PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON MY DAY IN NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

David J. Hooker

8:45 a.m., Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
Room 1401, New York Marriott Financial Center, 85 West Street, New York, New York.

I was standing in my hotel room, dressed in jogging shorts and tee shirt, about to shower and in about twenty minutes get ready to meet my partner, Craig Martahus. It was an uneventful start to the day. I had earlier jogged along the Hudson River, up and down from the World Trade Center complex. I'd seen people arriving at work, and I thought to myself what it must be like to work in buildings like the World Trade Center.

While I was moving around my hotel room thinking about what I needed to get done on Tuesday, I heard a muffled but fairly loud explosion, followed by a very loud clatter of debris hitting the side of my hotel and other nearby buildings. I went to the window, expecting to see something falling from the hotel building, which was under renovation. I thought there may have been a collapse on the roof, resulting in falling masonry. Instead I saw papers, pieces of metal and flaming boxes and articles falling from high in the sky, landing on the street and on flat surfaces below my window.
The twin towers of the World Trade Center were about two blocks north of the hotel, and I could see the South Tower clearly from my window. From behind the South Tower, I saw billowing black smoke from the North Tower. I knew that something bad had happened at the top of the North Tower, although I couldn't imagine what it was.

I called Craig and asked him if he'd heard anything; he said he hadn't. I flipped on the television; one of the channels had a view from the Empire State Building showing smoke coming from the top of the North Tower. At first the newscaster said there'd been an explosion and then shortly after the initial report said that someone had seen an airplane hit the building. There was immediate speculation on the television that somehow air traffic control had misdirected a plane on approach towards one of the New York airports.

I made a quick call to Nancy, my wife, in Cleveland. She was at her office, and I told her that one of the World Trade Center buildings had suffered a huge explosion. I assured her that I was fine and that Craig and I were planning to get out of the hotel in a short while and go to our meeting. I promised her that I would call her if anything changed but told her she should expect that I would be at the law offices where we were scheduled to meet for the day.

I decided I ought to hurry up my preparations to leave the building and get to our meeting on the other side of the financial district. I assumed that the west side of lower Manhattan was going to be difficult to move around, and I wanted to get moving away from the fire. I jumped into the shower and shaved.

As I was getting dressed, I heard another explosion, this one much louder than the first one. I moved to the window and saw a large fireball in the middle of the south face of the South Tower, above me and just a block north. Thick black smoke billowed out of the building, and flames blazed all across the middle of the building. This time there was a cloud of debris raining from the sky; I saw large pieces of metal, some fifteen feet or so long, clanging against the sides of buildings and falling on the street below. I have no idea what was among the material falling from the sky, but there was a lot of it. The stuff just kept falling and falling, as if there was no end to the source of the shrapnel. I wanted to watch, but I was also scared that something was going to crash through my hotel window. I moved back.

Just after the second crash, a man made a statement on the hotel public address system that people on the "upper floors" of the hotel should evacuate their rooms. I couldn't figure out if I was on an "upper" floor, but I decided that it was time to get out of my room as quickly as I could. I donned the casual clothes that were on top of the clothes I'd brought along, stuffed the rest of my belongings into the suitcase, unplugged the computer from the wall and plopped it into the bag, and headed out the door of the hotel room. I took a quick look back to make sure I hadn't left anything.
The emergency staircase was just around the corner from my room, and I decided I should walk down instead of using the elevators. There were other people in the stairway, some carrying bags, others without anything other than their clothes. The emergency staircase let us out on a portion of the second floor of the building, and we walked through the kitchen towards another staircase that led to the lobby. A man in a suit announced that the streets were closed and that everyone was to stay in the building. "We will set up chairs and tables in the ballrooms on the second floor until we get further instructions." Hotel employees passed out water and orange juice to hotel patrons and to people who had sought shelter from the street.

I spotted Craig on the second floor balcony; he yelled down, "Come on up here David, there's more room up here." The man in the suit told us the elevators were open, and I went to the second floor. "Here David," Craig said, and I followed him into a room with picture windows looking down on West Street. We could see a crushed car (later Craig said he thought it was the engine cowling from a plane that had smashed the rear of the car); white sheets on the pavement apparently covered body parts. There was a lot of debris in the street, although there was no longer anything falling from above.

