September 11, 2021
By: Rob Tyrie
Tags: New York, NYC, Sensemaking, 911, September 11

September 11, 2021

I am in New York today. This is not a surprise, I have been here 100’s of times in the last 20 years. I’ve structured my career around being here because I love it here. All of it.

Thank comes with stories and I have a special one that thousands of people have. Thousands of fortunate people who survived the World Trade Center attack. We were In the Towers when the planes struck. I was on the 40th Floor of the North Tower and that why I am back in New York today.

If you search "rob tyrie" or "Robert Tyrie " on social media or on Google there are other stories and reflections about my time in intersection with that calamity.

Any mistakes in this are my own and hope I will be able to fix them.

This incindent , the terror attack in NYC, Washington, the fear and the reactions, the trauma. All factor in my worldview of economy, human behaviour, fear, randomness, pandemic, and Exponential phenomena, mass hysteria, viral and otherwise (which is also related to my views on AI... There are plenty of good viral, exponential things too... like interest.

There is an overlap of with 9/11 and the Covid19 disease, the mass hysteria and fear and the ensuing economic crises and power shifts. This are import times that have the whole world's focus.

Please read this , reflect and respond in writing . The people I share it with usually respond with 500 or so words as they share their stories back. Others I do not trust do not respond or go on a tangent. Those people lack empathy I have discovered. Some of you have already responded and I thank you for that.

Me and my family and friends are only one story of millions of stories. My story and that of my family is a lucky one. It impacted all of us but no one died. I know people who died and others who had terrible thing happen. That terrible reality gives me the resolve to keep being an articulate witness, who used the past to make a path to the future as it informs my present.

And.. the story never stops. Now we go back.

— —

Toronto, March 3, 2002

The story never stops. It will take time, but that’s always the truth. It’s six months later and what I knew then is what I know now, I have changed, those around me have changed. A series of traumatic events will always test the human spirit, you never will know how you will react when something terrible happens. What I do know is that it will take you down to your very essence and show you things that you have never imagined. Now I have to write the story a second time, I have to go back.

In February this year I was visiting my cousin who was in the Toronto Sick Kids Hospital. She was recently diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a particularly horrid form of childhood cancer. She is three years old. She is dying. I can’t help but thinking that my daughter is three years old. My niece was going thru her second round of chemo. It saddened me deeply to see her, a tube in her chest, in pain. I left the hospital spent and worried.

I opened the door to my little white Volkswagen and I knew immediately something was wrong. I sat down. I had locked the door. “Oh no”, I gasped. I had put my briefcase down on the floor of the passenger side of the car. I looked where it no longer was. It was gone. I cursed and reached down for it, looking in the back seat, under the seat hoping for it to materialize. Had I brought it with me? A sickening feeling settled into my stomach. My car had been robbed. My briefcase, my laptop and all my travel documents were gone. I pounded my steering wheel, cursing in frustration. I went through the things I had lost in my mind. The laptop, all my email, files, papers. “Damn, I got that brief case in New York. I am always careful with this stuff. This happens to other people. What else did I lose?” I exhaled. ”Damn. The story. The only copy of the story. It was gone. Now, I’ll have to go back there to get it, back to New York”.

NYC, Sept 10, 2001.

I worked on the 40th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center WTC 1.

I had just gotten in from Toronto. I hadn’t originally planned to be in New York early in the week. At the time I was cycling between Chicago and New York for the work that I do. I’d spend the beginning of the week in Chicago and then go from there to New York. On the past Friday the project I was working on had explicit problems and our client was screaming mad as only a New York, master of the universe client can be. So I changed my plans that weekend. On the Sunday, I booked an American Airlines flight to NYC. I tried to book the hotel I usually stay at, the downtown Embassy Suites, but it was booked solid. I asked the agent where else I could book and she suggested the World Trade Center Marriott. I did not usually stay there because it was so expensive. $325 US. I whistled under my breath. I didn’t want to stay up in mid-town, which would be too inconvenient, too far away from my clients. So I booked the room at the Marriot anyway.

I got to the city in the morning and took a cab to what I called “the center of the universe”. I love working in New York. When I started working there again in the spring of 2001, I remember walking out of the World Trade Center at the end of the day. I was out on the corner of the street and I was calling my wife at home on my cell phone. “Hey Lynne”, said to my wife. “Where are you?” she laughed. I was walking to the street where there were thousands of people moving at New York pace, talking, shouting. The cacophony of traffic surrounded me, screeching tires, cab horns honking. “ I am calling from the shadow of the world tallest office building, the World Trade Center. I am at the center of the universe,” I shouted into my phone. “And, I still can’t get a cab.” She laughed again and told me to pay attention to what I was doing and to get to the airport on time.

On the Monday, when I got to the office, it was buzzing. The day was normal. Intense and fast, we had a lot of work to do and the pressure was on. I was working with 2 other consultants from my company, Livon and Karl. They had stayed the weekend and were hammering out some solutions to the problems we were having. I had to arrange a set of meetings. We had estimates to finish and our software company was preparing for our Wall Street user group meeting on the 13th, so dozens of people were flying in from Canada a couple of days before to be ready for it. I had planned to meet with an associate and close friend, Helene the morning of the 11th. They would be on one of the early flights to the city from Toronto. She was going to stay at the same hotel I was at and we wanted to get together as soon as she got in that morning. We talked on the phone about the project we were working on, setting up for the next day. “We’ll just grab a room on the 40th, I am in WTC1, the north tower. Call me when you get to the building and we’ll hook up”.

