Pearl 2001

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LGF reader James Croak, aka “Right Brain,” forwarded us these two emails that he sent out shortly after the September 11 atrocities; they speak for themselves.

***

Pearl 2001

Within one hour of the second tower falling, James Croak, a sculptor living in New York, sent this email via DSL to a girlfriend in France to let her know that he was alive.

Sept 11, 11:30 am
Sophie et al,

I was to meet with Mayor Giuliani this morning and give a presentation for a commission at 10:00. They told me to come an hour early because of security so I was riding in a cab down Broadway at 8:45 when the first plane flew over. I couldn’t believe it, I heard the engines and looked up, it was just above the buildings, a small jet I thought, and a moment later, a boom. Tons of beautiful white paper drifted down on Manhattan. Our Democratic primary is today and my first thought was that a candidate had dropped political leaflets. Or at worst a small jet had hit the World Trade Center and blown out the office stock, an accident possibly because of a heart attack; a lone pilot is enough to fly small jets here.

I directed the cab a few blocks further and saw an amazing sight, a beautiful day and the North Tower on fire. I got out of the cab and watched as one person after another jumped to their deaths 90 stories up as the flames hit them. Behind me was the cavalry, a river of sirens and lights careening down the avenues — ambulances, Harleys, ladder trucks, black & whites— weaving through traffic, all throttle and brake, honking, cursing, firemen craning their heads out the windows to look upwards, gaping at the damage, radio to the ear. It was the last thing they would never remember.

I turned away and was staring at the South Tower when the second plane hit. The concussion took my courage. It was an explosion beyond description, I felt that it was 1945 and I was in Berlin, or maybe Pearl Harbor in ‘41.

I could feel the heat three hundred yards away; everything on four or five floors, people and office equipment, came raining down on the crowd. We all ran north while it fell and got away before it hit because it was high up. As I glanced back I saw the contents of the floors on fire, people killed without a second to consider their lives.

As I was running by City Hall I heard my name called. A woman, a Mayor’s aide, recognized me and pulled me past the gauntlet that had surrounded City Hall. I figured that I would be safe in there. Giuliani has turned City Hall into a fortress over the past two years. We didn’t know what was happening and where the other “bombs” were so no one wanted to move. We sat calmly on the steps of City Hall inside these iron gates and rings of well dressed and heavily armed mayor security detail and felt safe, all the while watching thousands of bewildered people run up the street.

While sitting there speculating as to the future, the South Tower leaned over and fell onto Wall Street, and onto the emergency workers who had assembled there. It came down to the screams and wails of those watching, including mine. Never in history has anyone seen such a sight: A 110-story occupied building crashing onto other occupied buildings. I am sure that many people we know are dead.

Suddenly there was this 30 foot cloud that looked like the sea coming at us. Solid, roiling and white, we didn’t know what it was or if it was a biological weapon or even if one could breath in it if it wasn’t. The size and force of the cloud told me it would blow out the windows at City Hall and that I should run for my life.

I have never seen a New Yorker panic before, but we knew that something had happened way beyond our sassy world. We all scrambled behind city hall and jumped over the barricades and fences and got into the street and ran north. I threw one man’s crutches over the final iron gate and then him. I never looked back. It was pandemonium.

Periodically while I was running I would pause at crowds of people assembled around cars with loud radios so we could get news. No one knew what else would happen. After the second explosion everyone knew it was coordinated so maybe the tunnels would go up next. All of New York stayed in the middle of the streets. Millions of people walking, and no one would go near a building or tunnel or subway. The subways were all shut down anyway. Everywhere people were crying.

One man saw me trying to use my cell (not working) and asked to call his wife in the World Trade Center. She was in the South Tower and certainly dead. I had to explain to him what I saw, but he was stilted emotionally and couldn’t comprehend it. I would have waited longer with him but the cloud was still coming up Sixth Avenue so I kept going. There were long lines at the pay phones, which were mostly still working, desperate people trying to locate their families. I saw many cabs commandeered by Hasidim, they were yelling at other Jews on the street in Hebrew offering assistance to get them out of the area.

I finally got home, all sense of safety in my beloved New York City gone. We have fighter jets flying about our heads now, F 14’s and F 16’s at impossible speeds circling Manhattan as if in an air race. Now when I hear a jet motor, I wait for the explosion.

James Croak

***

The Dig

4:30 am Sat.
Sophie et al,

I went back to the remains of the World Trade Center and dug for bodies.

