Eyewitness to 9/11 (NYC)- John Rahmes '70

by John Rahmes '70

Friday, October 5, 2001

Dear Folks,

Needless to say, be glad you weren't in lower Manhattan 3½ weeks ago.

Early on September 11, I was madly preparing to take an evening flight to Frankfurt, Germany. I was scheduled to give a paper at a conference there on a project in Russia which I have been working on for the last 5 years. I had scrounged and wrangled a place for myself and my Russian partner on the program, and managed to get the German sponsors to pay for her flight and expenses and to get myself a grant to cover my costs as well. The whole production had been a lot of trouble to set up, and I was looking forward to finally getting to Germany. Of course, I had put off doing a lot of little annoying tasks until that very last morning, and was frantically trying to get them done before the limousine picked me up.

Some of these took me to lower Manhattan, and the first one was to get cash from the Merrill Lynch ATM in the World Financial Center. After exiting the subway at the Broadway-Nassau station, this trip, which I make about every 2 weeks, requires me to walk west on Fulton ½ block to Broadway, from Broadway west on Vesey Street 1 block, enter #5 World Trade Center, pass through its underground mall, walk through the lobby of the north tower (#1 World Trade Center), cross the pedestrian bridge over West Street, and finally enter the Winter Garden of the WFC.

I have a nervous stomach, which only gets more nervous when I anticipate a long plane flight, so at the last minute I delayed my journey, being forced to take a little extra time to remedy my discomfort. I was really annoyed that I was getting a later start than I had hoped, though my timetable couldn't possibly have been set back more than five minutes. I have made the trip from my house to the Broadway - Nassau subway stop many times, and I can predict how long it will take with high accuracy. When I finally arrived in Manhattan and came out of the subway, the north tower was already burning. I could not have arrived more than 2-3 minutes after AA Flight #11 struck - maybe even less than 1 minute. Had I held to my original schedule, I would likely have been inside WTC #1 on impact. I found out just yesterday that all of the mall and lobby ceilings had collapsed very soon after the initial impact, and I could have easily been under them when they fell.

What I first saw when I came out of the subway on to Fulton Street were people milling about oddly down at the corner of Fulton and Broadway. I stood for some minutes trying to figure out what to do. Something was happening. I walked down Fulton to Broadway, looked up, and saw flames at every window of 2 complete floors on the east wall of Tower 1 - at that time, I couldn't seen the huge hole in the top of the north wall. It was clearly a catastrophe, but it seemed to be a limited one. All traffic within sight had been halted, except for emergency vehicles roaring south down Park Row and turning west on Vesey toward the north tower. I remember noticing that these vehicles represented every possible hospital and religious group. Upon interrogation, a guy standing next to me tentatively offered the explanation that the tower had been accidentally struck by an airplane. I didn't believe him. In the back of my mind, I knew it had to have been caused by some kind of bomb, because in a modern building, for technical reasons which I won't detail here, you can't cause a fire like that by flipping a lit cigarette into a trash can full of paper. I was very irritated that I couldn't get to my money by my normal route because access was already sealed off by police cordons on the west side of Broadway. I began hatching a scheme involving walking east to South Street Seaport, turning south there and walking all around the bottom of the island, ending up finally on the west side of West Street. I could have then entered the Winter Garden and gotten my money, having totally avoided the WTC. But this was my conscious thought.

I vacillated, and as I did, some kind of self-protective "screen" must have descended over my perceptions. I believe most psychologists term this mental state "being in denial". My initial visual impression of the twin towers, received when I first saw them shortly after arriving in New York in September 1978, was of 2 vast silver ingots, absolutely devoid of occupants and incapable of containing them. Certainly, the towers' windows were narrow, and people inside the building could not be seen from the street below. I realize now that all of my choices which followed were based on the strategem of avoiding seeing any of the horrific details which might now be visible at those widows. I was only partially successful in this plan. After what seemed a very long time, I decided to attempt to do the other little items on my list.