At the end of the day, I was at the cube that they had for me. I sat on the eastern side of the building right at the glass. The view was a slice of the fantastic New York skyline. I liked looking over the city as I talked on the phone, the city looked like a model or the view from an aircraft. People, cars, it all looked like some vast computer simulation. Later that day, I walked back to the cubicle at around 5, the sky was black and seething. A violent thunderstorm was blowing in and it was making the late day dark and foreboding. Lightening knifed through the clouds. It was remarkable to see the storm happening from the viewpoint of the towers. I thought about how the wind would make the tower sway and I looked at the horizon to see if it was. A friend had told me that the build swayed so much in heavy storms that some people would actually get motion sickness when sitting close to the windows.

The boys were wrapping up and came up to see me. They were working in the computer lab on the 38th so I hadn’t seen them for most of the day. I was still churning through email. I asked Livon what he was doing for dinner. He told me he was going to watch the NFL game and invited me to join him. I looked back at my computer screen and said, “Thanks but I’ve got a ton of stuff to finish. I’m just going to grab dinner at the hotel and keep working”.

I packed up to go back to hotel at about eight. The floor was quiet, I was probably the last to leave. I went back to the elevator banks with my laptop and suitcase, rolling it with me. I checked into the Marriott at the base of the towers. My room was up on the eighth floor- room 809, no view to speak of. I got wrapped up in a movie, so I didn’t get back to work until about 11. I keep working until about 2am that night and then I hit the hay.

Sept 11, 2001 – 7:45am

I got up that morning at close to 8am. Started hustling to get ready. I said to myself, “It’s a good thing I am in the building – it’ll only take a couple of minutes to get to the office”. I was thinking of a dozen things at once, home, the kids, the project, my clients, the guys flying in that day. “Man, this is getting too busy” I said to no one in particular as a walked down the marbled corridor leading to the north tower. I lined up to get a day pass. I had not gotten a regular pass to the floor, so every day that I worked in the WTC, a photo ID was printed and someone had to confirm my existence to the authorities. When I got my first pass back in the spring, Louis, my client, told me how much bullshit these passes were. “It makes people feel better” he said, “They added this after those bastards tried to blow up the Towers in ’93. I don’t think having passes will stop anyone. But the veneer of security make some people feel safer”. I got my pass from the guard and I slipped it into my shirt pocket. I swung my laptop bag up to my shoulder and headed for the elevators. There is more than one bank of elevators, ones that go from 1 to 39 and elevators that go from the 40th to the 80th. It was a good perk to take one of the express elevators, because you got to go to the 40th without stopping, making it seem like you were only one floor up instead of 39. I suppose that there are others to go to the other floors but I had never used them. When I first started working in the World Trade Center, I’d tell my friends how cool it was to work there. Invariably they’d ask what floor I was on. And I would say, “It’s too bad, it’s a chance of a lifetime to be on top of the world and I am only on the 40th floor. Man I wish I was higher up, somewhere up in the 100’s, then it would really feel like the World Trade Center”.

The super fast elevator whisked me up to the 40th. My ears pop and all the people in the elevator ignore one another New York style. My pass can’t get me onto the floor am I on, there are a set of locked doors at the reception. So I pause before I get out of the elevator then I draft closely behind on the other people heading into work. I know the receptionist won’t be at her desk until 9am and it’s only 8:30 so there’s no other way to get onto the floor. If I handle the timing right, the guy in front of me will open the door and I will hold it right after him. No one will think to stop me, because I look exactly as I should. Overstuffed Laptop bag slung on my shoulder, dark slacks with a Royal French Blue corporate button-down and a standard issue cell phone on my belt. I am in and smiling my way to my desk to dump off my laptop. This is the first time I see outside. The sky is brilliant blue and clear. I now have one thought in my mind. Coffee. I walk back out toward the small tuck shop on the floor. There’s a knot of people that I work with. They look like they’re about to start a meeting. I ask Greg, “Do you need me in this?” He shakes his head. “Nope, internal folks only” and he gives me a look like they are meeting about me and our lumpy project. I cringe. This is going to be a long day. I walk over and get a grande Starbucks – only high-test will do at big banking New York. I head back to my desk and put the coffee beside me. I wanted to do some e-mail, but our corporate email server was down. I call the California help desk and the tech on the other end of the line tells me that the server is indeed not available. I tell him that those of us on the East coast would like to get some work done, so anything he could do to help me out would be appreciated, he logs the call and tells me that he is on it. It is 8:45am, I start using my laptop to do email and making some notes about the forthcoming day.

Then, the world changes.

