MY VISIT TO GROUND ZERO

The morning of September 11th, 2001 here in our Nation's Capital was much like any other typical September morning. It was bright and sunny, the air was cool, but not cold, and it pretty much felt like a typical Tuesday morning.

The night before it was announced during the Monday Night Football matchup between the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos, that Michael Jordan was definitely coming back to play basketball again, and not only that, he was going to play for my hometown Washington Wizards, so I was very excited about that prospect as I drove to work the next morning.

I drove past the heliport on the south side of the Pentagon, much as I had done everyday over the last few years, little knowing that in just a few short hours, that particular area of the Pentagon would be engulfed in a plume of flame and smoke.

I had a Doctor's appointment that morning at 9am, and I got to work early so I could take care of some things before heading out to my Doctor's office.

I had been too busy that morning to tune in to a television set. I remember hurriedly passing by the TV set in our company cafeteria and seeing some burning structure on CNN, but as I said, I was too busy to find out where that was.

It wasn't until about 9:45, well into my Doctor's appointment, when I realized that the world had gone mad. One of the nurses came running into the office where I had been waiting, and told me that airliners had hit the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and the USA Today Building.

The USA Today story later proved to be false, but one of the other nurses later told me that one of the World Trade Center towers had just collapsed. At first I thought she was exagerrating, and that only a part of the giant building had collapsed, because never in my wildest imagination could I have thought that the whole entire structure could collapse! But apparently it did, and I was terribly shocked, and anxiety and apprehesion began to creep over me.

Suddenly I felt afraid and vulnerable. As I ran back to my ofice building, I noticed people were also running, and some were even weeping openly.

A helicopter flew overhead, and everyone on the street gasped, not knowing wether or not this was a terrorist helicopter. I almost dove next to a car for cover, that was how confusing that morning was.

Fast forward a month and a half. I'm in New York city to visit some friends and to view first hand the area of devastation where the World Trade Center towers used to stand. An area that is now known as 'Ground Zero' because it looks similar to the devastation left after an atom bomb has hit a large city.

The first thing I noticed soon after emerging from the subway station and on to the street, was the smell that permeated througout the entire downtown area. A slightly pungent kind of chemically smell that was very disturbing. My friend told me it was asbestos.

Keeping my emotions in check, I managed to snap some photos while I was there. Here are the photos I took:



GROUND ZERO
October 27, 2001







GROUND ZERO
July 20, 2002






HERE ARE SOME VERY HELPFUL LINKS

For donations of money and/or blood
LIBERTY UNITES.ORG
THE AMERICAN RED CROSS
THE UNITED WAY
NEW YORK FIREFIGHTERS FUND DONATIONS
THE SALVATION ARMY
THE OFFICIAL NEW YORK CITY WEBSITE


For you New Yorkers out there, please help identify the thousands of missing people so that their loved ones will not continue to agonize over their fate
THE LIST OF THE MISSING
from CNN.COM