CNN are showing two new pieces of footage -- one of the first crash, the only known recording of that crash, and the other from Battery Park, showing the face of the second tower that the plane collided with. The most oft-repeated comment of the day has been "it's like a movie," and that piece of footage, to me, shot that notion straight to hell -- because it's so gleefully absurd that no director would ever buy into it. For the briefest of moments upon impact, there is no explosion -- there is literally just a plane-shaped hole in the face of the building, surrounded by puffs of dust that are almost cartoonish, and a split-second later the fireball rockets out from all directions.

It's time I went to bed, I suppose. I'm going to have to do it sometime. The thought of waking up tomorrow in a vastly different world scares the shit out of me. I know it's a ridiculous and overdramatic sentiment, but shit -- I wonder if I'll wake up tomorrow, period. It's after midnight and nothing more has happened, and there are gunships in the rivers and F-16s in the sky. As horrifying as it is to find myself living in a police state, for the next few days, I'll gladly accept it as opposed to the alternative.

Chris Conroy, September 12th 2001 - 12:52 AM Eastern Time


I'm fine. I'm writing this in my sister's apartment at 82nd Street. Everything here is safe and secure and quiet.

I'd been housesitting this apartment for the last couple of days, since my sister is in Chicago and her roommate was in Florida. On my way down to my 9:30 class this morning on the C train, we were slowed down and stopped repeatedly. A woman who'd gotten on at 42nd Street said that she'd seen one of the planes go into the building from the Lincoln Tunnel. Eventually the train ground to a halt between 14th and 4th Streets, and remained there for quite a while - at the time I thought it was half an hour, but that doesn't quite seem to gel with the timeline of events. In any event, we ultimately dragged into the station at 4th Street and I got off, intending to give class a miss since I was already twenty minutes late.

Stepping out onto Sixth Avenue was unreal - gazing south I could see the flames leaping out of the towers. At this time I had no idea it was a sustained terrorist attack. I shit you not, the first thought that leapt to my mind was "Wow, what a great background that would make for my next blog design." I had no idea that the planes were hijacked jets - I thought they were prop-planes or something - and I was under the impression that the towers were empty. I walked down 8th Street and up Fifth Avenue to my dorm, maneuvering through vast clumps of people at every intersection, all of them with their gaze fixed to the south, staring at the towers.

As soon as I got into my dorm, my roommate had CNN on and I instantly learned of the Pentagon attack (which apparently had only just happened within the last ten minutes) and instantly became aware of the severity of the attack. I leaned out the 14th floor window and stared down Fifth Avenue, the whole scene completely recontextualized. The fear started to set in. Every sound overhead could be another potentially explosive attack. I snapped my neck around towards 34th Street, staring at the Empire State Building, almost certain that I'd be gazing upon another fireball like the one I'd just seen replayed on television for the first of hundreds of times. For the next five minutes, I simply looked back and forth, back and forth. No explosion came.

I turned back into my room, exchanging words with my roommate. I don't recall what we said; some form of end-of-the-world banter. A minute passed. Then, I heard a scream from the street below, and a light humming rumble. I lunged for the window, nearly throwing myself out in the process, and I watched as the south tower - the tower I'd stood beneath admiringly, the tower I'd ascended several times, the tower my family and I had entered and departed from bemoaning the length of the ticket line just days before - fell to the ground. It just collapsed before my eyes.

I looked to CNN for confirmation. That's the hilarious thing, isn't it? Shouldn't I see something on TV and leap to the window to confirm it with my own eyes? No, I swung around and saw the dust cloud and the single naked tower and the small red logo in the corner of the screen and I knew that everything had gone to hell.

My roommate and I went to the elevators to stock up on food and water from downstairs. While standing in the hall waiting for their arrival, a shrill yelp leapt from a neighboring room - "Oh my God, what's happening?" We ran back to our room and leaned out the window. The north tower was gone. The replay was already running on CNN.