We waited only a few minutes when another man in a hotel uniform said loudly that we were to evacuate the building. He said that we were to leave on the south side of the building, which was directly below where we were standing. Some people moved to the north end of the building to take the stairs, but the man who made the announcement looked at us and said there was an elevator around the corner. We took it, and we were quickly moving out of the building.

We were directed to go right (west) out of the building a few steps to West Street and then told to walk left (south) down West Street towards the Battery. As we moved from the building, we were accompanied by some of the hotel maid staff, most of them crying and distraught about the tragedy around us.

The street scene was chaotic but manageable. As we walked south, I glanced back over my shoulder and could see large clouds of black smoke coming from the towers, which themselves were not visible from our side of the street. We saw all sorts of debris on the sidewalks and in the street; cars stopped and pulled off the street at odd angles, some having been hit with large objects crushing hoods and tops. There were more white sheets, some soaked with blood, spread over small piles of human flesh in the street. As we walked along the sidewalk, we passed a landing wheel from one of the planes, lying adjacent to one of the buildings. It had obviously been hurled four or five blocks south of the towers at the time of the explosion.

There were sirens everywhere. People were moving south, and emergency vehicles and crews were going north. Fire trucks, police cruisers, and emergency medical vehicles all wound their way slowly up the street. I saw the faces of some of the firemen, who were anxiously looking out the windows as their trucks moved towards the towers. They looked scared.

As we neared Battery Park, the amount of debris on the sidewalks and street diminished, although several blocks further south, both Craig and I noticed a single black tennis shoe in the middle of the street. Later we both wondered whether it had come from the blast.

The weather was beautiful on Tuesday morning, and crowds of people were gathered all over the lower part of Manhattan in spots where the twin towers were visible. For most of those spectators, I am sure the burning towers were riveting, and none of these people gazing at the fire and smoke could have foreseen the further disaster that was to come when the towers fell.

Craig and I sat down for a few minutes on a park bench in Battery Park. We both agreed that the best thing for us to do was to get off of Manhattan as soon as possible. Craig suggested a ferry to New Jersey; I didn't think there was such a thing. I said we could take the Staten Island Ferry, which I knew left from the southern tip of Manhattan. I pulled out a Flash Map book of New York, which I had thrown into my bag at the last minute before leaving home. I saw from the map that Staten Island had bridges to New Jersey, and I figured if we got to Staten Island, we could rent a car or take a bus and get towards I-95 and get home from there.

I put on my sunglasses, and we walked to the ferry building. The din of the sirens continued, but there was little commotion in the park. Lots of people standing around; they looked sad, uncertain, concerned. Some cried.
The ferry building is a fifties-style building with a long ramp leading up from the subway station. I should note that all the way through this, we were carrying our bags: Craig with a briefcase and folding garment bag and I with a (heavy) computer bag and small suitcase with wheels. We made our way to the top of the ramp and into the ferry building. Craig asked a man in a business suit where the ferry boarded, and he pointed towards a set of doors at the other end of the lobby. He also told us that the ferry is free.

There are actually two paths leading to the ferry boarding ramp, one inside the ferry building and the other on a balcony outside the building. We moved to the outside ramp to get some fresh air, and we stood with our bags at our side. We couldn't see a ferry boat, and we had no idea when we would move next. Below us, I could see the people in Battery Park, standing, watching, waiting.

In a few minutes, I saw a ferryboat approaching the building. I figured we were about to get onto the boat; Craig suggested that we hold back, since he expected a big rush towards the front. "No," I said, "Let's keep moving. We'll see where we end up." I figured that if we got on the boat, fine; if not, we'd be in position for the next one.

Both Craig and I were almost constantly trying to work our cell phones as we walked to the ferry building and waiting to depart. We couldn't get service, and most of the people around us were trying and failing to get signals. Occasionally my cell phone beeped to indicate that I had messages waiting for me, but I couldn't connect to retrieve them. I knew that Nancy was one of the people calling me, yet there was nothing I could do to let her know where I was.

We heard the ferry tying up to the dock. Just minutes before the doors opened, there was a loud, low rumble coming from the World Trade Center. I heard screams from the park, and we could see a dark cloud of soot and smoke moving through the buildings and enveloping the park area. I guessed that one or both of the towers had toppled or collapsed, although we couldn't see from where we were. There were more screams on the ramp to the boat and a sudden surge forward among the crowd. I sensed the crowd was about to panic. Just then the doors to the ferry opened; a number of people yelled out loud encouraging people to stay calm. The crowd seemed to calm down. No one ran; we all walked quickly through the lower part of the building and onto the boat.