I am at my desk working at my laptop. My coffee is to the left of me, my laptop bag is behind me. My back is to the window outside. It happens. There is a long, loud booming sound. Loud and far away, up above. Very loud thrumming, like a space shuttle taking off. I immediately leap out of my chair and spin toward the window. I am about four feet away from the slightly tinted glass. I can’t tell if the explosion is in my tower or the other one. Time starts slowing down. I scan the horizon and all I see is blue sky and building. Not thunder, I think to myself. Sky’s clear. My thoughts are rapid, not long sets of reasoning or questions. Just short staccato bursts of thought, one or two words at a time. Lot’s of visual intake. It was almost like speech was turned off an all my other senses were cranked up. I looked back and forth. Explosion? Fire? Bomb?. I’m not breathing. Then crazily, the building begins to sway. I still looking out at the horizon and everything is moving left, right, left again. And then again. Earthquake? The horizon looks like it’s moving back and forth 10 or fifteen feet. Time has now stopped for me. I start backing away from the window. The suddenly there is a loud scraping sound and building debris, metal and glass, flashing down the side of the building from the left to the right. “Jesus, Jesus Christ. JESUS CHRIST.” I back up faster, almost to the end of the row cubes.

I realize it must have been quiet before, because now people are screaming and running. Some one yells, “Get to the center of the building! It’s the safest place.” There are no alarms or announcements on the PA. The floor I am on has its windows intact and there is no fire or smoke or any damage that I can see. Gotta go. I see one of the guys I work with, he is low to the ground and running, he looks terrified. There is a rush of people moving to the exits. I stop. I walk back to my desk. Home. I reach into my laptop case a get my travel portfolio, a small leather case that I use to hold ID, my passport, airline tickets. I pick up my laptop. I pat my belt and pants, checking. Phone, Cards, Money, Go. I turned on my heel and move toward the exit, my laptop and case in my left hand. Livon.. Karl. They are in the building, in the computer lab on the 38th. I can’t remember Livon’s cell phone number, but Karl’s is programmed in my phone. I punch the buttons, still walking. It goes to Karl’s voice mail. “Karl, it’s Rob. I am getting out of the building. There’s been an explosion. I am leaving now!” Helene, she’s in the Hotel. Keep moving. There are still no instructions from the PA and no one is taking charge. This bothered me a lot. I tell some people to go, get out of the building. I start walking fast around the perimeter of the offices and cubes in the inside corridor that circuits the building. Motioning at people to keep moving, go. I go around the floor, once, twice. I’m not the only one doing this. Across the building I can see two others, a guy in a brown suit and Tom, a senior executive, are going around too. I can tell because I keep seeing them across the corridors that bisect the floor. If I see someone stopped, I tell them to go, to get out. There are only a few people that seem stuck. I am still not sure why I did this, I did not know many people on the floor, it just seemed like the right thing to do at a time when no one else was there to give orders.

Most people are off the floor now. It is eerily quiet. I come around the corner and I see a woman from the team I am working with, Barb. She is on the phone. “Let’s go Barb” I say urgently. She keeps talking. Another women I know walks toward me. It’s Michelle one the admin assistants. I did not know her well, but I had talked to her a couple of times before. She asked, “Are you leaving?” “Yeah”, I said, “Let’s go down together”. Barb was still on the phone. “Barb, we have to go, now!” I said more forcefully. She hung up the phone and stuffed some things in her bag. Michelle kept talking on her cell phone.

I had been working in the World Trade Center for over 5 months and I didn’t know any emergency procedures, I had only been in the interior stairwells to go down to the Lab on the 38th. There were still no announcements or alarms. I follow Barb and Michelle is close on my arm. We see a group of people entering a stairwell. We join them. In side the stairwell it is orderly. Like you’d expect in a fire drill. People are tense but no one is panicking. Then it hits me. Fuck, the 40th floor. That’s a long way from the ground floor. A long way. The stairs are narrow, the yellow walls close to us. The three of us just barely fit side by side, we go down in a slightly staggered line very close to the people in front of us. In turn, the people behind us were also very close.

