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Coming off the train, I'm looking forward to seeing the disaster site for myself. I'm wondering what I'll see: concrete rubble, twisted metal, tons of relief workers and equipment. Despite all the attention given to the site from the news, it looks not much more significant than an ordinary collapsed building or fire.
The first thing I notice in New York is right in the train station; hung atop the lobby of Penn Station is a large US flag. This isn't a big surprise, places all over Boston, especially public places and stores, have hung up flags.
On my way out of the station, I see a collection of random flyers stuck to the wall. Something about these posters catch my eye: they all have people's pictures on them. Closer up, I realize that these are posters of people missing from the WTC. Right away, not even on the street yet, I pull out my camera and take a picture of this.
NYC at first doesnt look much different, and mostly its not. Lots of people, lots of taxis, lots of the same old. But ten streets later, I walk into a striking site: probably the most patriotic Times Square in history. Every video screen on every building is emblazoned with an image of the American flag, text boards show words of nationalism and info on donating to the relief effort. At MTV, which has no video boards, every unused window has a flag hung in it -- perhaps the most unambiguously patriotic MTV ever has been. Ditto WWF Restarant. Ditto ABC. The next day I'll see my company's building displaying words of support for the NYPD and NYFD.
It doesn't stop there; almost every business in Times Square is showing off a US flag. Convenience stores. Newstands. New hawkers selling WTC commemerative clothing. A construction site across the street might is draped in flags. A fencer selling fake Rolexes wears a US flag kerchief around his neck. Even an adult movie house on 8th Ave hangs a US flag over the doorway.
Tuesday at training I do as much research as I can. A good chunk of the downtown area has been totally off limits most of last week; this week, half the downtown area is open, but only to buses and trains. Two of the subway lines going downtown are out of service, and less than half the stations on the other lines are open. In the other half of the downtown area, only government or emergency vehicles are allowed. And a section around the WTC site is "sealed off", though what that really means I wont find out till later.
A coworker from the NYC office discourages me. "Don't go down there," he says. "The smell is horrible and you can't see anything." But the instructor, from out of town, shares my interest. "My famliy said to me, while you're there, you might as well." He sums up my desire to see the site as "You have to see it for yourself."
"My son went to Redwood Forest about a month ago. He said, 'I took 30 pictures, but that's not good enough.' You don't get a sense of the true scale of the place. This is the same thing."
After training I head to the hotel. I try to prepare reasonably. I change into jeans and sneakers, but keep my work shirt on, hoping the name of a major news agency on the front might help me if I find myself taking pictures in an area deserted aside from me and a hundred rescue workers. I think of a creative excuse if I am asked lots of questions as to what I'm doing. I take my wallet, and my cell phone, mostly just to see if I'll have service downtown, my MTA cards, and a pen. I take a handful of tissues because I hear there is still dust in the air, with people wearing paper facemasks, and I'll either need them to clear my sinuses, or to breathe through.
On the way to a subway station, I stop by a drugstore to pick up a notepad to write in. I'm sure I won't be able to keep all my impressions of downtown stored in the camera.
The best bet seems to be the Fulton St. stop on the 2&3 lines. It's straight east of the WTC, about halfway across Manhattan. Not a terrible walk. The train goes through downtown on into Brooklyn, so seeing people on the train isn't surprising. But the 2&3 only has one stop downtown that's open.
I'm not sure whether I should expect crowds, or desertion, and whether I should expect trouble getting around. At best, I'm expecting mostly desertion, with occasional emergency vehicles being heard all around, and perhaps a collection of bored teenagers and NYU students wandering around.
In truth, as I get off, I see its not that deserted at all, although I'm the only one getting off the train; everyone else at the station is getting on. I notice about half the people are wearing dust masks, even though I can't smell anything odd yet. They are almost all businesspeople. Many offices downtown have been opened this week, so many employees are back to work, though not the full complement. With the people around, numerous stores and restaurants are open. Not only is the place not devoid of life, but at Prince and Water streets, children play in a playground.
Portable generators power bright halogen emergency lights here and there at street corners. To my surprise, I have cell phone service, and strong. A few blocks later my surprise will disappear, when I see a 30 foot cell phone antenna mast on a mobile platform, connected to a portable generator and a mobile switching station.
At Cliff St. the smell first hits me: a distinct smell of dust, aged concrete, with a strange accent of staleness or rottenness. It's not quite like anything I've ever smelled before, and it's not strong, but noticeable and undeniable.
As I walk the mile to the edge of the sealed area, a lot of things strike me. I've never seen so many utility repair vehicles before. ConEd, Keystone, and a few Verizon trucks cruise around the area. I've never seen so many police before. Aside from uniformed officers, some with advanced dust masks, there are numerous cruisers and plenty of NYPD one-person mini-cars. Aside from vans, trucks, and buses, and other vehicles with an obvious support role, there are hardly any other vehicles on the streets. I'll find later that most of these "other" vehicles are unmarked police cars and officials.
Walking past more emergency lights and generators, seeing clusters of police at every corner, past garbage smelling slightly old as if it hasn't been picked up in a week, I recognize a bit of the smell I couldn't place: the smell of ozone from constantly running generators, and probably downed power lines.
