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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
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IN NEW YORK Trade Center: towers of ash, piles of rubble
By Fred Kaplan and Elizabeth Neuffer, Globe Staff, 9/12/2001
Minutes after two airplanes smashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers yesterday morning - the first at 8:45, the second at 9:03 - a solid, dark gray plume of smoke billowed from the flames, covering the top half of the buildings like a blanket, and spreading like an oil slick across the clear blue sky.
At 10 a.m., the first tower, buckling under the pressure, collapsed like a sand castle in the tide.
Thousands of onlookers, already numb with horror, literally ran for their lives, screaming and crying. Amid the stampede, several people fainted, many tripped in the rush, while some stopped to help and others hurried on.
''Oh, my God. This city's in chaos,'' said one woman in her 50s.
At 10:30, as smoke and ash filled all Lower Manhattan, the second tower tumbled as well, setting off another sonic boom and round of panic.
One woman cried, ''Oh, those poor people, those poor people, oh, my God.''
Police waved people up Broadway, shouting, ''Move it, move it, move it!''
Other officers hollered to the many merchants who had stepped out on the sidewalk, ''Close down your stores and go north - now!''
Thousands were walking or running in the street now, looking dazed, shocked.
Keith Butterfield, an executive with Xerox, which has offices across the street from the World Trade Center, stood on a corner and looked around for co-workers.
''We heard the first explosion,'' Butterfield said. ''We thought it was a bomb. Last week, there was a bomb-threat scare. We thought this was it. Then we saw pieces of fuselage and body parts, falling from the sky. There were body parts in front of us, strewn all over the streets.''
Minutes after the second blast, Jake Binner, a 21-year-old who had just moved here from Hanover, N.H., was among those moving up Broadway, his hair flaked with dust, his eyes reddened from the smoke.
''I saw a huge fireball - it was like a science fiction movie,'' Binner said. ''When the second plane hit, everyone screamed. Chaos broke out when the first building collapsed. Some people simply abandoned their cars in the middle of the street. People were screaming and praying to God.''
By 11 a.m., streets as far as 10 blocks from the World Trade Center were deserted, thick only with white dust and reams upon reams of legal and financial papers. Pink telephone message slips, charred around the edges, slid through the gutters.
At Vesey and West streets - about 20 yards from the towers - dense smoke swirled where the towers used to be. The walkway that once connected the World Trade Center to the nearby World Financial Center had collapsed, trapping part of a fire truck under it.
Chunks of rubble lay in the street. Everywhere, there was thick, white, ankle-deep dust, like volcanic ash. As it coated cars, trees, and bushes - and the faces of survivors still struggling northward from the blast - the scene had an eerie winter quality, as if Manhattan had been hit by a freak September snowstorm.
A closer look at the rubble strewn along the streets, however, revealed remnants of the violent tragedy - a brown leather shoe, a crumpled briefcase, possibly the belongings of those still in the World Trade Center when the plane first hit.
''It looked like nuclear winter,'' said Charles Mangano, 46, of Merrill Lynch, who was in the nearby World Financial Center when the first plane hit. He was standing on the 34th floor when the second plane hit, and quickly got his staff downstairs before the Trade Center collapsed.
''All of a sudden it sounded like the entire US Air Force was coming down the island of Manhattan,'' he said.
Nearby, a car window and windshields had been blown in from the force of the building collapse. Several cars near the Trade Center erupted in flame, as did nearby gas lines. On West Street, more than 50 police officers and fire fighters struggled to put out small fires while also trying to rescue those trapped in the building when it collapsed.
One emergency rescue team was trapped in what is known as Building Number Seven, part of the complex that makes up the World Trade Center.
''We were in Building Number Seven when it [the tower] fell on us,'' said one dirt-covered emergency rescue worker, who asked not to be identified. ''We dug our way out. There were nine of us that went in, and only six came out.''
''We haven't even started looking through the debris,'' said another asked about survivors.
Hours later, Building Number Seven collapsed, too.
By midday, as dozens of rescue workers poured into the scene, bulldozers were brought in to scrape up the thick muddy goo created from the ash and the water that firefighters had used to put out fires. Paramedics, masks across their faces to shield them from the thick haze, were tending to the wounded.
Some were volunteers who had been called to the scene. ''I saw people jumping off the World Trade Center,'' said one, Lewis Vigal, an emergency medical technician who normally works for Cablevision.
''They were burning, they were aflame.
In true New York style, the scenes of disaster attracted its share of onlookers - some who came out of curiosity, some out of reverence for their city.
''This is Pearl Harbor,'' said Gregory Kipnis, who runs a hedge fund in midtown, and who hopped on a bicycle to come downtown for a closer look.
''This is the terrorist-caused equivalent of Pearl Harbor. It changes everything forever.''
Blocks north of the blast, New York had the aura of a deserted holiday weekend. Midtown streets, normally jammed with traffic, were nearly empty. For much of the day, subways were closed, so the streets were filled with pedestrians. Pretzel vendors continued to do a brisk business.
Every block, a dozen or so people crowded around a parked car, its radio blaring an all-news station. They also filled the entranceways to bars and restaurants to watch TV newscasts.
Outside St. Vincent's Hospital, in Greenwich Village, teams of nurses and doctors had lined stretchers on the sidewalk, awaiting the wounded, who had only just started pouring in. A placard said: ''WE NEED BLOOD - PLEASE DONATE''.
Across the city, buses stalled, taxis were out of commission, train stations shut down, cellular lines snarled, long queues snaked around pay phones, and everywhere, people tried to find out if friends and loved ones were alive.
Stores, theaters, and jazz clubs, which rarely shutter for holidays, were closed yesterday. The city's mayoral primary was postponed. Baseball games were canceled. In hotels across the city, lobbies were packed with panicked travelers - some unable to get home, many fearful of staying.
In this swaggering city, there was a sense that America, once considered invincible, had suddenly become vulnerable.
''People think it happens in Israel and it can never happen here - this is America,'' said Joseph Datskozsky, a Russian who was stuck in a subway under the World Trade Center as a tower collapsed. ''But they are wrong. There are many terrorist attempts; just this one succeeded.''
This story ran on page A5 of the Boston Globe on 9/12/2001.
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