Tower Stories

by Damon DiMarco

  I started feeling, one, angry at myself for standing around looking at things for so long and not moving away. Two, pretty sure there was a good chance I’d get hit by something, some piece of falling debris, and die. And three, pretty sure that dying was really going to hurt. I wasn’t thinking noble thoughts, like thoughts about my family or anything. It was, I’m about to die and it’s really going to hurt. Now how do I keep that from happening?

  I saw a car parked on the street, so I crawled under it. It was an old American car, something really big and really heavy like a Chevy Monte Carlo. I tried to get the engine block over my head because I figured that a big hunk of steel like that would protect me.

  No, I don’t know if that was the smartest thing to do or not. I was panicked, I wasn’t thinking right. I’ll tell you one thing, though: there’s a lot less room underneath a car than I’d thought. I really had to flatten myself against the ground to fit under there.

  I saw other people crawling under things, too. Some hit the ground and covered their heads. From under the car, I watched pieces of debris hit the street in front of me. I waited for a bit. I don’t know how long I stayed, but eventually I decided to come out and put some more distance between me and the Towers.

  I slid out from under the car as a fine white dust began to fall. I helped one person up to their feet and they started running. I went after him. Just then, the colleague I’d been walking with came around the corner suddenly. I’m sure he thought I was dead or severely injured, since one minute I was running next to him and the next I disappeared. But I joined him around the corner and we regrouped for a moment, noticing only then how people were filing into the lobbies of buildings to get off the street.

  A woman came running over and pressed herself up against the building next to us. I’ll never forget her face. I said to her, “Are you okay?” She had really wide eyes and she just nodded but didn’t say anything. I said, “Let’s all try to move north, away from here.” She just nodded again and we took off at a dead run.

  Somehow I wound up a block east of Church Street; I have no idea how I got there, I just know I was moving north and that’s where I ended up. My colleague and I ran into another person we knew, and she joined us. We had our own little group going now.

  Off-duty emergency services people started showing up. An off-duty fireman was directing traffic, and I asked him if anyone had evacuated the World Financial Center yet. At that time, my stepfather also worked in the World Financial Center, and I began to worry about him. The fireman said he had no idea what was going on, so we kept moving north.

  “From under the car. I watched pieces of debris hit the street in front of me. I waited for a bit. I don’t know how long I stayed, but eventually I decided to come out and put some more distance between me and the Towers.”

  Further on, I asked a cop the same question: Had anyone evacuated the World Financial Center? She said, “I don’t know what’s going on. Here, you find out.” And she handed me her two-way radio. I still can’t believe she did that. She was too busy to listen for what was going on and direct traffic at the same time. She said, “If you hear anything, let me know.”

  I sort of listened to the radio for thirty seconds and said, “Thanks, but I’m going to get out of the area.”

  No, I don’t remember what I heard on the radio. Thank God I don’t remember the cop’s name, she’d probably get into a lot of trouble for doing that.

  I made a decision to go to the offices of a competing investment bank where I have friends: Solomon Smith Barney at 388 Greenwich Street. My cell phone wasn’t working, but at that point I felt I had to get word to my family that I was okay. I figured my friends at Solomon would let me into their office to use the phone and internet. But when we got there, we found out they’d already evacuated.

  So I started moving north again and decided that this time I would go to the Stern School of Business at NYU, where I’d graduated a year before. It was going to take me a lot less time to get there than to walk home to Midtown. I also knew there were phones and internet connections at Stern.

  At some point, I stopped next to someone who had their car radio turned up, and I learned that the Pentagon had been attacked. Then I heard the radio announcer scream, “Oh my God,” and I heard the people around me scream, too. I turned and saw the South Tower collapsing.

  I see that image of the Tower collapsing still. Vividly. I was pretty close, but not so close that I was in danger this time. My first thought was that I’d just watched 10,000 people die. And then I thought that I probably watched half of the New York City Fire Department die—I’d seen the fire trucks and I know how those guys work. They go in, they go up, they fight fire. That was a very sobering thought.

  Now I was really concerned for my colleagues and stepdad. What if they’d decided not to move away? What if they’d been told not to?

  I kept moving north.

  I knocked on someone’s door, and a young couple with a little baby opened it.

  I said, “I worked down there. I gotta get word to my family. Can I use your telephone?”

  They invited me in but their phone line was dead. They had their video camera on until the first Tower collapsed and then they just went inside, shut the door, and didn’t want to think about it anymore. They wished me luck and I kept moving north.

  Then we heard another jet engine, and people started to get scared again. I recognized the sound, though—not a commercial aircraft but a fighter jet. Suddenly I was able to put things into context again. I thought, okay, we’re at war. The military is here to defend us.

  While I was under the car I’d had a moment to think and question. How could a fire in one Tower cause an explosion in the other Tower, and cause it to fall apart? It didn’t make any sense. I’d voiced that opinion out loud, and someone near me said, “No, no, it wasn’t the one plane, it was another airplane.”

