Wandering Words

Sept. 11th, 2001 started out early for me, very early. I normally wake up around 8:00-8:30 and get to the office by 10am. Like many times before and since I had to go to New York City that day for meetings. I must have gotten up around 5am in order to get to our Dulles, VA campus at around 6:15 to catch our shuttle over to the AOL hanger to catch the daily private plane to NYC. We landed about 8:15am in Teterboro, NJ where many corporate planes use the facilities. There is a private AOLTW bus that takes us into the city stopping at Rockefeller Plaza where a couple of the AOLTW buildings are at.

We got on the bus and started the trip into the city. Coming from Teterboro, we get onto a certain approach highway to the Lincoln Tunnel. I don't remember the name or number of the road, but I'll never forget circling around the entrance ramp that day. I was sitting on the right side of the bus, and as we came around, I looked over and saw a building with its upper floors on fire. The time was moments after 8:48. I know that because it looked like the fire had just started, the smoke plume was still in the form of a ball and hadn't even reached the top of the building yet. The building looked to be only 20-30 stories tall, it must have been somewhere in Jersey. I told the guys beside me to check it out. A couple of minutes later as we go a little further in, a second building comes out from behind the first.

Oh... my... that isn't a building in Jersey, those are the top of the twin towers. I stand up and tell everyone on the bus to look out the window... lots of gasps. The normal bus driver (Richie, I could write volumes on this character) is training a new guy and looks out. Richie is an older gentleman and a lifetime New Yorker and is really freaked. He starts fiddling with the radio to find out what is going on, like many we just think it is a fire. I call my friend Mark at UNCG, no answer so I leave a voice mail for him before the second tower is hit. I can't remember if we knew it was an attack yet or not, but my message to Mark is surreal to leave.

While heading to the Lincoln Tunnel we pass behind hills and can't see the Twin Towers for a while. Richie finally gets the radio on and they are saying a plane hit the towers, probably a small plane. When we come out the other side the second tower has just been hit and then everyone knows that this can't be an accident. Since the news shows had the big jet in the picture for the second hit, everyone realizes this is a MAJOR attack.

Going through the Lincoln Tunnel we lost our radio station and cell phones for some cell providers. My cell phone with AT&T was still good to go and I passed it around to let others call folks. My mom was on vacation and I didn't have her number with me. We arrive in Manahattan and we get off the bus and a few of us in the same meeting head to the Time & Life building over on the Avenue of the Americas. We head up to our meeting on the 35th floor in the Executive Board room and stop in the lobby to watch the big screen where most of the floor is standing. After a couple of minutes we head on into the meeting.

The Turner/CNN guys are huddled in one corner on a couple of telephones in front of their laptops. Most of the other divisions security officers and peoples (computer/network, not physical security guards) are sitting around the table listening to someone give a presentation about something orother to us, the AOLTW Security Council. When the rest of the AOL crew arrives we interrupt a little and this is when I find out why all the CNN folks are crowded in the corner. CNN.com is off the net. Completely, absolutely crushed from the traffic. AOL's traffic has increased many times over the maximum web traffic AOL had ever seen, but all the AOL sites are holding steady... guess the CNN guys should have listened to us and moved their sites to our data centers where we are designed NEVER to let our customers down (otherwise the state AGs will have our butts). To top it off, CNN center has been evacuated as well and there is no one there to add more servers. I later find out that AOL steps up and brings 300 additional servers online for CNN at the AOL data centers in about 2-3 hours. New record for our systems integration guys!!!

We get the meeting back on track for a little while and I step out to go to the restroom. As I'm walking back by the big screen the first tower falls. Oh... my... I stand there in shock like the other 20 people or so in the lobby. Utter silence on the TV and in the room. I shake myself out of it and go back to the board room to let everyone know what just happened. Everyone sits there for a second and then the entire room gets up and goes to the lobby to watch the screens. We watch for probably 20 minutes or so and some of us start trickling back in. It is time to make a decision, shall this meeting continue or not? A quick poll and we decide we are almost all in from out of town and have no where to go or anything to do, so let us continue. A few folks are hemming and hawing, and the Time, Inc. security person asks if we would like to move down to a lower floor? We go down to 17 or 7, I can't remember, after everyone quickly says yes.

We continue on for a while, have lunch delivered, try and eat, and get somewhat back on track for a couple of more hours. I am on AOL at this point while the meeting is going on and someone asks if we caught the private AOL bus from NYC to DC... what bus?!? Evidently there had been an overhead announcement in one our other buildings, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, for any Northern Virginia folks who wanted to go home to get on the bus, they forgot to announce that in the T&L building though. :( By this point everything is shut down on Manahattan, the air space is closed... 4 of us who were only going to be in NYC for the day are officially stranded it looks like.