As it turns out, the ferry was much larger than either Craig or I expected, and we were among the first of the pack of people who boarded. We kept walking through the boat, staying on the inside of the boat, behind plate glass windows that separated us from the outside deck. Craig stopped beside a life jacket station, grabbing one for each of us, saying, "Just to be safe." I then noticed that almost all of the people around us had not only picked up life jackets but had actually put them on. Ours were children's vests, and I have no idea how much buoyancy they would have given us.
We moved as far forward as we could in the boat. It was crowded, but not jammed. I looked through the window on my right and saw that the cloud of soot had overcome the boat. People on the outside deck were coughing and taking handkerchiefs, shirt sleeves and paper to cover their mouths and noses. Some of the people on the interior of the boat were doing the same thing. I was nervous; I thought about the dangers of the black smoke. I breathed slowly through my nose, thinking that would somehow protect me.

It wasn't long before the ferry engines rumbled and we started to pull away from the dock. I knew that once we got into the harbor, we would pass beyond the smoke and once again see blue sky and breathe clear air. Yet, it seemed to take forever to get through the cloud. I told Craig that we had to see blue sky soon, and finally we did.

Once the air cleared around the boat, I opened the sliding window beside me. The breeze blowing across the harbor cleared the air in the cabin. The route to Staten Island is such that the boat veered somewhat to its right as we sailed from Manhattan, giving those of us on the right side of the boat a view back towards Manhattan. Behind us was the incredible scene of thick grey clouds of smoke covering the entire southern end of the island.

The ferry docked at Staten Island. One of the crew made an announcement that all of the life jackets should be left on the boat. When the boat finally stopped, the passengers applauded and cheered. A woman on the outside deck collapsed, and there were shouts from several people calling for a doctor. A woman came from behind us and tended to the ill woman.

Craig and I walked out of the ferry terminal. We were in a small but bustling commercial district. The New York Yankees minor league baseball stadium is next to the ferry building. There were signs pointing towards busses and trains. We looked at them but couldn't find any destination on the island that showed any place obviously better than where we were.

Craig walked up to a police officer and asked him for advice about what we could do. We learned that the bridges off of Staten Island were closed. Craig asked where we might make a phone call, and the officer suggested we go to the precinct station at the top of the hill. He said there was a pay phone just inside the front door.

We walked up the hill, bought a couple of bottles of water, and sat down on a concrete ledge just below the precinct station. We could see Manhattan and the smoke, which had started to blow east, giving a slightly clearer view of the buildings. We knew by then that both of the trade center towers had collapsed. We looked at the familiar skyline, without the two towers that have dominated downtown New York for years. It was, and remains in my mind as I write this, an incredible feeling to look and not see them standing.

I walked up the steps to the precinct station. A man was using the telephone, but no one else was in line. He finally quit punching numbers and stood off to the side. I asked him if he'd been able to get through, and he said he hadn't. I punched in the numbers to connect to the AT&T credit card line and was able to get the initial connection. After putting in Nancy's telephone number and then the credit card number, I got an "all circuits are busy" recording. I knew that by pressing the pound key I could keep redialing, and I did until I got through to her. We were both relieved and happy to talk with each other, and I asked her to call the office and Craig's home to let everyone know where we were. In the half hour or so after I called, Craig was also able to get through.

The scene in front of us as we sat on the ledge outside the police station was hectic. A bus of New York City policemen arrived, from where I have no idea. They walked up to the police station and went inside. A man leading what looked like a school class came up from the ferry building and took his students inside the police building. Some of the people walking around had come from a later ferry, and they were dirty. Two women walked by me, arm-in-arm, both covered in grey soot, their nylon stockings ripped and their hair a mess. A man in army fatigues with a full backpack walked towards the ferry station. I gathered he had been called to Manhattan.