The streets near the sealed zone still show a layer of dust on them, and a strange light mud from the mixture of the ash and dust with the runoff from the rains over the weekend. Cars not moved in over a week have a light coating of dust even after the rains presumably washed them off a few days ago. Looking up, the air gets increasingly hazy. Streets are ripped up for thirty foot lengths and barely barricaded.
I finally come upon the edge of the sealed zone. Before I got here, I expected not many people, and a "seal" consisting of unattended police barriers and crime scene tape. Not so. The sealed zone is blocked by metal fences, which are well monitored not only by police, but by fatigued national guardsmen.
The guardsmen are probably my biggest surprised, perhaps because I didn't know they had been called in, and perhaps because I figured they had more of a rescue role here. While looking past the barrier at the first sealed off point I come to, a troop transport truck with a crop of guardsmen turns into the street and tries to get through. Crowds barely notice; a policeman has to tell the crowd to move out of the way. Other camouflaged military vehicles can be seen on the street, and no one seems the least bit surprised, as if fatigued militia in Manhattan were an everyday sight. Although the sight of guardsmen and pervasive presence of police is not frightening or worrisome, it's definitely very odd. The cops have been down here so long that they walk around the area like it's home, visiting favorite shops and business which offer free services to rescue workers.
There's plenty of people downtown, especially near the edge of the sealed area, but not the packed crowd I might have feared. I'm hardly the only one taking pictures; the paparazzi collection ranges from urbanites with hastily bought disposable cameras, to two-man TV camera crews. And anything one photog takes notice of can draw a crowd of other recordophiles; an original pro-America poster hanging in a print shop which catches my eye quickly has others wanting to take a picture of it as well.
Unfortunately, as I find at each seal point, the view is limited, at least from the east and north. The best view I find is of the remaining half dozen or so floors of 7 World Trade Center. Above the charred remains of that building can be seen, billowing up, a dusty cloud of hazy smoke.
After a whole week, and two days of rain, the sucker's still burning.
Elsewhere around the unsealed, downtown area, there aren't many people, and fewer vehicles. Across the barriers emergency vehicles drive around the area, heading to places unseen. City Hall Park is closed, FDR Drive is closed, and streets are lined, dotted, and even scattered with police barriers and metal fences. From near City Hall, an onlooker looks up at the buildings a few blocks away, and notices something I'd otherwise be ignorant of: "There's a hole in the skyscrapers."
Walking back to the train station, I realize I'm thoroughly parched. My lungs feel dirty. I realized now the continued importance of dust masks. At first the smell was intriguing and mysterious enough to be foreboding, but not bothersome; after about an hour, I'm dry as a rock and slightly wheezy. If I'd had to work down here, repeated exposure to the air would make a dust mask my first desire. My friend Rebecca later tells me that the week before, the masks were mandatory all over town. My shoes are damp and slightly muddy. I almost feel lightly covered in dust all over. The unique smell of downtown will likely stay in my mind for some time.
During dinner and drinks with Rebecca, I show her the pictures I've taken downtown. She insists I have to walk to walk her home, which is two blocks away, not to keep her safe, but so I can see something. On the way she points out a triage tent set up a block from her apartment. I pull my camera out of my pocket and try to snap a quick picture while walking past. "Oh no," she warns, "they'll confiscate your camera." My shirt might have helped me downtown, she agrees, but it would have had the opposite effect there. My picture is too blurry, and I don't bother trying to take another.
But outside her building, which she really wants me to see, is OK because it's where she lives. And it is a sight, which doesn't sink in at first. Along a 50-foot length of the base of the NYU medical center which abuts the street, south of the emergency ward entrance, and reaching about a 7 foot height, is a veritable bulletin board of flyers, displaying pictures of missing people. At the base of the wall are candles placed by families, many kept lit by a community effort. Some have burnt to their base. Twenty are lit tonight -- Rebecca relights at least three.
The term "missing people" on it's own doesn't have much of an effect. There's a sense of hope in the term, the idea that the person is only 'missing' and is around somewhere, and will eventually be found and reunited with their family. But after a while of gazing at this long wall, with my arm around my friend, it sinks in, that these missing people have been "missing" for a week, somewhere in a mass of rubble and ash and fire, with nothing to survive on. Four days ago these people were just "missing". Now its something quite different.
Each flyer has a picture, most are pictures of missing people sitting with their family, or dressed up for an important event: a graduation, a birthday, a wedding. After dropping Rebecca off home, I take a quick estimate of the wall, and barring duplicates, of which I see at least one, the wall contains 350 pictures. And there are over 1,200 more people - almost four times more -- who are "missing" just like these.
I had intended to see rubble, smoke, metal, and general physical devastation. Instead, I saw a 16-block section of the largest city in America closed to the public and enforced by domestic military. I saw a place where the dust mask seemed as in-style as the gas mask was in Israel in 1991. I saw an unemotional, desensitized urban center turned into a place where patriotism, sorrow, hope, and pleading were unavoidable. I saw a city that never sleeps turn into a city that won't lie down.