The horrific terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) in Manhattan will be forever seared into my memory. However, after 20 years past, my memories are fading ...
At the time, my wife and I lived right across from the WTC on the other side of the Hudson river in a high rise apartment building in Jersey City, NJ. From our bedroom we could view the magnificent and iconic two towers of the WTC.
My job used to be located in an old office building on Broadway near the entrance to Wall Street, next to the Trinity Church. Sometimes, on a nice day I would take the ferry across the Hudson river to go to work landing in front of the WTC. Shortly after I changed my job, my employer moved the office from Broadway into a very low level of one of the two towers of the WTC a few weeks before September 11 occurred. Fortunately, I learnt later all my former colleagues got out of the building in time.
My wife and I got married only about two months before September 11 in the municipal building of Manhattan. Then New York city Mayor Rudi Giuliani was unfortunately not available to officiate our wedding.
Just before September 11, my wife was hospitalized at Columbia University medical center on 168th Street. On September 11, very early in the morning, I got on the subway to visit my wife. Then the terrorist attack unfolded on TV while we were together in the hospital room. Everybody in the hospital was shocked! Later in the evening, I somehow managed to return home via a detour while my wife had to stay longer at the medical center.
The aftermath
For weeks photos of victims were posted in the elevator of our apartment building home: Have you seen her/him! Apparently dozens of people who perished in the WTC lived in our apartment building. We did not personally really know any of these neighbors, but it was horrible to enter the elevator every day and see their photos.
A first aid tent attended by several paramedics was setup along the Hudson river near our apartment building across from what was the WTC. This first aid tent would stay there for weeks even after it was highly unlikely that any survivors would be rescued. Hope springs eternal!
Awful smelling fume clouds coming from the burning or smoldering rubble of WTC would visibly waft across the Hudson river for several weeks. Every time we left our home, my wife and I would smell it.
For several months, the rubble of the WTC was removed. This was one of the largest human efforts I have ever closely witnessed:
Day and night dozens of barges would transport the rubble away on the Hudson river shuttling back and forth incessantly.
Day and night, you could see a dozens of tightly lined up large commercial dump trucks waiting to be loaded with rubble and then to transport it off. This truck caravan never shortened until the end of the cleanup process.
What a mind boggling effort! American can do spirit at its best despite the horror!
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