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Remembering 9/11 - New York picked itself up

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I was working in the World Financial Center that was actually connected to the World Trade Center by a concourse over the highway. At the time, I was running Merrill-Lynch’s government business down in New York. We had just concluded our morning meeting and I heard a low-flying plane, then a really loud noise… I took a look out the window from my office which faced on to where the Statue of Liberty was and saw this guy running away looking up and some debris falling down. When I looked up, the World Trade Center was engulfed in a ball of flames. I would have just seen the impact of the first plane as it hit the building.

I didn’t make the connection of plane/building. It was more surreal, like a movie set. When I looked up, I thought ‘bomb.’

So, I went out onto Merrill-Lynch’s trading floor. I said, “A bomb has just gone off in the World Trade Center.” People initially thought I wasn’t serious. Cantor Fitzgerald was in the World Trade Center (WTC ). They were probably the organization that was affected the most. I think of the 900 people they had working there, 658 died. All the people working for me who either had family members or really good friends working for Cantor Fitzgerald immediately got on phones and called people.

One of my right-hand guys spoke to his brother, who ended up not making it. They found his body the next day, which would suggest he got to the roof and jumped off. His brother had been there for the 1993 bomb attack (at the WTC ).

When we saw plane number two hit, that’s when we realized we had to evacuate. We had to walk down seven floors. That was tough. I don’t know how people walked down 80.

I think one of the most amazing things I saw was the firemen and the fire trucks that continued to head down to that area, particularly after the first building went down. They knew some of their guys were in that building and they’ll be going into the other building and there was a chance that one will go down, too. There was a stream of fire trucks heading to the site. You would have one station, then another station getting the alarm and having to go down.

Later when we were walking with hundreds of thousands of other people up through the streets of Manhattan, there was a huge lineup of people, probably for three blocks. I’m thinking “What are they waiting for?” This would have been a line four people deep, two or three blocks long in Manhattan. I’m thinking is there a bus to get them off, what are they doing? Then I realized they’re in line to give blood. But I don’t know who they’re going to be giving it to. In my mind, when those two buildings went down, there wasn’t going to be a lot of people left.

In that kind of crisis, you really saw an amazing character of people. It’s hard to explain but the whole place kind of picked each other up. It was pretty amazing for a city like New York.

Paul Thomas, HBA’85, complete 9/11 reflections for ONLINE ONLY

I was working in the World Financial Center. From a location perspective, the World Financial Center was actually connected to the World Trade Center by a concourse over the highway. Without being in the World Trade Center, you were as close as you can get.

At the time, I was actually running Merrill-Lynch’s government business down in New York. We had just concluded our morning meeting and I was having a meeting with an economist. I heard a low-flying plane, then a really loud noise… I took a look out the window from my office which faced on to where the Statue of Liberty was and saw this guy running away looking up and saw some debris falling down. When I looked up, the World Trade Center was kind of engulfed in a ball of flames. I would have seen the impact of the first plane as it hit the building.

I didn’t make the connection of plane/building. It was more surreal, like a movie set. When I looked up, I thought ‘bomb.’

So, I went out onto Merrill-Lynch’s trading floor. We housed something like 750 to 900 people on the floor. A lot of people had gone up to another window to see what happened. And I said “a bomb has just gone off in the World Trade Center.” People initially thought I wasn’t serious.

Then when they realized I was serious, that immediately got people on the phone. Cantor Fitzgerald was in the World Trade Center (WTC). They were probably the organization that was affected the most. I think of the 900 people they had working there, 658 died. So, all the people working for me who either had family members or really good friends working for Cantor Fitzgerald immediately got on phones and called people.

One of my right-hand guys ended up speaking to his brother, who ended up not making it. They found his body the next day, which would suggest he got to the roof and jumped off. His brother had been there for the 1993 bomb attack (at the WTC). But he basically said to his brother at the time, it doesn’t look good.

Then we saw plane number two hit and that’s when we realized we had to evacuate. I went to the guy who ran Merrill Lynch and said we’re getting out of here. The secretaries who were in the back who might not know about it, we let them know and started to evacuate. We had to walk down seven floors. That was tough. I don’t know how people walked down 80.

Then we got outside and a lot of people were kind of milling around and I said to them “this isn’t a spectator sport, get yourself up the west side highway.” If you think of where we were, the West Side Highway kind of goes along the Hudson River. You didn’t know what was going on but you knew if bombs were going off or things were happening, you wanted to be somewhat close to water.

At the time I was living about a four-minute walk to work in Battery Park. So, I started walking towards my apartment and a little past that. People were streaming out. People had left the building and were working their way up. The access off Manhattan was limited. People were trying to get to the ferries to basically go home, whether it was Greenwich, Connecticut or New Canaan or parts of Jersey. A lot were coming by me and saying “why don’t you come out to my place?”