There we were, not knowing what happened, wanting to desperately to know, trying to process this. I clutched my laptop and gear with my left hand and held my right out for balance as we descended. Michelle was on my left and a little further down and Barb was on my right one step up. The staircase was small, you could see, feel, hundreds of people trudging down the stairs slowly. It seemed like a fire drill only more tense than others I had been in before. I keep watching and looking at the people in front and in behind, watching for something to go wrong, watching for someone to panic. Stay calm. Being so tightly jammed on the stairwell, I know that if someone panicked and tried to run down, a pile-up would ensue and no one would get out. Faces were scared and perspiring. I did not know any of the people close to us, other than Barb and Michelle. The grey stairs were slick from the traffic and human perspiration. We had to walk carefully to avoid slipping. Down. What happened? There is the burble of people talking, like a cocktail party, you can’t hear a whole conversation, just snippets, but you can still catch important things. People were guessing, asking what happened. “It was a bomb”, “It was a plane”. I realized then that people were getting actual news as text messages on cell phones, or on Blackberries. My cell phone had no signal. It was a plane. My mind processed that as logically as it could. It’s a plane, so it must have been a small plane, no big deal it didn’t knock over the building. It must have hit high up. There’s no smoke. We can get out of this. I am keeping an eye on Michelle and Barb. “Rob” Barb says, “your stuff it must be at the hotel” you won’t be able to get it. You can come back to my place until we can figure out what to do. I have a place in the Village near NYU”. Our plan had been set. Michelle kept trying here cell phone trying to reach her brother. As we kept going the pace started to slow and it started getting hotter and more uncomfortable. There was smoke that was starting to get thicker in the stairwell and it was harder to breath. We looked at one another. The stairwell in the WTC did not have exits at every landing for every floor. When we got to the thirtieth floor, some people were leaving the stairwell. There was still no indication as to whether or not we should go down or up – we had no idea where the plane had crashed and I knew that in high-rises it not always the best to go down, sometimes the right thing to do was to stay put or go up. Damn. I see one of the SVP’s I work with leaving the floor. He’s working a Blackberry, punching at the keyboard with his thumbs. Silently, there is a tacit agreement to leave the stairwell and the crush of people. Fresh air, I breathed in deeply, worried more now about the fumes we had been inhaling. The floor is mostly deserted, but it is intact, no damage, just empty. Barb and Michele head for the phones. I talk to Pat the SVP that I know and find out the other members of our team are ok, they were across the street in the World Financial Center. They were evacuating too. I tell him I am going to try and call home. I head to an office. The sky in still blue, but there is an insane amount of paper fluttering in the air. I reach for the phone on the cluttered desk, a stranger’s pictures and awards on the wall. I accidentally hit a speed dial key and the phone starts ringing, someone picks up on the other end. “Bill, Bill” a voice says in a British accent – I had connected to this guy’s friend in London, I hung up the phone muttering. I am a foot away from the large window. I notice more debris in the air, bigger pieces, some hitting the window. Probably not a good idea. Get away from the windows. I back out of the office and found a cube close to where Barb was talking, nearer to the center of the building. I picked up the phone to dial out to Toronto. The instant I pick up there was a voice on the other end of the line. “Maureen, is that you? Maureen…do you see her?” a male voice panicked, probably her husband. I stammered a response “I am not Maureen, she’s not here, I am in her cube”. Hi quickly rattled off a New York address. “Tell here I’ll be there” he pleaded. “But…”. I decided in a split second to say what he needed to hear. “I’ll tell her if I see her”. He finally hung up. I dialed my wife’s cell phone. The recorded message indicated it was off. Damn. I dialed home. The phone rang 6 long times then switched to voice mail. All I squeezed out was, “Hello, It’s me and I am in the building that was hit, in the World trade center. I am all right I am just leaving the building now. I’ll give you a call on my cell”. Not the most inspiring message, but to the point. At that moment in time, I knew that I would get out to call her again and that nothing else was required. Gotta go. Later I would learn that I left this message at 9:02, 1 minute before the second plane smashed into the south tower.

I looked up and Michelle was moving to join me, clutching her bag. Pat looked at me and indicated he was going back into the stairwells with a nod of his head and a jerk of his thumb. I went to Barb, who was still on the phone, and motioned for her to come. The three of us gathered again, and went back toward the stairwell we had just left. There were people in front of us heading back in. We found out quickly that now we are traveling down with people from the 60th and 70th floors. They look disheveled and sweaty, handkerchiefs over their faces. Some laboring as they went down slowly. Soon after we started going down, we hear a shout. “Another plane, a second plane has hit”. I immediately reject the thought. I figured it was just that the media must be reporting the first incident twice… that happened all the time. There was wild speculation as we went down the stairs. One guy said it might be the failure of air traffic control, another said that was crazy. I am not sure why, but, in the stairwell that we were in, we didn’t feel the impact of the other plane or hear the explosion. Still no cell coverage, we kept heading down slowly. We were moving steadily and everything seemed tense but in motion. People were talking amongst each other. At one point there were two guys a flight of stairs apart. Two classic New Yawkas. “Hey Bobby” He yelled, “Dis’ is nutting. Remember ninety-tree?”. “Fuck, Yeah, yer right” Bobby replied. “There was that black smoke, no lights. Dis’ is a piece a cake”. I smile, a piece of cake. We keep moving. A man behind me sees my shirt. “Hey, you work for Siebel?” My shirt has the company logo on it. I turn to see him and give him a nod. “Hey Mary!” he yells behind him “This guy works for Siebel!”. She must have been an investment banker because she just rolled her eyes, pretty much reflecting the quarter we were having. He prodded, “So how’s this quarter going.” I give him the party line, good customers, tough markets, blah, blah, blah. Only in New York. Clients beside me, investors behind me and 27 floors to the ground floor.

We start slowing down now, almost to a stop for no apparent reason. The smoke in the stairwell is getting thicker. Smoke inhalation, bad. It is a pale white smoke, acrid. It hurts the back of my throat. People hold handkerchiefs to their mouths.

There’s a man behind us helping a woman. She’s large, overweight. She had taken her shoes off. He’s holding her arm carefully as they negotiate the stairs. We’re all talking. Suddenly behind, another man says, “ The other plane hit at the 80th floor of the south tower”. The man helping the lady stops. His face literally falls – “Don’t say that, my wife is working on the 98th…” He blinks, breathes and pulls it all together and just focuses on helping that woman, furrowing his brow in concentration. The procession stops, now people are more tense. We are still in the high twenties and were not making progress and we can’t tell why. People start yelling. Not panic, but New York traffic yelling. If they had horns, they’d be honking them. “Hey, Hey, Hey, keep it moving, keep it movin!.” “Come on, keep goin’”, “Why’re we stopping, let’s go, let go.”