After that, it all runs together - buying water, stunned silence, the spotty phone service, the relieved call from my sister in Chicago. I told her I would return to her apartment to tend to her two dogs as soon as I'd heard from my friend Jeremy - I knew his dorm, which is below Canal Street, was being evacuated, and I wanted to have him come up with me to stay there tonight. I'd received a phone call from him earlier in which he told me that he was there when the first tower fell. He'd woken up to the news that the first plane had just crashed, and thinking it was an isolated incident with a prop plane or something small, had rushed the ten blocks over to the Trade Center to see what had happened, and he ended up running from the dust cloud as it engulfed lower Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge, he said, was packed with people observing the scene and fleeing into the outer boroughs. He had his camera with him, and he'll develop the film tomorrow. Assuming anyone is open to develop it.

Once I'd heard from Jeremy, we agreed to meet in Union Square and walk up to 82nd Street together - taxis were spotty (and all filled) and at this point in time, no trains were running. To be honest, I'm still not sure if they're back online yet - the 1 and the 9 were running at 7 PM, but I get ahead of myself. While grabbing lunch in one of the NYU dining halls (all food was free), I ran into several acquaintances whose safety I was relieved to hear about. I met Jeremy at 14th Street, and after a quick stop at my dorm to round up last-minute supplies (a change of clothes, etc.), we set off down Fifth Avenue and Broadway, with nothing but black humor to keep us moving.

By the time we reached 82nd Street, Jeremy was exhausted - he'd already run for his life once today, and hiking sixty-eight blocks was certainly not something he'd expected to have to tack on top of that. At the corner of 82nd and Columbus Avenue we ran into a police blockade - the 20th Precinct is on the same block as my sister's apartment, and they'd locked it down for security reasons. Unfortunately, we had no ID that could prove we were housesitting for my sister. After a few confused minutes, and some gentle pleading, the officer allowed us through. After calling our respective parents to assure them of our safety, we holed ourselves up with the digital cable and stared blankly at CNN.

At 7:00, we got a surprise we weren't expecting - my sister's roommate Pat, who'd been flying up from Florida today (scheduled to arrive at JFK at 10AM, just managing to miss getting in before the FAA lockdown) and who'd been rerouted to Baltimore earlier, arrived at the door. As it turned out, she'd been shunting herself from train to train across the Eastern Seaboard trying to get into the city, and after a series of unbelievable coincidences had arrived at our doorstep courtesy of the now-operational 1/9 train. Sublimely enough, twenty minutes later we were at Ray's Pizza at 82nd and Amsterdam, calmly munching pepperoni. A poorly tuned TV at the back of the restaurant blurrily blasted Univision, making their reports on the tragedy doubly incomprehensible. It seemed like it was a million miles away.

Once back in my sister's apartment I sent out a thousand e-mails asserting our well-being, fielded dozens of instant messages, and then settled in to write this account. Blogger appears to crash my sister's computer, so there's no sense in even trying to update that way - I downloaded WS_FTP onto this machine and I'll do my best to keep this frontpage semi-current. All NYU classes have been cancelled tomorrow (Wednesday), and the city below 14th Street is closed down. This includes my dorm, a mere four blocks south of the demarcation line. I will not be able to return home until, they say, at least Thursday.

If I must be marooned, however, there are far worse places than on the Upper West Side. Everything here is calm and cool; I've been astonished at how well New Yorkers have handled this - no violence, no rioting, I've only seen one man shouting with rage in the streets - and that was before the second tower even collapsed. My respect for New Yorkers has increased a thousand fold.

However, I am slightly ashamed of myself. My roommate went to donate blood; I did not. I'm petrified of needles, and I knew I would be hiking almost seventy blocks and didn't want to weaken myself. But I'm still disappointed in my resolve. I'd like to think I could be of use in a situation like this, but I feel like today I proved myself a coward. It might be irrational, but it's still there.

In all other respects, I'm totally OK. I saw the tower fall, but I didn't even BEGIN to witness carnage like some of the people in the downtown area, and I can't even begin to comprehend what they've been through. A close acquaintance of mine, and a friend to all of my friends (she was the author of two plays staged by my high school drama group), may have lost the love of her life, a character in both of those plays. He was in the area and nobody has heard from him. I don't know, and can't know, what that's like. It may sound insensitive, but I hope I never will.

This whole catastrophe has been completely, completely unforgettable; it's one of those things that, at the risk of sounding obscenely obvious, I will never, ever, EVER forget: that single, burning, momentary tower, the gaping scar cut across the skyline of the city, the unbelievable thousands of people I did not know and now, never will.

Chris Conroy, September 11 2001 - 11:19 PM Eastern Time

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