9/11 My Reflections From NYC |
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In those days ABC put us up at the Empire hotel on W. 66th st when we were working in NYC. On the night of September 12th, 2001 I checked into the hotel and looked out at Lincoln Center below contemplating the view of midtown Manhattan and just what the morning would bring. The city had changed…. An enormous friendliness and desire to cooperate permeated everything. As we headed downtown countless individuals, all with a story, all with fears and concerns approached us. Pets trapped in high rises inside the evacuation zone, elderly people who were homeless and didn’t know where to turn, people just seeking information on who could have done this or if we’d seen a missing loved one of theirs. In midtown you might be having lunch at a sidewalk café as the parade of construction vehicles headed downtown or you may find yourself trailing a van along the West Side Highway heading uptown marked as carrying human remains. The first time I saw the pile… Exhaustion had already long set in and the sensory perceptions were extreme. The smell… A very strange smell that I’ve never really been able to describe stands out vividly in my mind. It is a common thread whenever you meet someone who was there, ‘Do you remember the smell’? The question lingers, striving for understanding but never quite achieving it. Days ticked on, moving from live shot to story and back to another live shot. The common thread was always the people… September 17th, 2001. An early call had us across the river in Hoboken, NJ to travel by ferry to lower Manhattan with a couple stockbrokers for the re-opening of Wall St and the New York Stock Exchange. In the early dawn light all eyes were fixed upon the glow from ground zero as the ferry rounded lower Manhattan making its way towards Water St and ultimately… Wall St. The brokers were nervous, not really knowing what to expect when they stepped back onto Lower Wall…. The streets were wet; continuous armies of street sweepers were running around the clock attempting to get the dust under control… The sound of portable generators filled the air as power to most of the buildings had still not been fully restored… Standing on the street corners, professionally dressed men and women with attaché cases at their sides were wearing respirators and gas masks… All of them had lost friends just six days earlier. It was on the 17th that New York came into focus for me. A man standing resolute and still on the corner of Wall & Water, in full business attire, peering over the rim of his gas mask presented the image of New York getting back on its feet. It is a moment in time that has stayed with me fresh as the day I saw it. |
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In NYC covering the terror attacks of 9/11 |
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www.televisionsound.com / Thom Shafer |
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