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Return To Ground Zero
By
Sasha Abramsky
Published: September 02, 2002
Like all New Yorkers and most Americans, journalists who covered the collapse of the city's World Trade Center on Sept. 11 have spent many hours since trying to deal with their memories, their emotions, the images that all-too-often haunt both their days and nights. For a few, the events, while devastating, belonged to the continuum of disasters and wars they had covered over decades. For some, that day triggered surges of panic and a longing to get away; for others, a fierce love of the city they had seen so damaged; and for still others, a strange combination of panic and pride. In other words, like all Americans, they experienced, and continue to experience, a cacophony of feelings, hopes, and fears.
Here, in their own words (edited from interviews last month), are reflections, both personal and professional, by some of the journalists who were at or near Ground Zero when the Twin Towers collapsed. They are identified here by their titles then. Many of them are featured in the new book compiled by the Newseum, Running Toward Danger (Rowman & Littlefield), but their stories in that volume leave off in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. For E&P, they chronicled what has happened since.
As individuals who capture events through words and images for a living, journalists, when they turn their tools inward -- exploring what is going on in their own minds and hearts -- can powerfully document emotions often left hidden in the recesses of the human spirit.
David Handschuh Photographer
Daily News, New York
He was shooting pictures when the first tower's collapse sent him flying under a vehicle. Uniformed personnel carried him into a deli just before the second tower's collapse buried the area around the vehicle. Handschuh recently met with his rescuers.
My right leg was shattered and the cartilage in my left knee damaged. I stayed on the first floor of my house for weeks. The 13 stairs to the second floor were the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest. I'm not able to run yet. My lungs are being monitored. So many reporters and photographers inhaled so much of that crap. The physical and mental health of journalists [at Ground Zero] seems to be getting overlooked.
I didn't go back to work as a photographer until Aug. 12. Before that, I worked in the office on things like multimedia projects while continuing physical therapy. I built my reputation as a hard-news and spot-news photographer, but now I'm doing feature work, such as hot-weather photos. I think what happened to me gives me a greater appreciation of what people we photograph go through -- getting re-traumatized when they see themselves in the newspaper.
I'm the luckiest man in the world to be here. So many good people lost their lives. The greatest pleasures are the simple pleasures, like finally riding bikes again with my family.
Joanne Lipman Weekend Journal Editor
The Wall Street Journal
Lipman was in the concourse of the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. After evacuating the area, she and the Journal's other editors worked to coordinate their reporters' incoming coverage.
It was a nightmare. We tried to get to the office, but Liberty Street was blocked. The second plane came in. It was hideous. We saw things no human being should ever have to see.
It impacted everybody here very directly. We lost our home. Everyone took it personally. It was a personal mission that we weren't going to be cowed, they were not going to get us. We ended up in New Jersey -- a two- or three-hour commute. People ended up coming in and staying in hotels all week. I commuted two hours each way. My family never saw me. My husband was Mr. Mom. All the things you swear you'll never miss -- birthdays, etc. -- I missed them all. My daughter's birthday was Sept. 12. She was turning 11. I came home the night of Sept. 11 and baked her a birthday cake. The next morning, I was out the door before she got up. My kids understood it wasn't just a job -- how important it was to get information out.
Those first few months, we were really working on adrenaline. When things calmed down for everyone else, we still didn't have a building. We were also in the middle of the newspaper redesign. Adrenaline and defiance kept us going. After that, it got very difficult for a lot of people. We had counselors in here. There was a fair amount of post-traumatic stress.
I don't know that I've changed journalistically. I'm proud of the people I work with, but I was proud of them before. Personally, I probably kiss my kids more.
We're still going through this. We just moved back to the office last week [starting July 29], and we're on the edge of the precipice here, looking over the site. You have to walk through tourists every day. I'm not ready to talk about this in the past tense.
Susan Watts Photographer
Daily News, New York
She previously survived a kidnapping and murder attempt in Honduras, and found her experiences at the World Trade Center far more traumatic. As the buildings fell, Watts phoned her editor from the pharmacy where she had sought shelter and said she thought they were all going to die.
I remember coming home that day and thinking: "How will it affect me? How will it change my life?" I still don't believe there's enough time between the event and now to come up with sweeping generalizations. There are still funerals, memorials. It's a work in progress still.
