I was supposed to attend a conference in New Jersey, beginning September 14, 2001. Flights were booked, my hotel was set. As a graduate student, I was excited to dive into a new technology that had the potential to change my world. I planned to arrive in New York – my first trip to the city – a day early, to see some of the sights.
Then the attacks happened.
And the world changed. All flights were grounded – a first in the US. Many stores were closed. The country and the world was reeling.
But then a note came the conference would go on. Flights would resume. I would go to New York.
So on the morning of September 13, within hours of US airspace reopening, I was on one of the first planes to land at Newark, not far from Ground Zero. There were a handful passengers on the flight and about as many crew. As we descended into Newark, all of us were at a window on the left side, staring in silence at the smoking void where the World Trade Center stood just two days prior. The world had changed.
I hurried to my hotel to drop off my bag. With just my camera, I took a shuttle van into the city, arrived at the Port Authority and headed downtown as close as the subway could get me.
The air was thick with dust and smoke.
I walked north and started taking pictures. I only had a few rolls – just what was in my apartment before I left. One roll of colour, 2 rolls of black and white. I hoped to find more in New York.
There were barricades. Cranes and excavators worked away. People gathered at the perimeter, some silent, some openly speculating. What happened. Why. How. Who. What would come next.
In the dust and the noise, we felt it. The world had changed. We watched a rescue effort that had just transitioned to a recovery effort.
It smelled bad. Like death.
I walked north on Broadway, shooting west into the rubble. As fire trucks came and went, onlookers erupted in applause and cheers. Parked fire trucks were accumulating thank-you cards. A bedsheet-sized banner hung out the window of a pumper truck: “We thank you with all our hearts.”
Near Cortlandt and Broadway, there were papers scattered on the ground. Spreadsheets. Newspapers. Things that would have been on the desks or in the filing cabinets of the banks and financial companies that occupied so many of those offices. Blown out of the windows as the towers fell and scattered on the streets. A few Postal Service bins sat on the ground, filled with the collected scraps.
2,753 people died just feet away.
Trucks came and went. National Guard. Police. Firefighters. People in hazmat suits. Some with respirators, most without. Rescue dogs wearing protective boots to shield their paws from so much broken glass and sheared metal.
A man had set up an easel on Broadway, sketching the shattered skeleton of one of the towers just a few feet to the west. The rubble smoked.
I walked north again. There were no cars allowed. At one intersection, a utility trailer held a bank of pay phones for anyone to use, as the destruction of the towers had severed all kinds of utility lines in the area and phone service was out. I didn’t yet own a cell phone. So I picked up a handset and dialed my parents in Canada. I was surprised it went through and I recounted the scenes of the last few hours.
When I got back to my hotel in New Jersey, I went right to the sink and rinsed my arms and face. I was covered in dust and my hair was several shades lighter from whatever was in it.
The water that came off me was grey.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said publicly that day that the agency had “not seen any reason—any readings that have indicated any health hazard.” The filthy water in my sink said otherwise. Asbestos. Lead. Glass fibers. Countless other toxins. It left a residue on the sink.
Just this week, new information was released about how New York City officials misled the public and hid air quality data showing the area was unsafe. Thousands of first responders and residents have contracted illnesses from their time around Ground Zero. I was there for an afternoon. They lived and worked for months in a toxic stew.
The world has changed.