The smoke is thicker. As I look down the stairwell, I can see it pouring in from the grey grates that are high up the yellow walls. The smoke was heavier than the air and it slides down the wall like fog on a moor. It was evil smelling, making people cough and hack. It was making my eyes tear it was so acrid. I check Barb and Michelle, we’re all coughing. Smoke Inhalation. We’re moving very slowly, 1 flight, then another. We were probably in the low twenties, I had not been paying attention to the floors we were passing, I was much more interested in checking the people that were around us making sure of our steps, making sure no one stumbled. At one landing there is a man in a wheel chair. He was waiting. There are two men with him, who have been carrying him down. I feel guilty that I don’t stop to help them, but I helping already, I could not bear to leave the women.

Barb’s intense blue eyes probably mirror the terror in my own and the smoke crawls into our lungs. Barb had a some kind of cloth and was using it to cover her mouth. It was getting hotter in the stairwell, my shirt was getting soaked with perspiration. I undid two of the buttons and untucked my shirt, seeking to cover my mouth and nose with the shirttail or my coller. One unsatisfactory tug proved it was to short. Choking. The smoke was denser now, a white fog, you could still see the shadowy outlines of people, but it was very smoky, a pale haze. I held my laptop tighter. Bad.. And then, finally, a break.

As we moved down, I saw people pressing to the wall. A security person was coming up the stairs. He was wearing a Port Authority uniform and he was handing out masks to those who needed them. This was the first time that I knew that we were going in the right direction and that we were going to get out. Following the Port Authority officer, were two policemen, hiking it up fast. What a relief, I shot a grin at Michele, and Barb who smiled back.

With the authorities in view, the smokey air began to thin, closer to normal. breathing was much, much easier. Each time someone came up, we had to stop and move against the wall. Following the policemen were firemen, fully kitted-up, masks dangling from utility belts, breathing apparatus, axes, tools clanking. They climbed the stairs with grim resolve. I looked in their eyes as they passed. Heroes. I knew they were heading up to save people, to make sure we were safe. On one of the landings near the 13th or 14th there was one fire fighter, he was a big guy, 6'3" 250lbs, standing, calm but breathing hard. He was in full turnout gear with oxygen on his back, his helmet cocked back on his head. Our eyes met, he had clear blue eyes and a thick blond moustache. I said good luck and really meant it. And he just nodded, clearly confident, knowing he was doing his job, saving people. I hope he survived.

We started to move down faster, now at a walking pace not stopping anymore. The confidence of the whole group was gaining. We could now here and see evidence of fire-fighting that was going on – firemen just inside the landing doors staging equipment and getting ready to go on the floors. We could here the rushing water of the hoses. The stairs, already wet, became a running river as we descended the last flights of stairs. We could here shouts as the water rained down on people below us. “Your going to get wet” wafted up to us. The water was making more noise than people now. Michelle grabbed my arm “ Your Laptop! I’ll put it in my bag.” I nodded and she helped me put the computer in her bag and then slung it on her shoulder. The water splashed down on us, we grabbed hold and carefully stepped down as the water from the fire hoses swept down the stairs.

We were there, at the door, I could see the day light as people poured out of the stairwell and onto the mezzanine, completely unprepared for what I would see next.

We slowed again, There’s a line up to get out the door. There are two port authority officers at the door and more outside, we move quickly, the women still on either side of me as we left the stairwell finally. It’s noisy and bright all of a sudden, the sunshine forces me to squint and raise my arm. We exited out of the stairwell at the mezzanine level. The mezzanine is one floor above the ground floor and is two stories high, looking out on an area that opened onto the courtyard between the two towers that was usually full of people, especially on sunny days. The outside mezzanine wall was two stories of floor to ceiling glass, giving a clear view of the courtyard.

The officers are yelling at us now “WALK and DON’T LOOK, KEEP WALKING”. Blinking, I breath in the air and look out on the courtyard. What? I am looking but nothing makes sense. Nothing is where is supposed to be. Wreckage, smoke, things burning. Michelle looks out mouth gaping. It wasn’t a small plane, it was a jet?!? I could see in the wreckage - luggage, seats, shoes, clothing strew all across the square. It was as if a bomb has just blown up. I was about six feet from the glass and I focused on a piece of the wreckage, my concentration and focus were so high that the part seem to leap of the ground. It was the skin of a jet, riveted and grey. It was a big jet. I gasped. Those aren’t just shoes. There were a string of security guards strung along the window every 10 feet or so – they urged us on yelling “WALK. DON’T RUN AND DON’T LOOK”. They were trained to know that such devastation would cause a catatonic reaction in civilians so they snapped us out of it and we walked like zombies, but I couldn’t stop looking at the carnage. I desperately tried to orient my self – the only thing I could recognize was the fountain sculpture in the middle of the courtyard. It look as if it was squashed by a giant. Then Barb yelled and grabbed my arm squeezing hard. We stopped and gaped. “Oh my God Rob look, no,no don’t look” realizing what she saw. At first only the dress registered. It was a patterned flowered dress. 10 feet in front of us right near the glass in the courtyard lay a women lying in front of us, her head was gone or smashed, her legs, just bloody pulp. Beyond her lay more smoldering airline wreckage and body parts. “KEEP MOVING”. Gotta go. I closed my eyes and kept walking close to Barb. We walked along another side of the building and then turned finally to the escalator the led down to the shopping concourse below. There was noise and chaos below. You could here water spraying, ambulances and shouting. The building looks remarkably damaged. I though at first it was water damage, but then I found out later it was from the blast that went through the elevator shafts to the ground floor. The ground floor was darkened, every thing blackened. Emergency people tended to the wounded. I saw a woman on the step, her head bleeding from a gash on her forehead, crying as the worker knelt beside here holding her closely. The sprinklers systems we on, so we were getting drenched. Water was ankle deep and running. Barb was trying to get oriented and headed to a specific exit. I had no idea where to go so I followed with Michele. I police office stopped us waving us back to the line of people toward another exit. We walked by the watch stand which only that morning held shiny new Tag Heur’s and Seikos was smashed and broken, not a watch to be seen. We stumbled out of the doors and up the stairs to street level – having walked through the shopping concourse underneath the courtyard, so we came up just at the edge of the courtyard at street level. I am completely focused on just walking slowly and carefully through the mess. Everything else was shut down. It was an incredible level of intensity, a state of powerful concentration I had never felt before. All the things under my gaze were in laser focus and nothing outside of my field of vision was apparent.