I did manage to get my second errand done, which was picking up a contract from a structural engineering consultant whose offices are in the 46^th floor penthouse of #225 Broadway. I was, of course, very distracted and actually wandered about 2 blocks farther north than I needed to go, and had to double back to find the building. I seemed then to stand in its lobby for many minutes, before finally deciding to go up. I was afraid - both for my safety and for what I might see. Their office has a large west-facing window which formerly framed #1 World Trade Center, only about 1000 ft. away. From this window, I could see the ten storey high diamond-shaped hole where the plane had struck. The hole was then just smoldering, with the actual flames still limited to the 2 floors immediately below. Occasionally, I could see little dots tumbling out of the hole - I didn't realize it at the time, but the dots must have been human beings. As I said before, I think I was seeing everything through a perceptual protective screen. I then looked down at the plaza level, and saw hundreds of aluminum wall panels fluttering downward through the air - they were like falling leaves, and many already littered the plaza. A very large piece of structural steel, about 2 stories tall and detached by the explosion of Flight #11, was drifting lazily down toward the pavement below. I remember that my only conscious worry at the time was whether or it not it would smash the sculpture in the center of the plaza. There were a few people standing under the northeast arcades of WTC #5, waiting for the panels to stop falling, so they could run across the street and away. Strangely, I don't remember seeing more than those 2-3 people - the whole complex seemed abandoned and totally quiet, as if it was a very early holiday morning - an impression which must have been wishful thinking on my part. I didn't see any bodies on the ground at the north side of WTC #1 - I actually might not have been able to see them from that angle, but I believe I was being unconsciously careful not to look. They must have already been there. I then heard a very loud and resonant metallic sound, which was that steel striking the plaza. The sound snapped me out of my reverie, and after checking to see if the sculpture was OK (!?!?! - which it was - then!), I grabbed the contract, & tried to call my mother. I never got through, despite several tries, so I went downstairs to the street. This must have been sometime between 8:55 and 9:00 AM.

I should mention here what it felt like to be standing on Broadway at that time. When I first arrived, it had felt something like a parade, with a lot of people milling around on Broadway, trying to get a better view. Even then, foot traffic was already moving predominantly east on the side streets and uptown on Broadway, i.e., away from the Trade Center. As I left the lobby of #225 Broadway, the heightened tension was quite palpable on the very crowded west side of the street. Several young women had tried to run while wearing high heels and turned their ankles, and were receiving EMS care. To avoid tripping, I had to walk carefully among many pairs of high heels abandoned on the sidewalk. A few young girls were crying in their boyfriends' arms, but otherwise, the only evidence of the general emotional climate were the grimmest kinds of expressions on all faces. At the northwest corner of Vesey and Broadway, a very nice looking young policeman, clearly Italian-American & with tears streaming down his face, was screaming at the passing crowd: "Get out of here! This was intentional!! Something else is going to happen!!! GET OUT OF HERE!!!!!

What was I thinking just then? I had finally, with considerable annoyance, given up on any thought of getting money from the WFC cash machine, and was wondering what my next move was. I was still worried about my pre-attack timetable, though in the back of my mind I knew that I almost certainly wasn't going to Germany that night. I still wanted to get item #3 on my list accomplished, which was picking up slides from a friend who lived at 125 Cedar Street, a scant 1-1/2 blocks east of the south tower. She has been a close collaborator for several years on my Russian project, and took excellent slides of it when we visited it together in June 2000. I wanted to show her slides at the German conference. As I walked south, I was pondering how to slip past the police cordons south of Fulton Street (by then, Broadway was blocked off there), and get to her apartment and those slides. As I stood near the screaming policeman, ruminating on to how best to slip around the barricades, United Flight #175 struck the south tower.

The sound that resulted is difficult to describe. It rolled and rumbled, lasted a surprisingly long time, and continued to increase in volume throughout its duration. It was loud, but not as loud as you might first imagine. It resembled like several very large claps of thunder, sounding very close together, & striking out in the middle of the Hudson River. Should you hear a good recording of it (do they exist?) that's what it will sound like to you. But what can't have been recorded, and made it very different from any thunder, is the way it shook the whole island and everything on it, including my insides. I'm told that the explosion registered between 3.6 and 4.0 on the Richter scale.

As I said, I was evidently peering around the corner of a building at Vesey and Broadway when the 2^nd plane hit. A lower building masked my view of the fireball, but what I did see were lots more of those rectangles of aluminum cladding, flying hundreds of feet into the air above the tower's roof, carried upwards by the black cloud of the explosion. In my memory, that cloud is alive. The pieces of aluminum seem to be being carried upwards on long black tendrils. Those tendrils shake in my mind like strands of a lion's mane, or maybe more like the great long mops of hair on the "troll" dolls which my sister played with when we were little kids.

