I explain to East Coast friends that in Iowa, people have tornado nightmares. You are on the second floor of your house or office, you open the blinds and see a killer tornado 20 feet away. You know you will not have time to get to the basement, and you are staring at death.
Then you wake up.
As I stood on Fifth Avenue watching the North Tower of the World Trade Center hemorrhaging smoke, the most sickening feeling was seeing the gaping hole of smoke and flames, and right above, several floors untouched. It was knowing there were people who would not get out. And realizing they knew it, too.
I worked at 32nd and Madison in New York, a block away from the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. Each day, I took the train into the city from Connecticut, grabbed a cup of coffee and looked straight down Fifth Avenue at those two white buildings soaring high above the city grime. In Des Moines, it’s like looking straight down Ingersoll at the Principal building, 801 Grand. I was 2 miles away from the World Trade Center, which is like being near Dahl’s grocery store on Ingersoll, at 35th Street.
When the North Tower fell, glass shot out from the building. The huge shattered panes shimmered in the sun as they fell. The building vanished, but the glass was still in the air for a long time. I feared for people below, when that glass fell 100 stories.
People around me on the street were crying. One woman crouched down on the sidewalk and started screaming like an animal. No one could calm her. We heard low-flying aircraft overhead, but in New York’s canyon of buildings, we could not see whether they were military or an “unaccounted for” commercial plane.
Back in my office, panic was growing. Phone lines were dead, and no cell phone would work. We watched news updates via streaming video on the computers. Newscasters said New York City was under martial law. All exits to the city were closed until further notice.
With no buses or cabs in sight, co-workers and I joined the tide of people in business attire, flowing north on foot. We walked from 32nd street all the way to 125th street train station in Harlem. I always thought of Harlem as a scary, crime-ridden area. As we trudged through the middle of the housing projects, it wasn’t scary at all.
Outside a Baptist church, some black women had set up a table and were handing out water in paper cups to relieve the weary people on foot. As one woman greeted me with a sympathetic smile, I thought, “Harlem is just like Iowa.” (more)
