shards of glass began working their way out of my skin.)
When I got back to the 7th floor apartment, one of the girls said, “Oh thank God, we thought you were dead.” I think from breathing heavily and all of the adrenaline surging through my body, I could hardly get a word out. My throat was completely dry. (I don’t remember this the girls told me later that,) I grabbed the half gallon container of iced tea out of the fridge and drank the whole thing. Then blurted out, “We have to get out of here.” So we loaded up our backpacks, and headed out, thinking we’d be back a few hours later. Once on the street, our plan was to walk a few blocks south, then walk up to our friend’s apartment in Battery Park City.
I walked into Cordato’s Deli again, this time to grab a few waters incase we got stranded somewhere. I came back out to see the girls taking photos (with those old Kodak “Fun Saver” disposable cameras) of the gaping hole in World Trade Center 2. I remember one of the girls saying, “it looks like it’s leaning.” No sooner did she finish that sentence when the building came crashing straight down. Easily the loudest sound I have ever heard. I instinctively rand back into Cordato’s Deli, with only one of the girls right behind me. The other two ran into the building across the street. No sooner did the doors close behind us when a wave of ash came rushing down the street like an avalanche. At the back of Cordato’s Deli was a bar, which was attached to the Pussycat Lounge. (Use your imagination.) Chani and I ran to the back and we hid underneath the swing door that the bartenders use to get behind the bar. “Are we going to make it?” Chani asked. “I don’t know,” I said. Just then a man who must have been caught in the dust cloud came into the deli. There was a glass door between the bar and the deli, so I could see this man needed help. I grabbed the water bottled out of my backpack and tried to help the guy rinse his eyes out and gave him a bottle to drink. I went back to where we were sitting underneath the bar, and the owner came in and said we were alright, we’re safe, we can stay there until we figure things out. He had a remote and put the TV on. I’m sitting there watching what I just saw with my own two eye and I still can’t believe it. The building is GONE.
Things had kind of settled after about 20 minutes and although we were still in the middle of that ash cloud, you could start to see sunlight poking through. Then the ground started shaking and the power went out. The ungodly sound of the other building collapsing. The TV went off. It was dark. Then another wave of ash came down the street again obscuring the light. It didn’t seem like it was going to end. People were crying. Now I’m scared. Truly scared. I start thinking the worst. I’m also thinking about how many people who have just died. It seemed unfathomable. The power did kick back on after about half an hour or so and that’s when several ash covered FDNY firemen came in and told us we needed to evacuate. They were giving out masks but didn’t have enough, so they gave one to Chani and I just grabbed a bar rag to cover my face. “Where are we going? I asked. “Just walk towards the Brooklyn Bridge,” one of the firemen said. So we step outside into the darkness. The streetlights were on as though it was the middle of the night. There was about 6 inches of ash outside on the sidewalk mixed with office paper. I thought the group of us from the Deli/Bar were going to walk together, but everyone just scampered off in all directions. So it was just Chani and I trying to make it to the East Side of Manhattan. All of Lower Manhattan was draped in this massive cloud of ash. I looked toward the Trade Center and it was pitch black except for some flames I could see flickering, and the beeping sounds of alarms. May have been the FDNY locator beacons for the firemen. Not sure. We made our way to Wall St, past the Statue of George Washington and past the New York Stock Exchange. The few people we saw walking around were covered in ash and seemed dazed. By the time we got to the East Side, we could see sunlight again. My cell phone was dead, so I could call anyone to let them know I was okay. We made it to a nice Korean Church on the Lower East Side where they welcomed us and let us use the phone. We stopped at Puck Fair (Irish Pub that’s no longer there,) and they could see we’d been through it and took care of our food. I had a Guinness and a Burger and was able to charge my phone. Smoke was still billowing from downtown. Once my Nokia was charged I was able to get through to more people and let them know I had survived.
This is just one story of many.