I always felt my profession was a noble one. We provide an incredibly important public service. But all of the reasons I got into photojournalism were confirmed. The public is able to see and taste and get some flavor of the event because I was there to photograph it. In the first days after Sept. 11, I felt enormous internal pressure to document as much as I possibly could. It was after January that other stories started to appear in the paper. The world has to go on. Just as people have to go on with their lives, the news has to go on as well.
On a personal level, emotionally, when I've had to cover a story that's joyous -- a parade, say -- to see people on the streets laughing, having a good time, that's reinvigorated me, seeing the public glad to be alive. The most jarring thing was seeing myself and my colleagues just fall apart on the job. That never happened before. You never saw photographers being emotional. After 9/11, I'd be at funerals and memorials and my colleagues' eyes would be bloodshot, tears running down their faces. Hardened, seasoned photographers who'd seen war, been in Vietnam. It was utterly disturbing to me.
When those buildings were coming down and we were running for our lives, we weren't journalists anymore -- we were victims. We became part of the story. Everything became surreal -- and it still is. There's a hole in the sky, and your compass is gone. You lost your sense of place.
It's impossible to believe it was a year ago. It feels truly like yesterday. There's no distance. I still feel shaken. I don't know if that will ever go away. You hear a truck hit a pothole, and you jump. Now, when I lay in bed and hear a loud noise, I'm afraid to close my eyes. It's not an orchestra anymore. If you were in New York on Sept. 11, you know the secret password. There's a bond. Everybody knows what it was like that day.
Adam Lisberg Reporter
The Record, Hackensack, N.J.
He got into his car and turned on the radio just as the first reports of the attack came on the air. Picking up a plainclothes cop who was trying to flag down a ride, he sped south from Midtown.
That morning, the adrenaline was flowing. I knew what I was doing. Then, all of a sudden, once the building came down, everything changed. Everything changed right then, and it's never been the same since. It broke down that wall between yourself and what you're covering that you always put up. It made me feel very vulnerable. There was no distancing, no emotional break.
At first, I was just numb. Then I started experiencing what a lot of survivors felt -- I couldn't sleep, had bad dreams. It's easy to send me into a panic state. It feels like my brain has been rewired for stress. I'm not the same reporter I used to be. I'm more concerned with writing stories people will remember and that celebrate common but overlooked aspects of life. I'm writing more features. Because I came so close to getting killed, I'm more deliberate about what I want to spend the rest of my career on. I want to write the kind of stories people e-mail you afterward and say, "That really touched me."
Some of the most meaningful features I've done in the past year have been things that celebrate the mundane. I had a blast writing a story about a dog. Maybe some of it is avoidance, trying not to dwell on unhappy things. I wrote a story about a children's spelling bee. I had so much fun. Hard-boiled people will say, "He's gone soft." But what I went through was very maturing.
Until January, I wrote almost nothing but World Trade Center stories. If you weren't there, it's harder to understand what people on the ground were going through. I ran through the whole gamut of post-traumatic-stress-disorder symptoms. I think I was trying to understand precisely why I lived when people all around me died. The answer is: there is no answer, but it took a long time for me to realize that. A lot of people I walked past at the command post died. If I'd stopped to tie my shoes, I would have been caught in the impact zone -- those chunks of rubble would have been on top of me.
In January, I started seeing a therapist who specializes in trauma. He told me, "For now, why don't you lay off writing on this?" So I just stopped, and it's helped a lot. The paper's been very good at understanding this. For now, I just need to get away from it all. On Sept. 11, my wife and I are going to be at the Grand Canyon. We don't plan on turning on the TV or buying any papers. We just want to avoid as much as we can.
Gulnara Samoilava Photo retoucher
The Associated Press
Born and raised in the former Soviet state of Bashkortostan, Samoilava, 37, was on the scene of the disaster within minutes of the first plane's impact. Out of her camera emerged some of the most recognizable images from that morning, of people, covered in ash, walking around like zombies.
I live down there, about five blocks away. I'm not a photographer for the AP - I'm a documentary photographer. I took a picture of the south tower about to collapse. I started running and ran less than half a block when I got caught in the dust.
