After 911, I sent an email out to all my friends and family letting them know I was okay. I also posted it to Tango-L, an email list devoted to social Argentine Tango. Later, I got replies from people all over the world.
911 marked the beginning of my life in Hell's Kitchen. I went to see Jan because I couldn't get home to Astoria. I never went home after that.
Always choose being together.
- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 21:16:53 -0700 (PDT)
- From: "Jai Jeffryes" <jaijeffryes@yahoo.com>
- Subject: Still here
Hi everybody,
I'm still here, and I'm fine. If you can believe it, merely three weeks ago I began working at 2 World Financial Center, the building adjoining the World Trade Center. Yesterday, I was running a little behind schedule. The time that the first airplane impacted is the time that I'm usually walking across the plaza below. My train bypassed my station, which annoyed me because that meant I would have to walk two blocks back to get to the World Trade Center. I had no idea that anything had just transpired, except some guy got on one stop back and was raving about something that he said still had him shaking. I thought he had witnessed a mugging or maybe he was just crazy.
When I got out at the Wall Street station it was mere seconds after the second plane had impacted and I was in the middle of pandemonium. It looked like the beginning of a ticker tape parade with paper and debris raining down on the street. I turned a corner and saw the twin towers aflame. I circled the area trying to find out if my building was still intact.
It never occured to me that 110-story skyscrapers could collapse. Viewing the fire and smoke, I could not even believe what I was seeing. As I circled the area, the fires were becoming visibly larger and I could see more deeply into the interior of the building. It was dawning on me that this fire could never be controlled. Then I heard the sound of the tower collapsing. I didn't know that was what was happening because I couldn't see it. I thought maybe some of the facade had fallen away. Fortunately, I was not hit by any debris, but a tide of ash rolled over my area and engulfed all of us. It was like a nuclear winter. I was right against the river by Battery Park and just about ready to jump into the water, but I realized there was no fire coming at me. It was just ash and soot. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth and avoided breathing any of it. It was akin to snowflakes, but thicker than any blizzard. I could see 10-20 feet anead of me and that was it. Day became night, and other people who were getting that gunk in their throats were hacking and expectorating.
I didn't know how much of the building had fallen, but I believed there could be more collapses, so I endeavored to walk south and east around the tip of Manhattan before any more waves of ash could roll over me. Shortly thereafter, I heard the same sound again which turned out to be the other tower collapsing. By this time, the first tidal wave of soot had thinned out enough for me to see that now a second one was rolling in my direction and would catch up in about 5 minutes. I kept walking briskly eastward, so when it finally hit me it was considerably thinner than the one that hit me when I was only a block away from the area.
I finally got far enough north not to be downwind of the conflagration. I was covered from head to toe with white ash that I heard one firefighter speculate consisted of pulverized concrete. It was as if someone had emptied a sack of lime over me. I knew from the time right after I exited the subway that it was important for me to make phone calls to loved ones to let them know I was okay. (That was before two 110-storey skyscrapers collapsed into oblivion practically right next to me!) However, long lines were to be found at every pay phone. I finally got my bearings and walked uptown. In Chinatown, I finally found a pay phone that had only a few people in line in front of it. I called my folks who were mightily relieved. (Incidentally, my calling card from Excel wouldn't work, but 1-800-COLLECT did... this is an unsolicited endorsement!)
I was starving, for I had eaten nothing at all yet. Street vendors were in business, so I bought a shishkebab in a pita. As I was standing there, I coughed from the charcoal smoke from the grill. I laughed ironically at myself standing there covered in soot from America's worst terrorist attack yet too oblivious to stand upwind of a street vendor's burning charcoal!
The streets were choked with people because no transportation services were functioning. You could easily discern who had been near the attack and who had not. The throngs of people headed uptown and covered in soot were the ones who'd been in it. The throngs of people headed downtown were the ones who hadn't been there and were trying to get a closer look. I made my way to the west side 20's where my brother works. I didn't know if my parents had succeeded in getting through to him by phone since phone service was spotty. He had heard nothing about me, and said over and over again that he had hoped I would have the sense just to come to his office.
It was there that I first saw the footage of the collapsing towers. I was dumbfounded. I hadn't realized that this was what caused the sound I had first heard from the next block. The area where the rubble fell was the side where I had been standing approximately 15 minutes earlier.
I continued my walk uptown. I bought an NYC tee-shirt from a tourist shop along the way to replace the soot- and mucous-encrusted shirt I was wearing and that had saved me from breathing any appreciable amounts of an incinerated World Trade Center. I also bought contact lens solution to clean my contacts and flush out my eyes. I stopped at a friend's apartment to wash off the soot, change into my clean tee-shirt and flush my eyes.
I still don't know if the building my company is in (2 World Financial Center) still exists. I don't know the status of my job nor that of the other guys on my team, who often arrive about the same time as I do. I might not get annoyed at slow trains anymore. Had I left for work 10 minutes earlier and not been on a delayed train, I would have been right under the face of the WTC when the first plane hit!
Every time I see clips of that blizzard of ash, I could swear that I still smell it.
Jai
