The Eagle

Currently Browsing: Student News

9/11 Memories: The view from the 15th floor

Last 5 stories in Student News

Thinking about getting a summer job? You have a lot of choices. - May 4, 2013
April Senior Spotlight: Hannah Green - May 2, 2013
Upcoming movies gallore! - May 2, 2013
Obama DJ-ing program reaches out - May 2, 2013
Cast opens up about 'Once On This Island' - May 1, 2013

Other stories that might interest you...

Written by Ilana Diamant, The Eagle Staff Reporter

“Empty sky, empty sky, woke up this morning to an empty sky.” – “Empty Sky”, Bruce Springsteen.

Buses’ screens are alternating between “Never Forget 9-11-01” and its route. There are “Remember 9/11” columns on news sites constantly updating new stories and pictures. Memorials are being planned, celebrities are all over talk shows complaining that they weren’t invited to ceremonies. Anyone who lives under a rock know what day is this Sunday.

September 11 might be the most well known date in American History. High schoolers have to study to remember the day Columbus landed, or the times of the Civil War. But ask anyone living in this country can tell you exactly what happened that day. However, not everyone had the chilling view of the events that a family member of mine did.

Sometime around 9 AM on September 11, 2001, my grandmother gets up. It’s a bright and sunny day out. She lives in Queens, New York, around 20 miles from the part of Manhattan where the Twin Towers stand. Her apartment is on the 15^th floor of her building, and her window has a panoramic view of the entire New York skyline. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, it’s all there. She’s about to start making breakfast and wake my grandpa up, but she notices something out the window. There’s a cloud of smoke rising from the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

She thinks it must be a fire from one of the upper floors of the building. She doesn’t know that that isn’t exactly the case, but even a small fire in the World Trade Center is enough to turn on the radio to hear what’s going on. She hears about a plane striking the tower, but at that point she can’t gather that it’s a deliberate attack. When she sees a glint of metal near the South Tower, it immediately bursts into flame. By now, she’s yelled for my grandpa and both of them have completely forgotten their breakfast. They’re listening attentively to the radio, and it’s become clear from the double attack that this is intentional. The fires burn for about an hour, until 9:59, when the South Tower starts to fall.

“Like children’s toys,” my grandma says. “Like building blocks, they just fell.” It takes 9 seconds for fragments of the South Tower to fall, and half an hour later the North Tower falls, sending fear through the nation like a jolt of lightning.

The footage of the collapse is one of the most chilling images many people will ever see. Most people saw it on TV, with close-up colorful views. Of course my grandmother saw this as well, but on that bright day there were pillars of smoke rising from the skyline, and the fires and the smoke would continue for days to come. Radio broadcasters were screaming and crying over the airwaves, and people were jumping from the towers. My grandmother chokes up as she recalls the day. She lives in a large apartment building, but many people there know each other and are close friends. A man named Scott Larson, who, as a boy, grew up in the building, was a First Responder, or, one of the firefighters that was first called to the scene. He never came out of the burning building, and today there is a memorial for him in the building’s playground.

Four days later, my family arrived in New York. While many people fled, my mom, as a native New Yorker, felt like she had to be there. As we drove into the city, she remembers there was still smoke rising from what is now known as “Ground Zero.” I myself don’t remember much of the day the planes struck, all I know is that I was in kindergarten, and it was school picture day. My teacher came running in, yelling that planes had crashed into the Twin Towers and that they were on fire. Parents took kids out of school and teachers struggled with what to say, but like I said, my memory of the event is a little fuzzy.

It took a long time for everyone to grasp the magnitude of that morning. The death toll rose every hour. Yellow-ish dust coated the streets. Troops getting ready to go home reenlisted, wanting to do all they could. The government immediately began searching for the perpetrators, the evil genius who had ordered the day’s events.

“This was an act of extremist terrorism,” my grandma states, “there are people out there who have nothing but violence on their minds, nothing but destruction. Their goal was to cause terror, and it worked. They wanted to prove that they could have an impact on America like we had an impact on their countries.” It’s an unfortunate fact that most Americans weren’t too informed of our country’s actions in the Middle East, as Al-Qaeda credits our troops in Saudi Arabia as a motive for the attacks. 9/11 served as somewhat of a wake-up call. Regrettably, now many people have educated themselves with wrong information, and as a result many Muslim-Americans suffer a negative stereotype. We are just as wrong to ostracize innocent people as terrorists are to attack us.

Any time I visit New York City, I take a moment to look at the magnificent skyline available from my grandparents’ window. I admire the Empire State Building when it twinkles red and blue at night, and the Chrysler Building’s bright white top. But if you sweep your eyes across the whole picture, there’s a hole in the horizon, a place where two identical towers stood 10 years ago. 10 years ago, the country lost 2,996 citizens. Some of these were business personnel, some were office clerks, and some were firefighters who charged into the smoke hoping to just find one more person alive. 10 years ago, the view from the 15^th floor changed..forever.