You saw all the fire trucks heading down to Ground Zero. And you’re watching the buildings on fire. You never would have considered they’d fallen down.

One thing was clear you did not want to be in that area. So, I was probably half a mile up the West Side Highway, so still close proximity but far enough away that you weren’t in the area. Then you started realizing people were jumping off the buildings. When you first saw something, you said “what is that?” Then you start realizing it’s people.

There were helicopters around because of the news and I could never understand why there was never any effort to try and get people off the roof but maybe the heat was too pronounced. I don’t know. When the first building went down, that’s when I decided I didn’t want to spend any more time in Manhattan today and I wasn’t going back to my apartment.

I think one of the most amazing things I saw was the firemen and the fire trucks that continued to head down to that area, particularly after the first building went down. You knew that they knew that some of their guys were in that building. At the same time I was thinking that each of the buildings housed about 50,000 people on a working day, so when I saw the first building go down I thought 30,000 or 40,000 people just died. There was a stream of fire trucks heading to the site. You would have one station, then another station, then another station getting the alarm and having to go down.

I think one of the most powerful memories was literally watching those firemen head down to that site after that first building went down, knowing they’ll be going into the other building and a chance that one will go down, too.

Even though there was a bit of a timeline between the plane hitting and everything else, I just don’t know how people physically could have gotten out of there.

A couple guys I work with basically walked with me from the base of Manhattan to, I don’t know, 90^th Street over the course of the day. It was literally like a Stephen King movie. You had hundreds of thousands or millions of people walking up the avenues north. They had cut off the exits because they obviously thought there was still a chance of attacks.

The other thing that drove me to get off the island, we were kind of milling around and this guy came up and said “Go north. I’m an undercover police officer. I think there might be chemicals.” They thought the planes might have had chemicals in them, so they wanted people to get as far away from the site as possible.

I remember it was amazing because the skies were empty and at one point before we started heading north, a U.S. military plane came over the skyline and everybody was cheering. Then we walked. I think we  stopped for lunch at some restaurant on the way. As you just walked and walked and walked over the course of the day, you started getting tired. We started looking around to see if we could find a bike shop. Because the way to get off was kind of north and almost through Harlem. And it was sometime between 3 and 4:30 p.m., can’t remember the time, and we actually found a cab in the midst of all that and one of the guys grabbed him and said “we’ll pay you whatever you want, can you get us out of here?” 

So, I ended up getting in the cab and taken out to New Canaan, Connecticut where one of the guys lived. And that was the day.

But for me, that was just the beginning to be honest with you. Because I ran the U.S. government business and I ended up staying at this guy’s place.

I was one of one of two people they couldn’t find the next day. So they weren’t sure what happened to me. But the other guy they couldn’t find was this guy who worked for me who ended up going back to the site trying to find his brother. I think he ended up finding the body. Two guys who worked for me both lost their brothers. But almost everyone else at work, many of them lost their best friends. It was a real tough time.

Later we were walking up with hundreds of thousands of other people through the streets of Manhattan, it was maybe the 40^th or 50^th Street, there was a huge lineup of people, probably for three blocks. And this is New York City. Having lived in New York City, I love the place but it’s a tough town. I’m sitting there going “what are they waiting for?” This would have been four people deep, two or three blocks long in Manhattan. I’m thinking is there a bus to get them off, what are they doing? Then I realized they’re in line to give blood. And you’re thinking they’re going to be giving a lot of blood but I don’t know who they’re going to be giving it to.

In my mind, when those two buildings went down, there wasn’t going to be a lot of people left. There weren’t going to be a lot of injured people, there were going to be a lot of dead.

Then literally the day after 9/11, we’re on the phone with the Treasury Department. And the next day we started work. As much as we got stuff together, I might have had 80 or 100 people working for me at the time, we only had about 12 stations.  And literally everybody but two showed up for work the next day in Jersey City. I didn’t obviously have spots for everybody.  I told them, “Don’t worry, your job is safe but I only have room for x number.”

The next three months were unbelievable. We’d have anthrax scares and bomb scares almost on a daily basis.  So, we would be working, then we’d have to evacuate our building. You get a sense of what people’s nerves were like.

In that kind of crisis, you really saw an amazing character of people. It’s hard to explain but the whole place kind of picked each other up kind of thing. It was pretty amazing for a city like New York. A very competitive place.

Personally, my wife and kids had lived with me for a couple of years and had just gone back to Mississauga. They had left that summer, which would end up being good because I’m glad they weren’t there for the actual event. It would have just been pretty tough. We were living in Greenwich, Connecticut at the time and they would have been in an environment where a lot of  families could have lost their husbands, fathers and that kind of thing.

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