Archive: In seconds, a confident N.Y. is shaken

From our archives, see how the Philadelphia Inquirer covered 9/11:

Life changed fast and forever yesterday morning, when an unseen terrorist hand guided two planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, collapsing the symbols of New York City's commercial and cultural greatness.

Now there is smoke where there once was steel, shocked silence where a self-assured populace once ran America's most dynamic city.

Casualties were expected to be in the thousands, as the attack rocked what amounts to two vertical cities.

By nightfall, an unsettling quiet permeated Lower Manhattan from Soho, to Chinatown, to Greenwich Village.

Two inches of white ash had snowed onto the streets, muffling noise like a blizzard, giving a savage day a surreal end.

"It's like Pompeii," a Battery Park City doorman said, as though only an ancient image of catastrophic destruction could adequately describe what happened to his city on a long and awful day.

It began with a loud, high-pitched whistle around 8:45 a.m. Erika January, a Pace University psychology intern, was in the lobby of the north tower, about to walk out onto the street.

"It sounded like a missile coming in," she said. "Then there was an explosion. Everyone panicked and we went inside, of all things. We had a sense of being shot at. "

That was metal, falling with heated speed from the 110-story north tower. In an instant, without speaking, the lobby crowd decided it was smarter to flee the building.

According to some reports, building officials told some people it was safe to remain inside.

When the plane struck, it created a huge orange fireball. "It was like Mount St. Helen's blew," transit worker Richard Grove said.

Easily visible against the blue sky, the plane suddenly "disappeared into the building," Bill Holmberg, who lives in a nearby high-rise, said. "It was like a knife going into a cake. "

Bill Hay, a truck broker from San Diego, was giving a lecture on the 55th floor when the plane hit. "It rocked the whole damn building," he said. "I mean, we rocked like a rocking chair. " He plunged into the smoke-filled stairwell and saw a man struggling with his seeing-eye dog, and a paraplegic being carried down the stairs. People coming from upper floors were burned and maimed.

A wave of gray-and-white debris rushed across Manhattan with a low rumble that reminded people of a jet engine.

Glass fell like rain, said Jill Sherman, a Haverford College vice president who was in a taxi one block from the trade center. "People were running," she said. "It was like the bulls at Pamplona. "

Banker Brian Kelly, who works in One World Financial Center, saw fellow workers being hit.

"I saw people getting their heads split open," he said. "I saw people getting their backs crushed. Never in my life have I seen anything like this. "

By 9:03, the second plane had struck the south tower. A cascade of fireworks and melting aluminum fell to the ground. Black clouds of smoke eclipsed the sun. "You couldn't see more than an inch in front of your face," lawyer Peter Fink said. "People were running into each other, running into cars. "

Fires raged overhead. Nurse Michelle Heath, who rushed to the scene, said, "You cannot believe the devastation. The air was filled with paper, blood, arms and legs. " Everyone was crying, including rescue personnel.

Californians attending New York University, a mile or so uptown, felt what they believed to be an earthquake. Police officers, unable to do anything, simply yelled to pedestrians, "Run!" and then sprinted away from the towers themselves.

Those able to look up watched in horror as workers in the towers jumped or fell.

"I saw five people jump out, one by one," said Mony Weschler, a volunteer paramedic with the Hatzolah Volunteer Ambulance Squad in Brooklyn. "You could see the flames behind them. It was red-hot. "

As the chaos seemed to peak, the unimaginable happened: The towers collapsed, one and then the other, falling in what seemed like slow motion, kicking up mushroom clouds of smoke.

People said it looked like a planned implosion, when demolition experts take down an unwanted building. The towers seemed to buckle, then just melt.

Robert Rosero, an employee of the midtown insurance brokerage Marsh Inc., had worked on the 99th floor of Tower One. Last Thursday, Rosero moved to Marsh's offices 45 blocks north, and there he watched as the tower in which he had worked collapsed in about seven seconds.

"The tower was gone, and all I could see was New Jersey," he said, his voice quavering. "I hope my friends got out. "

A burnt-gunpowder, acrid smell filled the air, and workers who were evacuated from the towers and nearby buildings covered their faces with handkerchiefs. A restaurateur near the World Trade Center tore up his linen tablecloths and handed them to people as they passed by.

With cars and buses restricted from Lower Manhattan, the streets were filled with stunned pedestrians, trudging in pin-striped suits, wearing blank and vacant expressions.

Caked in soot and dust, people moved stiffly like zombies from a horror movie, vainly trying to raise somebody, anybody, on cellular phones that were rendered useless, witnesses said. Massage therapist Maura Hurley, among the throng of people walking from the tower, said a woman suddenly ran up to her and exclaimed, "I don't know you, but I feel like I need to hold onto somebody for a minute. "

Strangers tried to find comfort and assurance. People in buildings far from the towers streamed onto the street, seeking a kind of solace among neighbors they normally ignored.

Visitors from politically troubled countries shook their heads. Terry McComish, a tourist from Northern Ireland, was shaken. "Being from Belfast," he said, "we've seen a few things blow up, but nothing like this. "

Yoram Landskroner, a visiting professor from Israel who lives across the street from the World Trade Center, fled with his wife when his walls shook. "We came here thinking it would be safe," he said, after scrambling over a wall and climbing a fence with his wife, Dinah, to get on a boat to Jersey City, across the Hudson River from the towers.

Tugboats, ferries, water taxis and police boats bobbed in the light chop, as officials evacuated the southern tip of the island. Hundreds of people clambered aboard, many of them, Landskroner noted, from a riverbank walkway near the Holocaust Museum.

Among the passengers was Monica Watt, the mother of a 5-year-old named Amanda who was in a wheelchair. Standing directly under Tower One with her son, William, 2, and Amanda, Watt feared they would be buried in debris. Suddenly, a stranger picked up Amanda, still in her chair, and ran with her toward a boat.

Watt got on board, joining a flotilla that looked to one old-timer like the evacuation of Dunkirk, France, during World War II.

In Liberty State Park in Jersey City, people stumbled off the boats, describing their escape from Manhattan, their eyes rimmed in red. Hundreds of ambulances from all over New Jersey awaited victims.

Nearby, Datek Online Service, a Jersey City Internet company, opened its lobby to several hospitals, which set up receiving sites for the injured.

As more and more people gathered in New Jersey, Staten Island commodities trader Eric Werner was on the verge of tears, worrying about his wife, Donna, who works in a building near the World Trade Center. "I have no way of finding out if she's OK," he said with despair.

The attack had a sickening echo for Werner, who had worked near the towers in February 1993, when terrorists bombed the buildings. New Yorkers such as Werner who had lived through this before, thinking they had seen the worst of terrorism, were left yesterday to rethink their definition of atrocity.

As Werner spoke, F-16 fighter planes roared overhead, and warships steamed by, a show of might and a startling contrast to the expensive yachts and occasional dolphins normally found in the busy river.

Hospitals in Manhattan were flooded with New Yorkers who wanted to help by donating blood. At St. Vincent's hospital in Greenwich Village, the closest major hospital to the scene, officials turned away would-be donors because so many had already turned up.

Ultimately, many people were left seething with anger, feeling rage against an unknown enemy for an unconscionable act.

"I feel violated," said Raymond Smith, a Hoboken artist who was sketching a picture of the dark cloud sitting where the World Trade Center used to be.

"I feel raped. I feel humiliated. This is just shameful what they did. "

Alfred Lubrano's e-mail address is alubrano@phillynews.com.