Finally, we were out. I was elated. Michelle yelled something and ran over to a man, he looked like a biker – black half-moon helmet, a beard, t-shirt and jeans with a thick silver chain at the hip attached to some unseen wallet or knife. They hugged. She called back to us, “It’s my brother, he’s here, my brother”. We walked up to him. The noise out side was loud. She yelled “Rob, your stuff…”. She reached in her bag and gave me my laptop back. I yelled back, “Are you good? Are you good to go?” She nodded happily, we left her to her brother, and Barb and I continued to walk away from the towers. I can’t really tell where I am, when I am. I am completely disoriented, but Barb knows where she is, I follow her. Now we saw what the world had been watching. It was awesome in its magnitude. Both towers were burning – the South tower belched red billowing flames while the top of the North was surrounded by black, oily smoke still pouring out of the building. Barb said, “My God, it’s like a movie.” It was hypnotic to see the towers on fire - your whole being is rejecting what your senses are processing. This can’t be happening. It’s not real. I reach for a prayer, something, think something. I come up with emptiness. We walk a bit more, the Barb grabs my arm and says, “Rob,we have to stop. This is history, we’ll never see anything like this again in our lives”. We stop in the middle of the street, gaping at the fires burning. All around us is chaos. The smell of burnt plastic and electrical wiring tingles. Sirens from ambulances and police cars are blaring as the move in on the site. People are running in all directions. Most people are walking away from the building. Security people are running toward the building, others are stationed at intervals to help with the evacuation. I can see panicked faces of the runners. Too Dangerous. I look around, I see it’s not safe to be in the middle of the road, so I take Barb’s arm and say “C’mon”. I take her back to the corner of the block where we can get our backs to the grey metallic pillar the makes up the corner of 22 Broad Street. At least no one can get in behind us. We stop and try to take in all that is happening. It hard not to keep staring at the towers – we’re transfixed watching this disaster movie unfold around us. Many people are close in to us, standing, staring. I never forget the angle of my neck as I craned it to look upward at the smoke and flames, impossibly large and forbidding against the clear blue September sky. We look at the towers and then at each other, Barb’s blues eyes wide. Disbelief. We stop for some time, just a short time a few heartbeats. “Let’s go”. It was clear that this wasn’t a safe place and I just wanted to leave. There was no more I could do. We start to walk toward Broadway. Suddenly a police woman shouts “Ohmigod, she’s jumping”. I can’t stop myself, I wheel around looking at the building and up. A body, like a rag doll, tumbles downward, seeming to float in the air. NO. Sickened, I turn away. I did not want to witness any more. It was too much. Barb and I turn to walk with the crowd, up Broadway. Police are shouting, screaming at people to move it, get out of there. I was amazed to see that even with all the horror, people stood watching, taking pictures and video. Assholes, it’s too dangerous. Keep walking. We’re in shock. Looking up Broadway there are thousands of people and it seems like we are all doing the same thing… trying to make cell phone calls. Looking at the small screens, punching numbers and cursing our phones for not working. One half the road way contained people walking form the tower, the other half was clear for emergency vehicles that were still speeding toward the towers. It would take a long time for me to feel safe again.

The overriding question that I kept asking myself, was what the Hell just happened? As we walked up the street, we saw a clump or people around a car close to the building. As we came closer it was clear that people were listening to the news playing over the car radio. We came in closer. It sounded like CNN. I listened.. “The North tower World Trade Center was struck by a Boeing 767…”. It was a jet!. “…appears to be the work of Terrorists.” All I can hear reverberating is the last word. Unbearable sadness. It was people who did this. People. I am saddened to the core, sounds get dull. I stand very still. Barb has drifted slightly away from me, intently listening to the news. “Barb!” a woman near to us yells. “Barb! You’re ok!” The hug. They are two others. They seem to know one another. It turns out that they all play on the same softball team. They were in another building but had been evacuated soon after the first plane has struck the North tower. We share our stories rapidly connecting speculating. Barb makes hasty introductions. “You’re from Canada? You picked a fine week to visit” We laughed, a little too nervously. Barb tells them we’re headed back to her place and we quickly conclude it the closest place where we can get inside and make phone call. “And have a drink!”. It seems slightly safer to be in a bigger group, so we keep heading north, paired up in to small groups, excitedly talking about what just happened to us. We kept stopping to look back at the towers as they continued to burn behind us. “Do you think they will collapse?” . One of the women had been out side a building a block away from the towers watching the first tower burn . When the second jet slammed into the South tower, the crowd she was with panicked. They were outside the ground floor of a building that was encased in glass. The crowd pounded on the glass until it shattered so that they could get in lobby. Insane. In the mêlée, she dropped her purse, when she went to go back out to get it, there was a man lying right in front of her, split in half by a window, she got quiet, her eyes wide, obviously still seeing the horrible image of a dying man. I reached out to hold her arm. People did this.