Now I get to one of the really strange tricks that my memory has played on me concerning this whole event. A lot of the things I've written here I remember, but many I've reconstructed by looking at a map, because my memory was fuzzy. For instance, I may have actually have watched the explosion in the south tower, and heard the policeman screaming from the corner of Barclay Street and Broadway, 1 block north of where I said I did above - I'm just not sure. When I look at a map, that doesn't seem logical, but maybe that's where I really was. But when I remember what follows below, I wonder if I was quite sane at that moment.

In my memory, I watch that lion's mane of a cloud from the middle of the southern ½ of City Hall Park. I am standing alone, with no one within 100 yards of me. The park I remember looks like an abandoned playground with no recreational equipment around it, like the overgrown back lawn of my high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma looked years ago - no sidewalks, nothing but overgrown grass, & with a few bare spots of ground here and there.

Anyone who has been to NYC knows that City Hall Park doesn't look like this at all. It's a very manicured place, with many flowerbeds, paved walkways and seating areas, benches, fountains, sculptures, and lots of fences - not anything like my mental image. There are no overgrown areas whatsoever, or patches of bare soil. Plus, it must have been full of people at that time, and I certainly didn't cross the street to it, in any case. I know this. Still, image which lingers in my mind is the fantasy, not the reality, & this I find very disturbing.

Again, it was a sound, the sound of the explosion, which altered my perspective, though I continued walking south. I must have had indecision all over my face, however, because suddenly I became aware of a short, rotund Hispanic police lady who had stepped forward to block my progress southward, and had begun shouting at me. "Yo, Holmes, you still alive! You didn't fall 1000 feet out of the top of a building - some other guys did!! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!". Finally, finally, I did just that.

Northward, people filled Broadway, on both sidewalks and from curb to curb, all the way up to Canal Street - I estimate I could see 50,000 in front of me (maybe more), and the same number behind. All, like me, were walking, not running, uptown. We left one lane open for emergency traffic to pass.

I turned and looked backwards toward the Trade Center upon reaching the corner of Broadway and Lispenard Street, 1 block south of Canal Street. A reporter from U. S. News & World Report came up to me, and I told her what I had seen. Together, we walked 1 block west to Church Street, where we could get a better view, and there joined a group of young business types on the northeast corner of that intersection.

The south tower was already in far worse condition than the north tower. Flames were leaping 400 feet above the roof level on the eastern 1/3 of the building. At the western side of the roof, I saw maybe 50 little blue specks moving around, with 2 large helicopters stationary above them. I was then distracted by the conversation around me. When I looked back again after maybe 10 minutes, only a few specks remained, and one helicopter. Were the others rescued, during the time I looked away? I don't know, but I'm almost certain that they weren't. The people around me didn't think so, but they had been distracted as well. None saw any helicopter land on the roof. Besides, I think things like that can only be done in Bruce Willis movies, not in real life: there was just too much heat to land. The last pilot just didn't want to give up, I think - I'm glad I don't have his memories. A few minutes later, the south tower collapsed, and those little blue specks went down with it.

Though this is a horrible thing to have seen, and I am probably still suppressing my reaction to it, I was far enough away to not be able to identify the specks as human beings. They really were just specks, and I couldn't distinguish arms and legs, etc. I guess my self-protective strategy worked. The most horrible thing for me to contemplate are those images of people hanging out of the windows of the towers, hoping for rescue, which have appeared in the media. Photographs exist which show some of them at the top of the north tower, just before it collapsed. This means that they survived in that hell for almost 1-3/4 hours before they died. To me, the jumpers and the people who were incinerated when the planes first hit had much more merciful fates. People hanging out of those narrow windows are what I am still having nightmares about.

Like many others, I believe that the collapses were the most astonishing things I have ever seen. I still can't "wrap my brain" around the fact. I never liked the towers aesthetically, but what makes the event so shocking to me is that they were so totally familiar. It seemed they had always been there. The WTC mall looked as familiarly unmemorable as any mall I've ever been in, and I was in it almost every week for the last 11 years. My first angry reaction, coming finally about a week after the event, was because of the damage the terrorists did to "my" neighborhood! For example, almost everything I have mailed to any of you in the last decade was sent from the Church Street Post Office, immediately north across Vesey Street from #1 WTC, a building which was severely damaged by that tower's collapse and is now closed for an indefinite period of time.

