[Sca-cooks] stories from the disaster

[Linda M. Kalb]

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I live in the Philadelphia area and have family and friends in both areas
that were hit (New York City and Washington, DC).

At 11:05 AM 9/13/01, someone on another list wrote:
[snip]
If any one has stories that they would like to share, (and the time - I
know we're all busy trying to concentrate on work and life), I for one
would be interested to hear them. Sometimes it's therapeutic to write (or
type) these things out.

I will let their emailed words speak for themselves:

 From a friend who was in a building adjacent to the twin towers:

Yes, I'm OK -- very very traumatized, but still OK. I'm working at 3 WFC
with Merrill Lynch, which is adjacent to the twin towers. Simply because I
came back from France on Sunday I'm on European time and went in at 8 am. I
felt the bldg shake with the first crash, then ran outside and saw the
second plane slam into the south tower. I was running before I was
conscious I was running.
I saw some things today you wouldn't believe. I'll tell you about it some
time, but yes, I'm OK. But kind of frightened now to be in NY.

 From a brother who was commuting into New York:

Email 1 (responding to me, cc'd to other family members):
I'm at home. Our bus was turned around. We were approaching the Lincoln
Tunnel just after the two planes hit the Towers. I saw the Towers about
five minutes after the second plane hit and saw them smoke for the next 20
minutes. When I last saw them, they were creating more smoke than I have
ever seen anywhere, but they were still standing. Later, down the road, we
heard the sickening news that the south tower had collapsed.

Email 2 (responding to another brother, cc'd to me and other family):
I am okay. Luckily we got stuck in traffic on I-80 and our bus driver got
lost trying to get around the traffic. That meant we didn't get to the
Lincoln Tunnel till just after the two planes hit the towers. They wouldn't
let us through the tunnel. So the bus driver turned the bus around and went
back home and even gave us our tickets back.

 From another brother who lives in Brooklyn:

9/11/01
Subject: I'm alive
Long distance isn't working. Email is. Just wanted you to know that me and my
roommates are fine. I can't think of any of my friends who work down there,
but someone I know is probably dead right now. Who knows when we'll know
anything.

9/12/01
Subject: Magic Trick
It has to be a trick. First you see it -- for thirty years -- then you don't.
I am sending along shots from my roof. In between yesterday morning and this
morning, there was just a lot of smoke obscuring the island, and blowing for
the most part in our direction. It smelled like smoke over here, and charred
memos were even found on 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.

The good news is that so far I know of no friends or friends-of-friends who
are missing. I have heard plenty of close-call stories: Dentists
appointments, trains missed, hangovers, that kept people away from the area
yesterday morning.

Yesterday morning. Every development was more unimaginable than the one
before. You probably felt the same way. It's different when you live in New
York, though. And it's different if you live in Manhattan; it's different if
you work downtown; it's different if you are dead. These thoughts never leave
you, yet are hard to grasp, so they circle your head, looking for an opening,
hoping to be incorporated into your rational (this isn't rational!) thought.

I had the TV on for 14 hours yesterday, and the news could not sink in. It's
unimaginable to this day, only the second day, of this new life in New York.

Here in Brooklyn, people are out and about enjoying the weather, and the deep
breath the city's businesses are taking. It's not enough to be alive; we must
act alive. Neighborhood friends came over last night, and I went out with
some others for lunch today. Unity and mourning.

The terrorists considered the WTC a symbol of something. I never did, until
it was gone.

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I won't send the attachment to the listserve, but if you want a copy of the
pictures let me know individually.

I also have a friend who was at the Pentagon when it was hit and survived.

Linda Kalb

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