  I couldn’t believe that. I thought, cruise missiles look like airplanes. We must be under attack by cruise missiles. At that moment, each person I talked to tried to rationalize what was going on, to put it into a context they could understand. But it started to dawn on all of us that this wasn’t an accident. We didn’t know what it was, but an accident? No.

  I kept moving on. When I crossed 6th Avenue east to get to school, the North Tower was still standing and I stopped to look at it. But not for long. When I got to NYU, I walked along the south side of Washington Square Park, past the Catholic Center. They had just put a piece of paper up, saying, “The Catholic Center Is Open for Quiet Prayer and Contemplation.”

  It reminded me of stories I’d heard when Apollo 13 was in trouble.33 The churches opened their doors for people to pray.

  I got to the business school and they had a lot of televisions turned on and tuned in, with everyone crowding around the screens. I’d lost my eyeglasses when I was crawling around under the car—I’d realized it at the time, but didn’t go back for them. At any rate, I couldn’t make out much of what I was seeing on the TVs.

  I looked a mess. I was covered with dirt from when I’d laid down.

  The dean of the school, who’d been a professor of mine, saw me in the lobby and came right over to shake my hand. He asked how I was doing. Stern Business School has a lot of connections to Wall Street and the Trade Center, so he was trying to take stock of the situation.

  We chatted for a minute and I asked him if the phones were working. He said, “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Let yourself into any office and do what you need to do.”

  It took me a few tries, but I finally managed to get through to my mother’s secretary and I left a message that I was okay. I also told her that I’d meet her later on at her apartment along with the rest of the family. My mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, brother—all my relatives work in the city. Later on, when we compared stories, it turned out that my stepfather, father, and I had all been within three blocks of each other.

  I knew my brother had a two-way internet pager
, and I knew they were still working because I’d seen other people using them. I sent him an email. Then I started running into colleagues of mine from school, people who I’d graduated with. Like I told my mother later, “We all had the same idea—to go back to school. There were phone lines and internet, and we could maximize the communications.”

  But my mother balked at this. “Bullshit,” she said. “When you’re under stress, you go somewhere you feel safe. Like a small community.”

  I spent at least two hours there. The school ordered pizzas and said we could stay as long as we wanted. And later on, a guy came in who’d been on the 69th floor of the South Tower. He was totally covered in white dust and said that he’d run down all sixty-nine floors. He’d barely made it across the street when the building came tumbling down behind him. He was … well, psychologically I think he was a mess.

  I decided to go home.

  Against my family’s advice, I went back to my apartment alone for the first night. I felt a strong need to return all the phone calls I knew would be waiting on my answering machine. I was useless for the first two or three days after that.

  The first time I felt normal was when I got a phone call from the office. I knew I still had a job, but there was no place for us to work. So I tried to volunteer. I registered with the Red Cross and city agencies, but they didn’t need me. And because of some recent international travel, I wasn’t able to give blood. There wasn’t anything I was able to do, so I spent time with friends and company.

  As it turns out, that was very important.

  When I finally went back to work, it wasn’t to do my original job. I got a call from my company to go to New Jersey to unload trucks of computer equipment.

  A colleague said something to me that was very inspiring. He said, “Jesse, I’m not a doctor, I couldn’t rush to the hospital to put people back together. I’m not a construction worker, so I couldn’t dig. I tried to give blood, but the line was four hours long; they said to come back tomorrow. So the way I fight back is to make sure our company is not affected. I can do whatever it takes. And if that means moving boxes from here to there, well, that’s what I’ll do.”

  I think those of us who are recovering well have taken that to heart.

  According to the 9/11 Commission Report, each tower collapsed in approximately ten seconds.

  It’s tough. I’ve been to funerals. I have a very close friend who lost her father, a remarkable man. Another colleague of mine broke her collarbone in the evacuation when she got trampled in a crowd.

  But we gotta keep going. If you let the attack affect you as minimally as possible, that’s the best way to fight back.

  Look, I grew up in this city. Those Towers were a part of my life.

  I remember my fourth-grade class took a field trip to the observation deck when we were studying the island of Manhattan. I used to go dancing at the Greatest Bar on Earth up near the top floor. I remember. And I take this personally.

  When your city gets attacked, it’s like you’ve been attacked. Physically hurt. Those buildings came down and a part of us was lost, too. A part of each one of us.

  The rest of the world thinks of New York City as a terrible, tough place. But when you live here, you know. New Yorkers are wonderful people, helpful people. Have you seen the way we pulled together? I think that’s what the rest of the world has learned from all this: what it means to be a New Yorker.

  32 September 11 was the mayoral primary in New York City. Following the attack, the primary was postponed.

  33 The Apollo 13 lunar landing experienced an equipment malfunction in April of 1970, which placed the lives of astronauts James A. Lovell, John Swigert Jr., and Fred Haise Jr. in severe jeopardy, forcing them to return to Earth before reaching the moon.

  ALBERTO BONILLA

  Originally from Honduras, Alberto Bonilla, twenty-eight, moved to Jersey City from Tempe, Arizona, to study acting in New York. He is a brightly energetic man.

