This clearly isn't something I was planning to write.

We live in New York on South End Avenue, 3-4 blocks from the World Trade Center. The Regatta is at the lower end of South End Avenue; you walk north about three blocks to the other end, where it joins Liberty Street, and one block inland is/was the WTC.

The Regatta has nine stories, and our apartment is a duplex on six and seven, looking out to the Hudson. Upstairs, our back door opens onto a breezeway above a large octagonal courtyard with a garden below. Looking upward to the left is/was visible about the upper third of both towers. I remember sister Pat and John calling us once on their mobile phone from the cocktail lounge on top saying they were looking down into our courtyard.

Tuesday morning we were lying in bed listening to music on the radio when they announced the first tower was hit. My frame of reference was the plane that hit the Empire State Building in the mid-1940's, which I remember clearly, and I at first thought it was the same thing. I hadn't heard the first crash, but then I very clearly heard the second kraaaak. I put on a robe and went out on the breezeway, and looked up left.

It was a historic sight. There wasn't too much smoke yet, it was a bright, sunny day, and the tops of both towers were shooting red and yellow flames out of windows on a number of floors. I liken it to two cigarettes standing on end with glowing red tips on top. People have commented that I was very blasé about the whole thing. I suppose so. I thought it would just burn out and leave a scorched area, but the view was more historic than I thought. Afterwards there was only smoke and ash to be seen, and eventually, nothing.

I went back in and turned on the TV. The view on CNN was from midtown looking south, with the smoke blowing left. I was south of it, and the smoke was blowing right. They said the south tower was going. I went outside and could just see ash going downward in a cloud. It reminded me of pictures of Mt. St. Helens erupting. The ash cloud was moving out, and I closed the door. The whole building was enveloped in ash and it looked like nighttime. It settled in a few moments and the sun came out again. Then the TV said the north tower was going. As that happened we lost power, and have been out of touch ever since. I looked outside and the ash cloud was coming again, and the building was enveloped again for a few moments, then it settled. Minimal ash came inside, although surfaces became gritty over the couple of days we stayed home. But outside everything looked like it had snow on it, the breezeway, the garden below, our tiny balcony looking at the river, all the trees below. All kind of boats pulled up right below our window, tugs, police boats, EPA boats, a boat from Liberty Island. They seemed to be picking up pedestrians off the street. I felt we were doing fine where we were.

We still had phone service, and I was able to get and receive calls for a while, then the phone went out, too. Mobile reception didn't work either, since their broadcast towers were gone. The water went out, too, since it needed an electric pump. The intercom was gone, but while the phone was still on I called down to the lobby, where our superintendent suggested people stay upstairs, since there was nothing to be done downstairs. We ended up vegging out for three days and two nights. We had sandwich makings, and ate by candlelight. We went to bed early and slept late. You couldn't flush more than once on each toilet.

On Wednesday, I decided to go downstairs using the staircase. There was enough ambient light coming in from each stairwell that I didn't really need the candle I had. Outside South End Avenue was a sight. They had towed away any parked cars, and all sorts of dump trucks, tractors, scoopers, and anything around that uses five-foot tires were transferring rubble from one spot to another. At first they had left huge amounts of rubble in the middle of the street. Then, day and night, moving, back and forth. I understand they were transferring the rubble to barges in the river. I was told it's all being treated as crime scene evidence. The activity in front of the building looked particularly eerie and hellish at night under floodlights, and vehicles were always stirring up ash. Some cars had had a good inch of ash on them.

The marble floor of our lobby was all tracked up. The staff had tried to mop it, but there's not much you can do without water. Tony had "liberated" some supplies from the supermarket on the ground floor of our building, and I picked up some Pellegrino and granola bars. Much of the lobby had medical equipment such as I.V. kits. The super said our lobby had been one of the triage centers for the wounded. I asked him about the dead. He said they had been put out in the arcade in front of our building, including body parts. Out in the street were people from every agency, the national guard, the FBI, the city police, and on and on. I asked the super how our people were doing. He said there were a good number of people staying in the building. New people weren't being let in, unless they could talk their way in. He mentioned an elderly lady in the building who died of a heart attack the first day. He arranged for removal. He said he had to go through the building and close some apartment doors, because some people had run out leaving their doors open.

