Posted By:
Al C.risafulliI was delivering a presentation at a hotel in Northeastern Pennsylvania. After I was done, I went outside for a break, and a hotel employee told me that a small plane had crashed into the WTC. I looked at the sky, and said "must have been a hell of a bad pilot."
Then I went into the hotel bar, which was packed. The television was on, and the bartender was pouring drinks for everyone. It was barely 9:30 AM, and everyone was drinking - that's what struck me. I watched the buildings fall on television, while the local NBC affiliate was reporting all sorts of erroneous news - terrorist activity at the Liberty Bell, bombed apartment buildings in Los Angeles, an attack on Mount Rushmore - it was chaos.
I got in the car and headed home to New Jersey. When I came around the bend on Route 80 where you can see the NYC skyline, I saw the plumes of smoke and almost crashed into the car in front of me, as every car on the highway was stopped, and their drivers staring at the skyline. The signs on Route 80 read "New York City Closed - Please Turn Back", or something like that. I remember thinking that was something I'd probably never see again.
When I got to my town, I drove to the top of the hill where you could see the skyline. There were about 25 people standing in the middle of the street, staring at the smoke, all crying. That's when it hit me. I hugged my family extra tight that night.
A week later I drove to Hoboken and walked around the riverside parks, reading the "missing" posters and looking at the makeshift memorials. I still remember one poster that had a picture of a woman and the words "Bring my mommy home." Another poster read "I lost no one, but I lost everyone."
I still remember the chunks of dirt in the air, even a week later. I still remember the smell.
I still remember having MSNBC on my television, virtually 24 hours a day, and the fear as I watched the news ticker delivering one horror story after another. I remember the silence above my house during the days there were no planes in the air, and how freaky it sounded when the silence was broken by the occasional private or military jet flying overhead. I remember driving to a Wal-Mart 20 miles west of my house to buy relief supplies because all the other Wal-Marts were cleaned out.
Mostly I remember the commuter parking lots nearby my town, and the chalk that police put on the tires to identify the cars that nobody ever came back to.
-Al