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more from ManhattanFrom: JVoelcker@aol.com Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 Subject: more from Manhattan Another day, another dawn in Manhattan. The mayor has ordered 11,000 body bags. Bodies and body parts are being taken to New Jersey ice rinks on barges. A friend's firefighter brother hints that the scene at Ground Zero is indescribably worse than we see on TV. Some say that European coverage is far more graphic than anything seen here. Two days after the attack, a kind of edited normalcy is returning to Manhattan. Many businesses north of 14th Street are to reopen today. Broadway shows and museums will reopen. Much public transport is operating, with traffic & transit reports every 10 minutes. I spent all of yesterday with groups of friends. Mobile phones are everywhere; it's easier for us within 212/NYC to call each other than for the rest of the country to call in. (E-mail me if you want me to call someone for you.) Delis and restaurants are open, though they have not been supplied in 48 hours. Yesterday everyone was quiet, polite, solicitous. In the evening I saw the first few flowerings of anger, yelling and screaming. There will be more, much more. Traffic is ambulances, police vehicles, Humvees, and a lavish supply of taxis. Intersections are staffed by the police cadets I usually see at the academy across the street, as well as army reservists with automatic weapons. About 10 pm, we walked in the 20s around 7th Avenue. A barefoot woman with a cellphone ran south toward us, screaming at the crowds to run. Very quickly behind her, more than 100 people pelted south down the avenue. Quickly the word spread: a bomb at the Empire State Building. An entire street of people turned south, walking and then as panic spread, running. Cops screamed "Go, go, now" and motioned south. We ran from 25th to 15th Street. I was able to call a friend watching TV, who told us a dog sniffing a package in the Empire State Building had indicated it was suspicious. That building AND Penn Station were immediately evacuated. Half an hour later, the alert was called off. But we had a very brief taste of the fear you have seen on TV as crowds fled in terror from a burning inferno, a collapsing building. Union Square last night became an impromptu peace meeting, with lengths of butcher paper covered in candles, bouqets, messages and memorials. Some people talked, a few danced or chanted, and a growing crowd argued loudly at the fringe -- more eruptions of anger. Earlier in the day, the wind shifted and for the first time, Manhattan north of Canal Street darkened in grey ash and we tasted the smell of burnt, charred buildings and perhaps flesh. A cloud of dust sliding from a passing bus brought nervous patrons pouring out of a deli asking what had just happened. All of Eziba's New York employees and freelancers are located and safe. A coworker and her boyfriend located his mother Tuesday night after she ended up in a Brooklyn hospital, after being knocked down by the blast and then walking dazed over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn. Everyone hears stories: friends of friends who escaped from high floors, people located in other cities, and those still unaccounted for. Parked cars have hand-lettered or crudely photocopied "Have You Seen This Person?" signs with snapshots, names, descriptions taped to the doors. Similar signs are on lampposts. My friends in Brooklyn say they have grey, sooty financial documents in their back yards. Debris from the explosions and collapses landed as far away as Coney Island. Everyone in the country, and indeed the entire world, is in shock still. New Yorkers and Manhattanites are living a particular kind of unreality. Please be patient with those New Yorkers you know. As denial and outward focus give way to the beginnings of acceptance and the emotions that follow -- horror, piercing sadness, overwhelming anger -- I think we will all need a lot of support. There is, finally, a shared grassroots pride in our city and our people here. I moved to NYC 20 years ago last month, and I have never felt so strongly that I am a New Yorker as well as an American. Few that I know are thinking of leaving. It seems important that we stick it out and work to get life and business underway again. But I don't think it will be easy. No one knows what lies ahead; we're making it up as we go. Think of us and stay in touch. love, jv. P.S. Feel free to circulate this if you wish. |
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