9/11 - A first person account

Author's note: This is a first person account of the incident as seen by the author, a journalist living in New York that fateful day of September 11, 2001. The author tells nothing more than what he saw and experienced that day. An epilogue at the end of the post will briefly deal with impact the incident has had on the global political and security landscape. 

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The South Tower hit by the second plane

I REMEMBER the 'Coach' leather handbag well. I got it for my wife three days earlier, only to return to the store the next day as she had wanted to change to one of another colour. 

 A year later, I stared at the same handbag lying on a dressing table in our bedroom, halfway across the world from where it was bought and wondered about fate of the lady who sold it to us. The store was located at the basement plaza of what was then the New York World Trade Centre.

 The day began just like most other in that early New York fall. The smell of freshly-brewed coffee filled the morning air as I took in my daily dose of rantings by MSNBC shock-jock, Don Imus, on his 'Imus In The Morning' show.
 I had the entire morning planned. After breakfast at the apartment on River Road, Roosevelt Island, I was to catch the residential bus for the subway station at the end of the little island straddling the waterway known as the East River between Manhattan and Queens.
 I would have caught the Q train together with thousands of other commuters and make my way to the 34th Street station where I was to change to the Brooklyn-bound N or R train. I would have had to get off at the Cortland Street station in lower Manhattan, a station which actually is right smack at the basement of the ill-fated twin towers.

 From there I would walk to the J&R Computer store to pick up a personal computer I had sent for repairs a week earlier. The journey from my apartment to the store should not take no more than 30 minutes, I reckoned.
 No one saw it coming. It was a lovely morning to pick up a cup of coffee, find a bench and watch the morning commuters criss-cross the city to their work places. But just as I had finished shower, and while glancing outside of the apartment's 8th floor window to see whether I would have to take a jacket with me, I noticed something was not quite right.
 Wailing sirens are part of New York's soundscape. You hear sirens all the time in the city. But that morning something was different. They were louder than usual and they seemed to come from every direction.
 I noticed traffic was at a standstill on the southbound Franklin D. Roosevelt expressway. The only vehicle moving were the emergency vehicles and theywere all racing downtown. After a while of my eyesight following them, I eventually saw the World Trade Center towers.
 The two towers were so tall that they were visible from from almost anywhere in the city. The pair have stood there for decades, like sentinels watching the southern entrance into Manhattan. They were my point of reference whenever I walked in the maze of lower Manhattan and they were also one of the first places where my family had our pictures taken when we arrived in New York two years earlier.
 The top section of one of the towers was spewing thick black smoke but I thought of everything else other than it being hit by a jetliner. Immediately I turned on the NY1 news channel network and as I finished I turned my attention again towards the towers, at the precise moment when a bright orange ball of fire shot out of the second tower. Still I thought there was a fire at the World Trade Center.
 It was only after I learned of the two other planes that crashed, one each in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon in Washington, that I knew of the two airliners that slammed into each of the towers in lower Manhattan.
 New York plunged in a state of panic thereafter as all routes into Manhattan were closed to traffic. The subway and bus systems were also shut down. On an even larger scale, America closed its entire airspace after grounding all flights.
 For the first time in the two years that I had been there, I saw military vehicles in New York. The National Guard were deployed to secure the city and assist in getting people who do not reside in Manhattan get out of the island.
 The two towers fought the flames bravely for about an hour and during that time I watched some of the most harrowing scenes ever, including of several people who decided to take their own lives by jumping down the towers.
 There was no way that any of those who jumped would have made it. The two towers were 110-storey high and the planes hit each somewhere in their mid-rifts. So most of those who jumped must have jumped from floors 80 and above.
The towers succumbed to heat of the flames about an hour later in a scene that will forever live in my memory. Thereafter, the grieving started.
 In front of the apartment where I stayed was a fire station housing the New York Fire Department Special Operations team. I knew some of the officers there as we sent our kids to the same school on the island. By nightfall, many of the personnel sent from the station to perform emergency rescue operations in lower Manhattan had perished. They were the gallant ones, having made their way up the stricken buildings while others were making their was out. I guess they never stood a chance.
 New York was in a daze that entire day and it seemed like the longest day ever. By late afternoon I could find letterheads with addresses of the World Trade Center as far as in mid-town Manhattan. The wind must have carried them there.
 Rescue efforts went on all day and throughout the night while office of the Malaysian Mission to the United Nations on 43rd Street was closed. The office complex also housed the Malaysian Consulate.
 That night I was at the Consulate General's home helping staffers go through a list of Malaysians working in the city as calls started to come from their loved ones in Malaysia enquiring of their fate. The Consulate tracked each and every Malaysian registered with it although the effort was hampered somewhat as all cellullar phone networks were jammed.
 The next morning, City Hall reopened some of the routes into Manhattan, including a limited coverage by the subway system. I was able to get only as far south as Union Square on 14th Street.
 There a little corner had been turned into a memorial of sorts, with flowers, lighted candles and pictures of those still missing in lower Manhattan being lined up on the pavement. People were very friendly thereafter as they grief.
 I will never forget that smell of burnt steel that hung in that morning air. I stayed at the Square talking to people the entire morning.

ENDS

Epilogue: The US responded swiftly, first by launching an invastion of Afghanistan where they believed Islamic Jihad fighter, Osama bin Laden was holed up, and then toppling the Sadam Hussein regime in Iraq.
 The 'War on Terror' spearheaded by former President George W. Bush is still being fought now, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Apart from having toppled Saddam and killing Osama bin Laden, little else has been achieved.
 I finished my tour-of-duty in New York five months after the incident. I was the last correspondent from my newspaper to have served in the US.