We were walking north, when suddenly, there was a boom and a roar in the sky. I spun around going low, craning my head upward to see what was attacking us now. People were screaming, scattering away. I scanned the sky, terrified. Finally, there! It was a fighter jet, an F16. “Don’t worry, it’s one of ours” I shouted. Breathing heavily, blood pumping, we got closer together and kept walking towards Barb’s place near NYU.

We could see at the corners there were long line-ups at pay phones, there was still no cell service. The crowd started to thin, and there were two distinct groups, people, like us, who had been close to the towers walking away and people staring at us as we walked, they must have just been coming out of their building, stunned horror reflected in their eyes.

Oh no! I hear screaming behind us. I spin again looking south down Broadway. All I can see is black smoke seething at street level and a crowd of people, many blocks away, running. “We have to get off this street!” I yell at the women, motioning to them with my arm, “Run”. All of them except Barb start running west, across to Sixth Avenue. Every cell in my body wants to run. Trampled. Run and get the Hell out of there. “Barb, let’s go”. “I can’t. My shoe. The strap, it’s broken”. I look down, the strap of her shoe must have broken in the descent. I look at the ground around us. I see broken glass and rocks, She can’t take off her shoes. I look back down the road, people are running. “C’mon”. I take her arm or her hand, and we walk together, as we have done all day and keep going, not looking behind us. The crowd and the smoke never reach us. We were probably 15 or 20 blocks north of the tower and most of the dust and debris that we saw later on television went to the south. We caught up with the rest of the team, thankful to be alive. We were stunned, looking at each other, all with the same question in mind, “What just happened”. We looked back. No. It couldn’t be. I thought at first that it was just an explosion, but it was worse. Barb said “My God Rob, there is only one tower.” She cried out. “Barb”, I asked, desperately “Are you sure we are supposed to see both towers from here?” I thought that we were looking at one of those views of the towers where one was hidden behind the other. “No, there should be two. One of the towers has collapsed”. Disbelief. We stood a looked at the rising smoke. The other tower still stood there burning, alone now. A man in a suit walked by holding a briefcase in one hand and a newspaper in the other. I know instantly that he had been there, in the building when it happened. “It’s gone”, he said resolutely and kept walking. I felt so helpless, hopeless. All we could do is walk away.

I thought some pretty simple thoughts as I look back on the black oily smoke. That was too close. Life is too short. I’ve got to get home.

“It’s not far, just another couple of blocks”. The five of us walked, numbed, quiet. I kept looking over my shoulder at the single tower and the smoke. We come around the corner of a low condo, very elegant. Near the lobby, Barb bumps into a neighbour, Boris a tall, fit blonde guy about our age. He’s in workout gear and carrying a knapsack. Talking New-York –fast “Barb, did you see, the Word Trade Center has been attacked, and they’re still burning”. “We were in the North Tower. We just got out” she replied quietly. “C’mon, were going up to my apartment for a drink. This is Rob”. Boris turns grey. I smile and shake his hand and we all head for the elevator. In the elevator one of the women asks Barb where her husband is. “He’s at home, he just dropped me at work and was heading back home this morning, I talked to him already”. It hit me, that’s who she was talking to on the 40th and again on the 30th. We wait a polite distance by the door, so that Barb and Zarko could have a private moment before we piled into their New York condo. She unlocks the door and calls out while entering.

Then, she goes in. In a minute, she comes out. She looks at me, blue eyes burning, “He’s not here”, she pauses, looking scared, then “Come in guys”. We file into the apartment. Barb heads for the kitchen, another one of the girls heads for the television, snapping it to CNN. Boris walks to the window and sticks his head outside, so that he can see downtown – The window faces east so he has to hang out the window to look south. From the window we can see the lone tower and the black smoke billowing in the air. Out the window and on CNN, we are in the center of the universe as the storm boils around us.

The images on the screen are what we have been living for the past hour. We see the North tower burning as the second explodes. I am torn open in deep shock and now the images don’t stop, I can’t stop watching them, trying to makes some sense of what has been happening. Trying to figure out what might happen next. Barb brings out some beers for us, and one of the woman, makes a call to her parents. She’s crying, telling her story. “Yeah, I’m ok, I love you too”.

CNN blares in the background. There’s an engineer shaking his head, trying to explain why the tower collapsed. And we see it over and over again, slow motion, crumbling to dust in front of us, behind us.