After resting for awhile, we decided we needed to move. Craig suggested we find a hotel, and he asked a police officer standing on the precinct steps above us where we might find one. The officer shouted back in a surly voice that we needed to go to an intersection of some route number and Richmond Avenue. Craig asked, "could I step up and ask you to show me where this is on our map?" The officer reluctantly permitted Craig to come up, then admitted that he didn't know where to send us.
We walked up the street and found a man in uniform outside the borough courthouse. He told us to take the Number 44 bus to the intersection of the freeway and Richmond Avenue, where we would find the Staten Island Hotel. He said it was the biggest hotel. After walking a half a block in the wrong direction to the wrong bus stop, we found the Number 44 Bus route and waited for the bus. It seemed like a long time until a Number 44 approached.

Two women in jeans and tee shirts were standing behind us and said they, too, were going to the Staten Island Hotel. We got onto the bus, and as the bus pulled away we learned that a young man and another couple were also going to the hotel. All of us had come from Manhattan, and none of us had any idea what we were going to do next. I earlier doubted that Craig and I were going to find a room at the hotel, and once I heard about all of these other people going the same place we were, I was sure there wouldn't be any vacancies.

The bus ride lasted about twenty-five minutes (I guess). Many of the people on the bus were talking; others were sitting silent. A man in a dark business suit sat beside the window, a cell phone at his ear but not talking. He was covered in soot, both on his clothes and in his hair. Craig asked a young woman where we would get off for the hotel, and the man in the dirty suit looked back and said he'd tell us when to get off. Then he turned his face back to the window.

The young woman whom Craig addressed was standing with two other women about her age (probably in their twenty's). She was dirty and carrying a boom box. She was talking to everyone and no one in particular, saying that she wasn't going to go back to Manhattan for a long, long time. She said after the explosion that she started walking towards the World Trade Center because she was looking for her brother, who worked there. Someone, she said, threw her down on the ground twice to keep her from getting hit with flying debris. I think she said that she found her brother and turned around. The two young women with whom she was traveling were friends, maybe new-found friends (I'm not sure), whom she'd invited to come back to Staten Island with her. She said that they were going to go home, drink scotch, and go to church.

Several people on the bus recalled their observations about being in the Battery Park area when the cloud of smoke billowed down from the collapsing towers. One woman told us that it was incredibly dirty and smoky, that people had jackets pulled over their heads and wandered around trying to find their way out. Some of the people on the bus said they saw others jump into the Hudson River from the esplanade along the waterfront.

By this time it was sometime after noon. We had heard rumors from various people, starting in Battery Park, that there had been other terrorist attacks in other parts of the country. Several people said that the Pentagon had been hit, and Nancy told me the same thing when I reached her on the telephone from the precinct house. In the bus, the woman with the boom box assuredly told all of us that, in addition to the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol had been hit in Washington. She said that the Sears Tower in Chicago had collapsed and that eleven high-jacked planes were on their way to Los Angeles. I believed her, I guess; the fact that she carried the boom box led me to believe that she'd heard this on the radio. I was more alarmed for the country at that point than at any other point of the day. Thankfully she was wrong about the extent of the terrorists' attacks.

The boom box lady and her friends disembarked before we did, and she wished us well, saying she hoped we enjoyed her city of Staten Island. A little while later, the man in the dirty suit got up and told us that he was getting off the bus and that we should get off at the next stop.

From the time we made the decision to go to Staten Island, I was thinking that we should find a car to rent and just drive home to Cleveland. I wanted to be in control and not rely on planes or trains. I also had no desire to stay in New York. My grand plan suffered some set-backs when we got to Staten Island, because there were no obvious rental car agencies at the ferry terminal. More importantly, the bridges were closed.
Nonetheless as we rode the bus to the hotel, I was thinking about getting a car. I saw a U-Haul agency on the side of the road, and I looked at Craig and said, "What about a truck to take us home?" Craig said, "no one else is going to think of that one."

We got off the bus and walked up to the hotel. People were sitting and standing outside the main door. Inside, the lobby was crowded, yet the people at the reception desk were handling the inquiries extremely pleasantly. There was a legal pad on the counter, and people were writing their names on the waiting list for rooms. Craig put our names down; we were numbers eighty-one and eighty-two.

There was a bar with televisions tuned to CNN. This was the first time since we'd left our hotel that we'd been able to see any public news broadcast about the day's events. We learned that the Pentagon had, indeed, been hit. We watched the footage of one of the planes crashing into the towers.