  I GOT A CALL from All My Children, and the casting director said they had a role for me and that it would tape on the eleventh. I was told to bring a bunch of different clothing for costume options. So I had the eleventh down on my calendar as a day I’d be acting in a soap opera. Imagine that?

  Normally I left the house at 7:30 A.M., but that day I ended up leaving at 8:00. From my apartment, I took a bus to the PATH station at Grove Street in Jersey City, which shot me directly into the World Trade Center. From there, I’d hop a subway to Midtown, where I temped at Morgan Stanley.

  Well, the day started off bad. The bus was twenty-five minutes late. I was furious and worried. I was carrying four changes of clothing, which was awkward and heavy, so my back hurt. I remember I kept looking at my watch because I was so concerned about the time; I had to get to work early so I could take time off for the All My Children shoot. I couldn’t afford to lose my temp job.

  Finally, the bus came at 8:15. Late, late, late.

  I got to the PATH station and it was mobbed. There were two trains running, one to 33rd Street in Manhattan and one to the World Trade Center. Either one would have got me where I was going, but I took the Trade Center one because I was into this routine where I’d get my breakfast at a smoothie place in the mall underneath the Towers. I’d buy the $3.45 smoothie. So I took the train for the WTC.

  Well, we made it to the Trade Center. It was 8:42—like I said, I was dead sure because I kept checking my watch. There were hordes of people in the mall, and I got into this huge line to get a smoothie. Looking back on it all now, I’m a little ashamed. I think: How self-involved am I? I don’t remember a single face from anyone standing in that line of people. Not one of them.

  It’s 8:44 or 8:45. I’m still standing in line, I’m frustrated, it’s taking forever. Then I look in my wallet and … I don’t have any money. That’s how it is when you’re an actor. Sometimes you have money, sometimes you don’t. That week had been financially rough for me. I was literally a starving artist.

  So now I’m really pissed off and I’m going over my options in my head. I can find an ATM in the middle of the mall, or I can go without breakfast. Getting out of line to find an ATM meant having to get back into line, which would waste even more time. Going without breakfast meant being miserable and hungry all morning.

  I got depressed. That can happen when you don’t have money to eat. So I figure, okay, this morning I just won’t have breakfast. And I hightailed it out of the mall.

  I went to catch the E train uptown, and the oddest thing happened. There was nobody waiting on the platform. It went from being utterly crowded to nobody. Maybe this was all after the first plane hit, I don’t know. Like I said, I was really into myself that morning. Did I miss people running? I don’t know how it makes sense now. I know I sat down on the train and I sat there and I sat there. It wasn’t moving.

  There were only two other people on board. One was a teenaged Oriental rave girl with headphones, a hip black outfit, and a silver purse; she was all the way at the end of the car. And sitting right next to the door was this older black lady wearing a dress who was knitting and humming to herself. An empty car in the World Trade Center transit hub, at rush hour on a weekday morning? Even then it didn’t dawn on me.

  We waited. And we waited. And we waited. Nobody came. The station stayed empty, and I was a mess. My backpack’s falling off my shoulder, I’m holding on to my clothes. If I didn’t have enough money for a smoothie, I certainly didn’t have enough money for a suit bag, so my clothes were all on hangers in dry cleaners’ plastic. And I’m so involved with my own drama that I’m shouting at myself in my head: Why the hell isn’t this train moving? I’m gonna be late!

  Then all of a sudden, the doors closed and the train started to go. Still nobody else on board but us three. And that’s when I thought, is the train operator crazy? Why is he leaving? There’s nobody on board.

  I work for the Data Integrity group at Morgan Stanley on 47th and Broadway, so I got off the train at Times Squ
are and started running. I got to my work building and took the elevator up to the 37th floor, thinking, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late! Ran to the bathroom, dying to use it. I ran back out, and … everybody’s gone. Again. The whole cubicle section is empty.

  And again, I’m thinking, what the hell is going on?

  That’s when I noticed all the computer screens in my department. They were all logged on to CNN.com, and they were all showing this picture of the World Trade Center with fire coming out of it. Every single computer. Now I’m thinking, what? What? I mean, I’d just come from there.

  Almost immediately following the tragedy, many of the buildings flanking Times Square sprouted flags, banners, and homemade signs.

  I ran to the windows at the corner of the building. Looking downtown, I could see it now, clear as day. Both Towers burning. From the altitude I was at, they looked really close. I could see the fire and the yellow, the red, the black smoke. A few co-workers appeared and came up beside me. Nobody said a word. The TV was turned on but nobody was watching. I remember hearing someone crying hysterically. A sound I’d never heard in an office environment.

  You know, as an actor, I study things so that, later on, I can re-create emotions and behavior. I have no idea how to describe what I’m going to say next. But that sound of someone weeping in the office? It was as if God was crying. I looked around to see if somebody else had heard it, but everybody was staring out the window. Then I checked to see if the person crying was me, but it wasn’t.