An announcement comes overhead and we find out that all of Rockefeller Plaza is being evacuated and that includes the Time & Life building even though it is a block away. We pack up our belongings, and decide we better pack up the food and the water and the drinks... just in case, no tellings where things are going at this point! We decide to meet in the Sheraton lobby where several of the AOL'ers are staying. Our NY colleagues head home to their families. I decide I will head to the AOLTW Emergency Command Center in the 75 Rock building to see what is going on and if I can be of any assistance. The building is empty except for the 9th floor where a make shift command center has been setup in the large conference room across from the WB screening room. Matti, our telecom guy for 75 Rock has normal phones and standard Bell business lines strewn out all over the place and there is a pretty efficient team coordinating things for the company.

I try and find out if there are any other ways for us to get back to DC... NOPE. Matter of fact, how many hotel rooms, beds, and floor space do we have available for the ones that were staying. There is nothing for a Chief Architect/Technology dude to do right now. We give them a list of all of us who are in town and where we are at.

Heading back over to the Sheraton it is getting later in the day, about 4pm. My walk over is odd in some way... oh yeah, not many people or cars out right now. At 4pm on a weekday I would expect more... a lot more... hmmmm. We meet up in the lobby and head to one of the rooms where we all gather. 9 of us total from AOL Virginia, with 5 rooms that were single occupancy until this all happened. We sit in the room for a couple of hours watching TV and making calls. I call my sister and let the cat out of the bag that no, I'm not in DC where a plane crashed into the Pentagon... I'm in NYC where the planes crashed into the Twin Towers instead. She has my mom's contact information and I give her mine to pass on to my mom. I do get to talk to my mom eventually and let her know all is well, they are locked up in Williamsburg actually. Norfolk Naval Base seems to have a rather large swath of lock down and they are stuck in Williamsburg.

We go to dinner in the hotel resturant and are amazed as they open up door/walls directly to the sidewalk which should be stuffed with people but is quite empty. I finish up dinner early and decide I need to go find some clothes for the next day. I try several places, but they are all closed by 6:30pm. I end up going to another hotels gift shop and picking up a NYC tee shirt, pair of underware, deodrant, and a tooth brush. $40. :)

Everytime I go out onto the street there are less and less people. Also, every single block has a group of four police officers walking around with riot gear on their nightstick over their shoulders. They have their radios up pretty loud so all can hear, and it frankly is scary. I hear two conversations, one about a white Maxima that will not stop over on the FDR and police wondering if they should ram it off the road. Another about a helicopter that they don't know if it should be in the air or not. Amazing conversations. I still cannot figure out where all the officers came from, but I'm happy to see them. There are also continuous streams of firetrucks, again from where I don't know. They line up on side streets and about every 15-30 minutes the crew loads up and heads down to the site. At one point I see two NYPD officers kiss each other; things are diffently going badly in the world.

After I get back to the hotel we decide to head out for a walk. We end up walking to Central Park. All of the roads through the park are closed off and so everyone is walking in the streets. I observe something I've never seen before in NYC. People stopping and talking to each other. Real honest conversations and even hugs traded and time spent with someone else. It wasn't isolated either, there was a lot of it. Also, people were saying hello to us... strangers from out of town. People were smiling, nodding, and acknowledging us. I've spent a bit of time in NYC... this is VERY, VERY weird for me. I'd been told that NYers are just busy and don't have time for the pleasantries that the rest of the nation does. I had accepted that after spending time there and realizing that they were nice people, and there were just too many of them in too small of a space to be able to open doors, say thanks, etc. without wasting an enormous amount of time. Now I saw the evidence of that when things did slow down. If the tragedy had happened in Los Angeles, I feel certain the people would NOT have behaved the same.

We head back and call Amtrak to see if we'll be able to get back to DC. Trains are back in service, there is one leaving at midnight if we wanted to take it. We decide to wait and take the fast Accela in the morning at 10am from Penn Station to Union Station in DC. Sleep comes and goes during the night, still in a bit of shock about it all.

Waking up the next morning, I look out the window onto the streets. There are NO CARS, VEHICLES, ANYTHING on Avenue of the Americas... matter of fact the roads have been empty for a while from the looks of it. There is graffitti directly in the middle of the streets. Amazing, try that on a normal evening and you'll get ran over! We start walking at about 8am down the 13 or 14 blocks to Penn Station. Easily the wierdest time ever in Manahattan. This should be rush hour, yet we walk those blocks and never stop for a "Don't Walk" sign but once, and that was only for one car then we continue crossing. There are no cars, we see maybe 7 or 8 cabs, and only a dozen or so cars total the entire walk. There was some street traffic however... roller bladers. We saw more folks on blades on 7th Avenue than cars. I just keep feeling more and more freaked.

We cross through Time Square and there is only a couple of people on the edges. We walk across to the center island where normally there would be folks trying to get tickets for shows and the like and we are the ONLY people on the island. Weird.

We get to the train station and catch our train, my closing of the past 24 hours is looking back out my left side window of the train when we come up in New Jersey and seeing the skyline of Manahattan.

I just keep thinking to myself........ Where'd Manahattan go.