A Decade Later: My Experience of September 11, 2001

I was a thousand miles away at home, and didn't actually see the TV footage till around 11 a.m because we didn't have TV. It was Tuesday morning and we were heading out the door to our volunteer work when a friend called and said a plane had crashed into one of the Towers. They thought it was an accident then. By the time we drove the ten minutes from our house to meet up with other volunteers, a second one had crashed and they knew it was terrorism. In view of that, we prepared a message of comfort, and headed out to an area around Matewan, WV. As we went door-to-door, we found many who had no idea what we were talking about, so we urged them to turn on their TVs and shared the message we had prepared.

It was at someone's home who didn't know that I first saw some images- I had suggested she turn on her TV which was next to the door. When we stopped for lunch around noon, we chose a local restaurant that had a big screen TV and asked them to turn it on so that we could see footage of what was happening.

Following lunch, we stopped by at home to find that someone we regularly visited had left a message on the answering machine, literally crying in her distress, hence we went straight to her house and spent the afternoon trying to console her. There was a meeting that night, so we headed home as soon as she seemed to calm down enough.

However, the traffic was backed up horrendously. We thought perhaps there was a car accident, but as we inched closer to the one intersection in Phelps, KY., we found there was a run on the gas stations. The police were directing traffic, so I rolled down my window and asked the officer what was going on. He said: "What! Are you stupid or something? They've bombed New York! We're at war, don't you know?!" So I thanked him. Since we were low on gas, and it was clear there would soon be none to get anywhere in short order, we decided to join the long wait at the pumps- more out of prudence than panic. They were rationing it: $10 worth at one station and the second one was 10 gallons per person. We had to go to both stations to get enough to keep us going. It was a week and a half before there was any gas to be found again.

We attended the meeting that night and began our volunteer service at 5 a.m. the next day, armed with as many issues of a magazine printed earlier that Spring that had discussed terrorism and giving comfort in the aftermath of an attack that we could find still scattered among the volunteers as well as other appropriate literature. At 9:30 a.m. it was time to meet up again to regroup, but we were late because people were literally hanging off the car, begging for anything we had that could comfort them.

We had planned a bus trip to tour the headquarters of our volunteer work in New York and decided to go ahead even though it was only three weeks after the attack. New York City was in chaos then. National Guard and the army everywhere, police on every corner. Which roads were open and which were closed changed everyday and even the officials couldn't tell us which, but we found our way around anyway. Our bus was stopped at several checkpoints where armed police and trained dogs inspected the bus and the luggage stored in the compartment. At headquarters, where most of the organizing and printing took place at the time, there were many stories. People had fled across the Brooklyn Bridge by the hundreds and sought refuge there since its buildings were the first they came upon. Volunteers working there welcomed them with open arms, fed them, comforted them, and in some cases gave them places to sleep. A few of these poor souls were still there when we arrived. The volunteers themselves were quietly traumatized, having watched it all with their own eyes. Some who worked in one of the factories (now sold and converted to apartments)- among whom were personal friends- were transferred to work in other departments since the building had large windows all the way around and a straight, clear view of the Towers.

They were still burning when we were there. The ash that fell constantly, the choking dust and smoke that nearly killed me when we would first come up out of the subway, but -most of all- the smell are still very vivid to me. The anthrax scare at the New York Times happened while we were there. I'll never forget it. I still have the photos we took of the area around Ground Zero that we were allowed to walk to (the streets around it were closed to all traffic, even pedestrian, for a perimeter of about 10 or 11 blocks on one side and even more blocks on another). Yet how immediately we as volunteers were mobilized to help both our own and the millions of grieving, desperate people around the world was truly most impressive!