It’s my turn on the phone now. I call my house. “It’s me”. I think it’s my wife Lynne. “Thank God you’re alive. What happened?” The story starts to come out when I realize that I am not talking to Lynne, it’s our friend Laura. I am annoyed, I want to speak to Lynne, I need to speak to Lynne. “Wait, wait, I’ll get her”. I wait calmly, taking a pull on that Bud’. “Hello Lynne?” She’s on the phone now. “I made it out, I am out, up in Greenwich Village.” She asks me if I am ok.. “Yeah, just got to figure out what to do and how to get back. Are you watching this? It’s on CNN. The North Tower just fell. That’s where I was. That’s where I was when the plane hit. We just got out of there, I couldn’t get through on my cell, it wasn’t working. She says “Ok, you need to call your Mom, she’s a mess. Call me after. Stay safe, I love you”. “I love you too”, I say quietly.

I call my parents in Ottawa, still watching the images on CNN. “ Mom. Yeah, I’m ok”. She’s crying. “Things were bad but we’re out, I am up near Greenwich village”. We talk a bit more and she calms. I tell her to call my brother and sister and I tell her I will keep in touch. I remind that the cell phones aren’t working.

My mind starts to churn as I hang up. What at about the others, Karl, Livon, the people who flew into New York? Where was everyone?

Barb is by the window. We’ve been here for about a half hour and there is no sign of her husband. I look over at Boris and he just shakes his head. The women are close together, they start saying their good byes, hugging. Then it’s the three of us.

I call my office and get one of the admins, Charlaine. “We heard, your wife called – thank God you’re alive”. I am tense. “What about…” She interrupts me “Everyone has checked in except Nigel. Immense relief, and then worry. So where is everyone now, we’ve got get off Manhattan? Charlaine starts to tell me where people are. She tells me that there have been some rooms booked at the Marriott Marquis in Time Square. I tell here to make sure to tell everyone that calls to meet there, it’s as good a location as any, and we can figure out what to do from there. At least we’ll have a room to sleep in. I tell her I will check in with the office later. The sheer magnitude of what has just occurred is starting to sink in. After all that, what would happen next? More attacks? How wide spread?

CNN is still reporting missing aircraft and a scrambling military effort. Local news is still focused on what was happening at the site. The estimates of the death or possible estimated are mind numbing – up to a 100,000 people worked in and around the towers. Looking out the window, people were streaming up the street, while other people stood, craning their necks to watch the towers. We could see people on roof tops and on balconies also watching, riveted on the unbelievable scene downtown. Sirens still blaring continuously as emergency vehicles charged through the streets. The death toll would be enormous.

We sat nervously, making small talk, watching news, I recounted what I knew from my calls. I asked Barb if she had an Internet connection, I was starving for more information, anything that would indicate how bad things were and how wide the madness could have spreads. The news was speculating on how many other buildings were burning and how much of New York would have to be evacuated.

Barb looks very tense. She say quietly that Zarko probably went down to the site. Boris says convincingly. “He’ll be back”. I am thinking the worst, but also that we have to stay strong for Barb and take care of her until Zarko is back. I busy my self with here computer trying to get online, without a lot of success, wishing at the same time that I had a blackberry so I could keep connected.

Time drags and emotion in the room is high and tense. We all seem busy but really we are waiting. The colour is draining from Barb’s face.

Then, the door swings open and Zarko, a tall craggy faced slav, rushes in. He’s disheveled and dusty and Barb rushes to him, hugging him. Boris and I are up and smiling, huge goofy grins. I don’t know the man, but I feel I’ve known him al my life, there are rapid introductions and we shake hands, firm grip, pumping, like old soldiers meeting after a campaign. The emotional relief is enormous. It’s now afternoon. We rapidly catch up, he understands what Barb and I went through.

“I saw it on television and then after I talked to you the second time and then the second Plane hit. I couldn’t bear it. I ran downstairs and took my bike and raced down to Canal. There were barricades but I went around them to get close to the towers.” My eyes widened. It turns out he was outside the buildings waiting for Barb and he had staid after we had left to escape up Broadway. He continued, “I didn’t know what I could do, but I could leave without you. I was close a couple of block away when I heard explosions and the first tower was falling. I moved fast. There was smoke and screaming everywhere”.

As he spoke, his words merged with the images being played on CNN, there was no difference in what he was saying and what we saw. He’d survived.

We looked at one another, each wide eyed. The Zarko broke into a smile. “ We are hungry, no? We must eat”. Laughter.

— — — — — — — — +++++++

________________________________________________________________________

Wed September 12 – Escape New York

Thurs September 13 – James, Michelle is missing, her brother was missing too.

Friday September 14 – the group session - the bell tolls

Not flying the flag in my window

The first stairwell – with Rick at 3080 Yonge

The first time back at Yonge and Egg

Strong smells

Air Craft sounds, On the phone in the back yard

Sirens

Running….by the American flag, funeral home.

Telling the story, sharing it.

First call back with my dad. How cool is cool.

Crazy golfing and smoke, Helen, Don Cary. Jim Covering my back in Chicago.

Breakfast with Mike the Sunday after,

Ottawa Thanksgiving – Home Coming - a journey and a walk alone

EMDR – Dr. Till Davies

Oct 25 Back in New York

Nov and December The New York Project

Daniels Art

Peter’s Story

Ottawa Christmas

6 Month Anniversary – The closing of the Site

June in New York

Sept 11, 2002 One Year Later CTV

Back at the American Embassey to leave something to remember, a rock from the site.