One resident had been in Princeton at the time. She couldn't drive back across the Hudson, so she went way up to the Tappan Zee Bridge, left her car in Tarrytown, took MetroNorth to Grand Central, walked from 42nd Street down the east side to Battery Park and then around to us. Why? She had two dogs in the apartment. Actually, the Animal Care and Control people were very active in the neighborhood and the building, rescuing pets.

Wednesday we had a knock at our (open) back door and it was a neighbor from upstairs, Mike. Turns out he's a CEO for a major software company. He works at home and only goes in about once a month to his office, but his office was in the North Tower. That evening we had him over for wine, cheese, and crackers, by candlelight.

Overnight Wed/Thurs the water came on, cold only. I checked with the super. He had pulled some stunt and crossed some wires. We all flushed. And took a cold shower. During the day two of our concierges sneaked back into the building, Gerry and Willie. They were helping out Tony, the super, quite a bit. Gerry came by with Maria Alvarez, who lives in the building and works for the Post. She interviewed me about the events. She also thought I was pretty blasé.

By late Thursday, though, it didn't look as though things were about to improve. There was talk of mandatory evacuation by Friday, so I said it was time. With darkness coming, I wished I'd started earlier in the day, but I packed everything up at four in the afternoon. From the way things are going, it doesn't look as though it will be worth coming back for our usual December visit, so if we evacuated, I didn't want to rush off to Florida any earlier than the end of the month as planned. I got all our stuff packed that we take to Florida, not just an overnight bag. I was hoping we could take all our stuff, and it worked out.

I got our bags down the six floors to the lobby. Then Tony, Gerry, and Willie came up and carried Bev in her chair all the way downstairs. I just had to carry the flashlight. A few other people had decided to go, but it took a few hours until the personnel showed up.

Talk was that the Hilton Millenium is gone [not so], of course the Marriott right at the base of the WTC. The pedestrian bridges over West Street are gone, and the little bridge over Liberty Street fell, too. The American Express building was expected to fall, too [it didn’t]. The Embassy Suites hotel with the multiplex cinema that just opened last year (the first movies in the neighborhood) apparently burned down the first day [rumor only], when they couldn't spare any attention for it. Gateway Plaza, a large rental bulding up South End Avenue, was declared structurally unsound [rumor only]. Most the other buildings on South End Avenue had emptied out earlier; we were the last building open, but we were also the furthest. Actually, Battery Park City is built on piles and on landfill (from the WTC), so they want to check the structural soundness of everything, in the long run.

There was a convoy of Battery Park City Park Authority vans. About 6-8 people from our building were asked to walk a block away to get into theirs, but they brought us our own tiny van, right in between all the business going on with the dump tracks. Then the convoy left the long way around. With the WTC blocking the whole west side, we made a circle around it: first to Battery Park and the Staten Island Ferry, then up the East River on the FDR Drive (everything dark; it was eerie to see the silhouette of the masts of the Peking at South Street Seaport) up to East Houston Street, then all the way across town on West Houston Street to Pier 40. That's the big Fedex distribution center. We all got off there. A lot of restaurants had contributed food, and between vans we grabbed some baked ziti and cookies.

My first plan was to go to sister Pat's on Long Island, but that quickly became Plan B, not only because if I got a limo we'd get there about midnight and I was having trouble calling, but because Plan A was better. We had a promotional freebie of a free weekend at a midtown hotel, and if I could get in one (paid) night earlier, so much the better. We couldn't reach the hotel on the phone, so the Parks ladies drove us uptown hoping it would work out.

It was interesting that arriving at Pier 40 on West Houston Street and leaving it north on West Street, there were scores and scores of people in the street applauding every time any official-looking car went by, including us. There were all kinds of signs for the personnel saying "You're Our Heros" and "Thank You".