When I was walking home, I felt very lucky and happy I was alive. I still feel it. For the next two weeks, I was a refugee, staying with my friends. I got pretty depressed for quite a while. It changed me personally. When my photos got published a lot, it gave me all this recognition and a lot of self-respect, a belief in myself.
Sept. 11 will be a hard day, because I'm so sensitive to the subject. I have a nightmare repeatedly that I'm outside and the whole building starts collapsing. Very often. When I go to work, to the subway, every day something reminds me about it. When I hear a plane very low, it's scary. When I hear sirens longer than normal, I'm in a panic again.
Catherine Fitzpatrick Writer
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Fitzpatrick was in New York to cover Fashion Week for her paper.
I was not in New York as a news reporter, but as a fashion writer. I left this ultra-glamorous world of fashion and turned on a dime into this horrible tragedy. The ash cloud engulfed me. It was very traumatic. I wasn't really aware of the toll it would take till I got home. It was a trauma to be within a few blocks of the towers and to see people falling and jumping. It was surreal. I metaphorically didn't take my fist out of my mouth for a couple of days. Just sat curled up trying to recover.
I had a very difficult time with the fact that I didn't get into direct contact with my family till almost midnight that night. I realized I left the personal behind for the professional, and I deeply regret that. I would not do that again.
I'm going back, on a personal basis, for the anniversary, and I'm going to retrace my steps that morning and reconnect with individual New Yorkers I met that day. A portly owner of a warehouse who took me in saved my life -- and he called me two weeks later. He'd been afraid to call, because they were so sure I had died. I'm going to see him. And a group of firefighters I interviewed. They were on 15th Street, had stopped to make one last call to their families. I finished interviewing them, they went barreling south. A few minutes later, the two towers fell. Many of the company died. I'm going to meet one of their wives.
It's part of the process of healing. It's taken months. It's hard, being from outside New York, because everyone around me saw it on a TV set in their office or living room. There's a chasm between how they experienced it and how I did. It took a couple of months to understand they'd never experience it as New Yorkers. They experienced it as Americans -- as a national tragedy. To New Yorkers, it was municipal, their neighborhood. It's a monumental difference. When I told my husband I was going back, he was supportive, but he asked me if I was going to be like one of those old guys in a uniform in their 80s and 90s observing anniversaries.
I am writing my own account. Whether or not it's for publication, it's for my children and their children.
Emily Gest Reporter
Daily News, New York
She had been covering a Democratic mayoral hopeful. Seeing the first plane hit, she phoned her office before her editors had even heard what was happening and then jumped on a subway train headed downtown. E&P published her account of that day in our issue of Sept. 17, 2001.
In the last year, I've written about victims' families and, as time elapses, more on memorials and the redevelopment efforts. I've taken breaks here and there, doing silly, fluffy, entertainment stuff. I needed it. When you talk to people every day who lost people and they cry on the phone to you, it's pretty wearing. I've wondered about therapy -- but I haven't decided. I've only had one or two nightmares, a little sleeplessness. I don't have intrusive thoughts or images.
I've always been sympathetic to people, to victims of crime. But I understand more now. At one point, an editor said to me, "This is the biggest story of my life." I was really offended. It's so much more than a "story" -- that trivializes or marginalizes it.
I think I know myself better now -- my priorities are stronger and more intact. The people closest and dearest to me don't always take a backseat to deadlines anymore. ... I'm more confrontational now. The tolerance for bullshit is a lot lower than it used to be.
Suzanne Plunkett Photographer
The Associated Press
When the first building fell, she remembers running for her life up Broadway. She ducked into an alley and, crying, phoned her dad, leaving a message on his answering machine saying she was OK.
I don't want to be a victim, but I still get choked up when I see the missing posters and shrines. [Since September], my family has become a lot more important to me. I feel I've made much more of an effort to be a good friend, relative, sister, daughter. My sister came up the week after, and I put my equipment away, and we visited the sites as "real" people. Telling someone I'm close to where I'd been, that made us closer. I was a little more jumpy before September about little things. I've mellowed out a little and worked out what's important.
