EDITOR’S NOTE: The following account of the 9-11 attack on New York’s Twin Towers is written by Vinod Menon, a former Reporter business writer. He looks back 20 years at his experiences on that day in this eyewitness account.
For most Americans, 9/11 was a seminal event in their lives. It forced them to grow up, recommit to their country and settle any doubts they might have entertained about where their loyalties lay.
On the flip side, it has scarred us like no other event in recent history. It is the Pearl Harbor of our times. It has left us with a profound sense of disquiet and permanent vulnerability, the specter of which haunts people and politicians alike.
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My office in lower Manhattan was just one state — but a world away — from my cubicle at The Reporter. I joined The Reporter in March 1997 as the business reporter.
With my background in economics and financial markets, covering business for a hometown paper was very much a learning experience for me. Nevertheless, I had a great time working my beat. Each day I learned something new — and not just from my interactions with people, public officials and the editors, but also from the photographers, fellow reporters and folks in other departments.
While working at a regional newspaper was intimate and fun, the call of financial markets was hard to resist. In the summer of 2000, I accepted an analytics role with a forex firm on Wall Street. I had just been a year with them when the attack on the World Trade Center took place.
“The morning of Sept 11 was crisp and sunny…” I can recall that 20 years hence because I wrote that in my diary that night. In reality, I have no memory of that day before 8:45 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 struck Tower 1 and jolted me out of my morning work rituals. It was a day like any other; I started my day in Princeton, NJ where I lived with my wife. I got off the Path train deep within the bowels of the WTC around 8 a.m. and picked up a coffee and bagel from the vendor across the street before heading into 140 Broadway where I worked.
8:45 a.m.: It was still 15 minutes until the market open and I was catching up on my overseas emails.
This must be an earthquake, I recall thinking, feeling the jolt of the impact and rumbling that followed. A few minutes later I saw papers coming downlike confetti outside our windows. The televisions on our floor were tuned to the news channels. As a news helicopter flew around the North Tower, we could make out the outline of an airplane across the facade of the North Tower.
I remember thinking, it must take a particular kind of stupid person to fly a plane into a building that size! We still had no clue it was an airliner, we just thought it was a sightseeing airplane that had crashed into the building. From my office window on the 21st floor, I did not have a clear line of sight to the North Tower, but I could make out the smoke billowing out from behind One Liberty Plaza. We turned up the volume on the televisions trying to make sense of what was happening.
9 a.m.: The Stock Market opening was delayed, but I wasn’t paying attention. We were milling by the windows on the west side trying to make sense of the mass of people, fire trucks, and emergency vehicles trying to get around each other on the streets down below.
I saw a blur out of the corner of my eye and a flash across the corner of the South Tower and I felt that jolt again. Twice is not an accident! My journalistic instinct kicked in and I called an acquaintance at the Federal Reserve across the street — no response. I called my friend at Bloomberg — it went to voicemail. I called in to the News Desk at The Reporter, hoping the editors would have some information on what was happening from the wire services.
I got through to my News Desk Editor, Nona Breaux. I recall giving my first impressions of what was happening to her and then to the Editorial Page Editor Dick Shearer.
I tried to call my wife to assure her that something was happening in lower Manhattan, but that I was safe. She was already in class at Temple University, so I just left her a message.
My colleagues and I had no sense of the enormity of events unfolding before us. We continued to stand and gawk at the smoke billowing from the South Tower and the melee on the street below. At some point we started seeing pieces of furniture falling out of windows in the South Tower. And then a body followed. A small figure, but recognizably human … Was he wearing a yellow tie?
I have very little sense of what I did for the next half hour, but at some point the building security people addressed us over the PA system and recommended that we leave the building. By now, people were talking about a terror attack.
I walked down 21 floors in a daze — disturbed by what I had seen, what I was hearing, and disoriented by the constant turns and fetid air of the stairwell. We spilled out into the lobby and out onto the street. A policeman shooed us away from the building as debris and odd bits of twisted metal started to rain down. I headed down Courtland Street towards the East River.
9:59 a.m.: It started with a low rumble. I half turned to look up to see the South Tower loom over us and then start to collapse. I ran for my life. I didn’t get too far before the wave of dust overtook and enveloped me and everyone else.
Just before the dust blotted everything out, I saw the entrance to the subway station to my left and darted in. Past the first flight of steps the entrance had been padlocked shut. I was among the first people at the gate, but a throng of people were pushing in behind me, it was a stampede. I crawled out from one side to under the stairs, pulling my shirt and tie over my nose, as a makeshift mask.
The world seemed to be at an end. The dust snuffed out the daylight. It was dark under that stairwell and I could not even see my hand. The rolling heavy rumble of collapsing masonry was now replaced by intermittent sounds of dropping debris, like thunder.
I heard the wail of a woman filtering through the persistent hiss in my ear. I counted my heaving, burying my face into my backpack to breathe what I thought was the clean air within.
I lay there for what seemed like an eternity. It must have been just a few minutes, but it seemed longer. Somewhere in the far distance things seemed to stir again. I heard a siren and the frantic toots of a fire truck. Eventually I got out and made my way across town to catch one of the last ferries making its way across the Hudson River to Hoboken, N.J.
Standing across the river in the noon sun, and gazing back at a familiar skyline, scarred by smoke and dust, I realized the world would never be the same again.
Vinod Menon is now employed as a risk manager for a Fintech company. He lives in Wayne, Pa.