There is a staging area at Chelsea Piers where city staff determines if one has useful knowledge or experience to help with the rescue. If they hear some, they tape S&R on you (Search and Rescue) and send you to the Javits Center for dispersal. They send you uptown, not down. Except for iron workers they want no else there and have placed the military at all entrances to prevent anyone getting close. It is a polite run around.

Some iron workers dropped by my loft at 6:00am Thursday—having put in an 18-hour shift—and asked if I wanted to go in next time. They weren’t sure because they thought that I might have had enough having witnessed it all go down. Of course I wanted to. We went Friday in mid-afternoon: In Queens eleven of us piled into a van and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge to the uncanny sight of the altered skyline. We pulled into a commercial equipment store and helped ourselves to everything we could carry: cases of gloves, masks, crowbars, pails, and respirators, without a thought of paying for it. The shop owner helped us load it; he proudly waved as we drove off.

An ex-cop drove the van with a police parking placard stuck in the window getting us by the first four security checks. Then we approached two HumVees parked across the road at Park Row and Broadway with young men in battle fatigues standing about. National Guard I thought. Then they surrounded the van. Regular Army I thought. And then all six doors were jerked open at once.

Marines. Welcome to Not America. I am in the middle of Manhattan in a private car and armed Marines are ripping open my doors. I felt better already. They snapped our ID’s from our hands as fast as we could pull them out. The two in back talked very loud to hold our attention while the others moved in among us. Satisfied, they had us park and motioned us into the site.

We collected our shoplifted gear and hiked a quarter mile to the site. The tension in the air was frightening—military vehicles, M-60 machine guns. Hundreds of angry cops. Everybody looking us over. A couple of more checks and we walked into Guernica.

I saw the towers go down, so I thought that I would be prepared for the spectacle, but the enormity of the debris field dwarfed my expectations. It is about a quarter mile in any direction, there is no level area, the height varies from 15 feet thick to over 120 feet. Smoke still rises from all areas. Three of the tower facades still stand up to 10 floors but nothing is behind them, just the standing steel front. The field is lower in the center so it appears one has walked into the smoking ruins of Pompeii or another vast coliseum.

The exterior of the towers was made of 12-inch steel columns spaced four feet apart. As they fell these shafts speared everything in sight. A dozen of them protruded from the West Side Highway, sticking up like some mad confection. Four of them shot Zeus-style into the side of the American Express building 30 floors up, knocking off a corner. The debris washed across the highway smashing into the World Financial Center, blasting all of the glass from its walls.

Looking downward through the wracks of steel beams you realize they are sitting upon a sea of emergency vehicles.


How to Kill Firemen

1) Make an explosion.
2) Wait 15 minutes.
3) Make another explosion.

Spread out across the debris field are bucket brigades, serpentine chains of 200 people each—firemen, cops, military—lines meandering up and down to the dig. The entire site is being excavated with five gallon pails which are hand passed to dump trucks. Not a finger will be lost. Each dig has a cadaver dog, the dog shows us where to dig and then a small hole is made. In goes a TV camera with a listening device and everybody yells to be quiet. Generators are turned off and everyone stands still.

After four days there is no more sound, so the digging and cutting begins. When they find a body they yell “body coming” and an adjacent brigade climbs across the wreckage to form an opposing line, the body is then passed on a stretcher between the lines. If it is a fireman (there are over 300) his hat is placed atop him and the stretcher is carried, not passed. Actually we “pass” the pall because there is no walking.

My first body was a fireman. His hat told me what had happened to him. Crushed, burned, shattered, it looked like a civil war relic brought up from the sea. My second body was a young girl, petite, in shape. I can’t take this, I thought, and considered running. Thankfully we didn’t have another for an hour or so.

Periodically the line would call “We need paint,” meaning they found a body too deep to dig for at this time so the area is sprayed red to we can find it later. Several times we passed a body the size of a basket ball. If the wreckage shifts, a Klaxon blows twice telling everyone to run, which we do. A minute later they all run back, me still shaking. The next body was in a fetal position—she must have lived a while, I thought, and died of exposure with a billion tons of mess on top of her, scared beyond understanding. All told, I worked all night, we found 27 bodies and carried 9 out.

You think there are no heroes in America? I saw a lanky blonde that could have modeled Channel tie a rope around her ankle, grab a stethoscope and dive head first down a debris hole that would have shredded a raccoon. The firemen in general were fearless, shrugging their shoulders at the obvious danger of it all.

But missing from the scene was any mention of how it got like this, why it came down, what should be done about it. Nothing, not a peep. I suspect that it was a kind of collective shame for not having protected us from this.

At first light, after twelve hours on the pile the accumulated stress and fear got the best of me and fatigued, I walked home. But I’m back in tomorrow.

JC

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Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT
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