There was a street vendor at Ground Zero. We were talking afterward about Afghanistan. He said, "There are more Ground Zeroes in Afghanistan than here." I thought it was profound. I ended up getting sent to Afghanistan in February. That gave me more perspective about the world. After Afghanistan, I've just felt lucky, happy with what I have. My eyes opened up to the world more. I could connect with people I never expected to connect with.
If a posting comes up, I'm hoping to go to another country. But I really love New York, so I'm kind of torn. I don't want to abandon New York. In a way, I feel tied to New York now. Just today, walking around Grand Central Station, I was stuck in a huge crowd, and I just smiled. It sounds goofy, but I feel less cynical, more open. I feel a really strong affection for New York. I'm even making the best of my teeny, tiny apartment.
Robert Hughes Culture Reporter
The Wall Street Journal
When the second plane hit, Hughes was close enough to feel the heat from the explosion. With perhaps a hundred other people, he sought shelter in a subway station.
In the first few months, a lot of people wanted to talk to people from the paper and asked how we were. It was unusual for a reporter to hear others interested in your well-being. I gave a lecture on culture in Grand Rapids, Mich., in January, and what the audience really wanted to hear was what it was like in New York that day. It was important to hear it from -- I hesitate to say the word "survivor" -- an eyewitness. There's more personal interchange in reporter-subject conversations than there used to be -- because The Wall Street Journal was such a presence here and so visibly affected by the attacks.
Hughes was among the Journal staffers who returned to its downtown offices in early August.
I hadn't been south of Canal Street since 9/11. I didn't need to be reminded of what I'd seen. I was surprised by the number of tourists. People who come to the city now feel they should see the site. It's understandable, but it seems so incongruous to me. The first day, I went to where I was standing when the first tower fell, there are all these tourist tables set up with pictures of the crash. Typical of entrepreneurs, but a little unsettling.
Richard Drew Photographer
The Associated Press
A veteran of many wars and tragedies, Drew was covering a maternity fashion show in Midtown when he received his orders to head for the Twin Towers. There he hid from the police as they tried to clear people from the area and continued taking photos. Since September, he has lectured on the event around the country.
I've been at the AP 32 years. I've covered my share of disasters and earthquakes and fires. You get a feel of what's what, what can be put out, and what can't. [So when], all of a sudden, people started falling out of the tower, I started photographing it. I photographed maybe a dozen jumping. I was the only photographer on that spot then. A woman paramedic was standing next to me watching. The people were dropping and hitting the walkway. The sound was amazing. I could hear them hitting the ground.
Then I heard a creaking sound, like a rock slide, and I started photographing the debris. I didn't know it was the building coming down. An ambulance guy grabbed me and pulled me down the street.
I won a prize for a picture of one of the people falling from the World Trade Center, headed perpendicular to the ground with his legs bent. He was a pastry chef at Windows on the World [a restaurant atop one of the towers]. A couple of papers that ran the picture received a lot of flak from their readers. But it shows a part of this person's life. I feel my pictures put a human element on people on their way to their death. An Argentinean woman here did her master's thesis on the photo. I'm not blase about this. It's the worst event I've covered -- and I was in the kitchen with Robert Kennedy in 1968 when he was shot. I still have a blood-spattered shirt.
I'm more aware of my surroundings now. The AP sent me on a course -- the Centurion Risk Management Course in England -- run by former Royal Marines. This was shortly after Danny Pearl. It's a course to make journalists more aware of their surroundings. It deals with booby traps, ordnance, and first aid -- even how to keep yourself alive in a minefield.
I went to a campaign rally on the Upper West Side at the 72nd Street subway. I saw a boom-box radio and a homeless guy. As the morning wore on, the guy left and the boom box stayed. I told police. They shut the subway down and brought in people in moonsuits. They took X-rays. Finally hammered it apart. It was just a boom box. But I've become aware of what could happen.
It hasn't changed my job, or how I do it every day. I spent weeks after the World Trade Center at the stock exchange. I had to go through the National Guard checkpoints, but that was my job. I'm not going to live on a farm in the Midwest to escape terrorists. You can't live your life that way.
Jim Pensiero Assistant Managing Editor
The Wall Street Journal
When the second plane hit, Pensiero was still in his office making phone calls. He typed a quick e-mail message to key colleagues directing them to try to report to the Journal's emergency offices in South Brunswick, N.J. Then he joined the exodus out of the paper's building and managed to get on one of the last boats leaving for Jersey City, N.J.
