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Friday, September 11th, 2009

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Featured, Journalism

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Columbia Journalism New York New York City NYU September 11 2001 September 11 attacks World Trade Center

We all still feel the pain of 9/11

Eight years ago today, I woke up to my roommates standing around the television, staring in disbelief.

All six of us worked at the newspaper, so the horror we felt in watching the 9/11 attacks unfold quickly turned into feverish discussions about how we would cover this.

How would we localize this story? Who would we talk to? What would we do for art? We were in a working state of mind and didn’t take time to process what was happening around us. I’ve said it before, I still feel guilty about that.

It wasn’t until nearly a month later when several of us went to New York City to do a series of follow-up stories, that the weight of the event truly hit me.

After interviewing sources at NYU and Columbia, we got off the Subway downtown to meet up with the rest of our group. As soon as we hit the street we noticed that the air was still heavy with ash and smoke. More than a month after the buildings collapsed, people were still walking around wearing surgical-style masks. There were memorials all over the streets, overflowing with pictures, flowers, stuffed animals and handwritten letters to victims of the attacks.

Finally, we made our way to the top of an adjacent building and were able to see the World Trade Center site. We all just sat there in silence, watching crews cleaning up debris. The enormity of the site, how big those buildings really were, wasn’t apparent to me until I saw the gigantic dump trucks moving up and down the ramps.

One of the things that always strikes me about New York is the noise. The street musicians, the car horns, the people talking. There’s always so much going on.

In those days following the 9/11 attacks, I don’t remember hearing any of that. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the city. I remember having fun being in the city with my friends, but I also remember kind of walking around in a dull haze. I’m sure we all still feel the pain of that day, but the anguish those poor people in New York must have gone through and are still suffering is something we can never fully understand.