I told Craig I wanted to find a place that rented trucks or cars. He suggested I get the yellow pages from the front desk. The woman gave them to me, and I copied the addresses and telephone numbers for the two Enterprise car rental agencies on the island, a local car rental agency, and about a dozen truck rental agencies. I tried to call the Enterprise number, but I could not get through on my cell phone.

I asked Craig to stay with the luggage, and I went on foot to find a vehicle. I figured out the hotel was at about 1400 Richmond Avenue, and according to my notes there was a U-Haul agency at 1725 Richmond. I followed the street and, as I rounded the bend, saw four or five U-Haul trucks sitting on the street beside the tire/truck rental agency.

I walked into the store and asked if I could rent a truck. The man behind the counter said yes. I said I wanted to go to Ohio, and he looked at me as if I were crazy. "What do you mean, Ohio? How do you think you're going to get there? All the bridges are closed and are going to stay closed. I've got crews over in New Jersey, and there's no way they're coming back today or even tomorrow." I said I needed to go because there was no place to stay. I suggested that the bridges would open up sooner or later, and I would be ready to go. "There's no way I can rent it now, anyway, because I can't get through on the phone."

I asked him to hold the truck for me and told him I would be back after I figured out if we could get off the island. He said he would. "I'm not renting this one to anyone else."

On my way back to the hotel, I stopped at a travel agency in a strip center. I asked the proprietor if he knew any place to rent a car. He said he didn't. I said, "when are the bridges going to open?" He said he didn't know they were closed. I left.

From the hotel, I noticed earlier that we could see the freeway leading to the bridge. When we'd arrived at the hotel, all traffic was stopped on the freeway going towards New Jersey. As I walked back to the hotel, I saw cars moving west. I walked into the lobby, and Craig said the bridge had opened. I said, “Good, I've found a truck.” He said, "Well, go get it!"
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in the cab of a fourteen foot U-Haul truck, with horrible suspension and a loud muffler. I pulled up to the hotel, and we threw our luggage into the back of the truck and took off. We crossed over the bridge to New Jersey; the roadway coming back onto the island was blocked with police cars. I wondered if we were going to get stopped, since we were driving a rental truck from the city. No one seemed to pay attention.

We headed north onto the New Jersey turnpike. We passed Newark International Airport. The airport was completely shut down, and there was very little traffic on the turnpike. Off to the east, we could see Manhattan, with midtown glistening in the brilliant sunshine and downtown engulfed in the constant billowing clouds of smoke. We listened to the radio all the way home.

The trip home was mostly uneventful. We exited the turnpike at the Meadowlands (no tolls were charged), and as we left the turnpike, a cavalcade of emergency vehicles came up from our rear and pulled into the Meadowlands complex. It looked as if it had been set up as a triage area.

We got to Interstate 80 and headed west. About ten miles short of Delaware Gap, traffic came to a complete halt. We inched along for about an hour. Many cars turned around and went backwards on the median strip. Someone in a car ahead of us asked one of the people going in the opposite direction about the problem ahead. The driver told him that the Delaware Gap had been closed because of a bomb threat. Whether that was true or not, after about an hour we started moving forward.
We stopped for gasoline somewhere in central Pennsylvania. The other car at the gasoline stop was being driven by an older man who was traveling with his wife. He pulled up to the gas pump after I did, and he had the wrong side of the car towards the pump. He got back into the car, turned it around, and then started pumping. "Rental cars," he said, offering me the explanation as to why he'd pulled the wrong side of the car next to the pump. "We came from the city today." I said that we had, too. He said, "we were on a plane at La Guardia ready to go to Cincinnati, and we were told we couldn't go. We were lucky to get a Hertz car. It took us a long time to get over the bridges, but we're on our way."

I told him we were going to Cleveland, and we talked about how far he would need to drive to reach Cincinnati. He didn't have a map, and we gave him directions. I then told him that we, too, had rented the truck in order to get home. "You mean to tell me that you don't have anything in that thing other than the two of you? That's great," he chuckled, and then walked off to tell his wife about us.

Craig and I arrived back in Shaker Heights about 12:30 a.m.

It's very hard, even now one day later, to put all of this into perspective. We were lucky all day, and we were both very happy to get home. We made some smart decisions. We saw incredible tragedy, and I hope we never need to live through a day like that again.

David J. Hooker
Wednesday, September 12, 2001