In the months following, I went through a period of real anger. I was very angry at the people who had committed this crime. And I was sad. I think about people who lost their spouses, parents, children. Some of the images, I can't get rid of them. The jumpers. When you looked at the destruction and the intensity of the fires, intellectually you knew lots had died. But when you see somebody jump, you don't get that image out of your head. It keeps coming back.
But work was very helpful to me. It gave me something to focus my energy on. If you're busy, you're not sad. I didn't want to let anybody down. The first months were absolute craziness. It was such a huge story, and we had to deal with being dislocated. We had to start thinking about getting the redesign back on track. Our graphic designers managed to save most of their work, but we had to send people into the buildings to find their files, their hard drives.
Overall, our industry has done extremely well, print and TV. That work is some of the best work those individuals and publications have ever done. But we always have a tendency to pump it up a little when we don't have any news -- the highly speculative pieces, a tendency to write stories we have pieces of but not all of.
Richard Pyle Reporter
The Associated Press
Pyle is a battle-tested correspondent, but the attack on New York has been, for him, the hardest of all these events to comprehend.
This story has been filled with superlative things. I've covered six wars beginning with Vietnam, and I never saw anything as difficult to compute mentally. It was so close at hand and unexpected and such an unbelievable thing to witness. The only thing I ever saw that in any way resembled it was the oil fields on fire in Kuwait -- flaming like the fires of hell were being vented.
In the aftermath, in our neighborhood, we lost a bunch of people. I didn't know anybody killed, but the fire companies in south Brooklyn lost about 40 people -- people we'd see every day in the streets. As a journalist, you have a tendency to stand back by the side of the road and watch history go by. In this case, you couldn't help but be a part of it. It reaffirms the mortality, the transient nature of life.
Journalists don't want to admit certain things -- that we feel a streak of patriotism, for example. In this case, journalists have admitted it -- patriotism, sense of community, a togetherness in a national cause. My wife put a paper flag in the window. It gives me a little comfort just to know it's there.
Bolivar Arellano Photographer
New York Post
Like Susan Watts, Arellano survived a kidnapping in Central America. He witnessed students being massacred by the military in Ecuador, and peasants being killed en masse in El Salvador. But, as with Watts, the World Trade Center has taken a toll on him far surpassing anything else. Arellano was trapped in the dust clouds and debris after both towers fell. Amazingly, Arellano escaped with only an injured leg. When he returned to the Post, his son, who works for the paper as a photo editor, sent him to Bellevue Hospital to get stitched up. In the weeks following, he couldn't stop coughing. Despite his injury, Arellano walked down to Ground Zero each day to shoot photos. He began obsessively reliving that murderous morning.
I heard the crashes of people jumping. It's still in my mind. I prayed: "Give them wings. Don't let them hit the ground." But God was busy. There were thousands of people praying to him to save them. After that, I cried day and night, day and night. It's always in my mind. A tape: finish and rewind, finish and rewind. There's nothing I can do. Day and night. I wake up and thank God I'm alive. I try to take advantage of every second I'm alive.
After three weeks, I called some photographers and asked if they'd put pictures in my gallery to sell and raise money for widows of firemen and cops. We have 22 photographers. We've given already $27,000. Next Monday, we're giving another $23,000. I work full time for the paper. After I finish at the paper, I come here [to his gallery on East Ninth Street]. The Library of Congress bought 130 pictures. The curator said it's the best exhibit of 9/11. Day and night, people come and cry and cry. A lady recognized her husband in a window on the 102nd floor. Another lady recognized her son jumping. She was here crying two hours. I took a photo of 13 firemen. After two months, we found out all 13 died. We gave their family and friends copies of that picture.
I'm very emotional now. I talk and then I start crying. I have to go inside, because I don't want people to see me crying. I'm sure it will be for the rest of my life. You just have to keep living, but nothing is secure now. If that can happen to the United States, nobody is safe.
Sasha Abramsky is a freelancer based in New York. David Handschuh was interviewed by Dave Astor. Photography by Chris Casaburi.
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