I initially thought that the south tower had fallen over like a tree chopped down with an axe. Thank God that this didn't happen, because it would have been very much more destructive to the adjacent buildings and killed many more people. What I originally thought was internal structural frame toppling over was in fact some of those waffle-like pieces of facade which detached and fell free, and now project so very photogenically out of the ground at various spots within "ground zero". With all of these later memories, I am able to let reasonable explanation replace my initial horrified assessment. But that black lion's mane - cloud viewed from an empty, abandoned playground is stuck in my mind forever.

Immediately upon the collapse of the south tower, the air was suffused with a really vile chemical smell. I thought then and am certain now that this was the smell of plastic office furniture burning, which produces very toxic gases. If the burning furniture included polyurethane foams (and it almost certainly did), one of the resulting combustion products is cyanide gas. Though the concentration was obviously extemely low, those gases are still not good for you, so I started yelling at the people around me, urging them to go far enough north so that they couldn't smell the odor. I didn't wait around long enough to see if any of them took my advice.

I walked north on Church Street, crossed Canal Street, and walked up through Soho on Mercer Street, looking for a telephone to call my mother. All of the pay phones had at least 20 people lined up in front of them, so I kept moving north. Parked cars here and there had their radios turned on and people clustered around them, listening to the news. Some of the galleries and restaurants had placed TVs in their windows, and at some of these more than a hundred people watched, spilling off the sidewalk, out into the street, and tying up traffic. As I crossed Houston Street, I remembered a used book store I frequent, ½ block above Houston, so I went there to use the phone. Still no luck getting through, so I talked a little bit with the guy behind the counter, and then went outside to take my first look in almost 20 minutes at the still standing #1 WTC. I had not been looking at it long when it fell. What I remember, which has not been shown in any photograph I have yet seen, is how the exterior structural frame of the top of the building remained standing for a short time after the floors had collapsed, lingering for perhaps 3 or 4 seconds before following the floors downward.

Shortly thereafter, what must had been an F-16 thundered overhead. It must have been part of one of the squadrons, finally scrambled from Dover, Delaware and Cape Cod, which arrived on the scene much too late. Military aircraft are incredibly loud, and nobody on the street, including myself, had ever heard one before. Everyone around me shrieked and hit the ground, thinking it was another suicide attack. There were probably a hundred people lying face down on Mercer Street between Houston and Bleeker at that moment.

For the rest of the day I walked up and down Manhattan, doing my little tasks, including calling my mother; trying to get cash; visiting people, some of whom I hadn't seen in years; and dropping off the contracts I had picked up from the consultant at the client's office. I just didn't know what else to do with myself. I walked all the way up to West 93^rd Street. The farther I walked north, the fewer people I saw covered with dust from the collapses, and the more I saw doing standard New York things, which offended me then and offends me yet, though I don't know what else I should have expected of them. I do remember that 90% of all the people I saw on foot that day, from one end of the island to the other, were walking north.

I starting heading back home from West 93^rd Street, still hunting a cash machine (I finally got money on Thursday - all the machines were closed or empty for 2 days). I thought I was going to have to walk over the Manhattan Bridge to get home, but when I finally reached 14^th Street, the "L" train was running east into Brooklyn, so I jumped on one, transferred, and arrived home just after 8:00 PM., almost 12 hours after I had left my house that morning.

My friend and her husband barely made it out alive. She was out walking her dog during both the first and second attacks (she must have been a lot closer to everything than me), and they didn't finally leave their building until after the south tower collapsed, walking blindly through that black cloud down to the ferry. They must have watched the north tower fall from the middle of the Hudson River, and are now staying with friends, and not much else, in upstate New York. Their building is badly damaged but still standing, and I am on standby, waiting to help them go down and get their belongings out.

This letter has become long, and probably I am better served by you reading it than you are informed by having done so. I had to write it to make it clear to myself, and in doing so I guess in some small way I have begun to understand what survivors of genocide mean when they term the telling of their experiences "bearing witness". If you made it to the end of this letter, thank you for your indulgence. I hope I get to see all of you sometime soon.

With Love,
John

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