Coming up the FDR Drive earlier it was weird to see the electric signs flashing "Lower Manhattan closed s/of 14 St". What an odd thought. But Midtown wasn't very active either. Outside the hotel I asked if it was open, and they said for registered guests only. They weren't taking people off the street, with the bomb scares and all. But it worked fine for us. I gave the Parks ladies each a hug and we settled in.

Then it struck me that not only does our homeowner's policy allow for hotel stays, but we had just gotten a new policy with Chubb as of last Sunday, and Nine Eleven was Tuesday. I checked with the agent, and she says she'll have someone call me, but this policy is very generous on hotel stays, almost indefinitely, so we'll see.

The Lexus is still in the garage diagonally across from the Regatta. The last I saw there was a pile of girders blocking the whole building, but that changes minute by minute. We'll see when I can get the car out of “hock”.

We just went out to dinner a few blocks away at a charming Spanish restaurant called the Toledo. On the way, walking down Park Avenue, there were several groups of people on a vigil holding candles in regard to the day of mourning.

Back at the hotel, the young man at the front desk, who has been here from Nashville for three years and who evacuated from Reade and West Broadway the first day to live at the hotel where he works, said he saw I was in the paper. He produced the article, which I copy below verbatim, with comments.

The New York Post   Friday, September 14, 2001, Pg 32 bottom [not front page news]

APARTMENT DWELLERS CALL "LUNAR LANDSCAPE" HOME
By Maria Alvarez

A handful of people in the devastated blocks around the World Trade Center have opted to rough it in apartments lacking utilities and access to food in the days since the devastating terror attack.

"Why should I leave? I'm not the slightest bit afraid," said Vince DiNapoli, who lives in Battery Park City. "This is my home. What else are we going to do?" [Not exactly my words, but maybe in the ball park.]

DiNapoli lives with his wife, Beverly, who is confined to a wheelchair and has Alzheimer's disease. [It's Pick's Disease, but who's heard of that?]

Battery Park City was evacuated immediately after Tuesday's attack--but some residents opted to remain. [Who announced an evacuation? Tony said to stay.]

"The only thing is, I'm going crazy," said DiNapoli, a retired college professor [high school/junior high teacher, but professor reads better] who has to light his home at night with candles. "I can't get my e-mail and I can't work. I haven't listened to the television and quite frankly, I'm not quite sure what's going on."

The DiNapolis have relied for news on their super, Tony Hernandez, who has also been bringing them food and other supplies.

Another Battery Park City resident Tharyn Aiken, was in New Jersey [Tarrytown NY] when the terror jets hit the World Trade Center.

She later managed to catch a train to Penn [Grand Central] Station and walked home.

She was desperate to see her pet dog [two pet dogs], but when she was stopped by police keeping people away from the disaster site she lied and told them she had a child at home.

"I had to go back to my home," she said.

And now that she's back, she's staying.

"What else am I going to do?" Aiken said. "I have to go back to work, and I"m afraid to leave because they might not let me back into my apartment."

Jerry [Gerry] Colon, the [a] doorman at the Regatta Building in Battery Park City, has stayed on the job throughout the disaster, not even taking a break to go home. [He came back in from home on Long Island.]

He has fed the pets of residents who were evacuated, and brought supplies to those who stayed.

"One woman came in to get her cat, and when I told her that I fed her, she broke down crying and just started hugging me," Colon said.

Hindsight, Again   Reading this again four years later, I am amazed at the many details I’ve forgotten. I don’t recall that any water eventually got turned on in the apartment and that we could take any shower, cold or otherwise. I don’t remember that an elderly woman died in the building. I don’t remember that it was the hotel clerk who recognized my picture in the Post; I thought I’d gotten the article from one of my sisters. I don’t remember that my first plan was to try to get to my sister’s house. The events are otherwise clear in my mind; it’s some details that have slipped away. I also note the extent of the rumors about buildings in the neighborhood that had been damaged or destroyed, which was not at all the case.