Laurie Morris is Communications Director at the University of St. Michael’s College. She holds a B.A. in English from U of T and a certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from St. Michael’s. Laurie lived in New York from 1998 until 2014.
Twenty Years Since that Terrible Rainy Day
Saturday, September 11 marked 20 years since the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in Manhattan. Living at that time in the West Village and working for the Associated Press (AP), I was a first-hand witness to the devastating story as it unfolded.
I’m also someone who didn’t know anyone who died or lost someone that day. But even 20 years later I remember small details that bring back a feeling of loss.
There were obvious losses that Tuesday. I heard the first plane hit the Towers as I was leaving my apartment to catch the subway to Rockefeller Center where the AP office was located. I thought it was a huge car crash and glanced down Hudson St. but saw nothing. By the time I got to the subway station at 6th Avenue, people were standing in the street. I joined them, again looking for the crash I’d heard minutes earlier. It was only when I looked up instead of down that I saw flames coming out of the World Trade Centre. I knew enough to call my dad to share the news with my family, and to let them know I was well out of harm’s way.
Inside the offices at AP, we watched the breaking news “A-wire” stories tracking missing planes while the local news wire ran reports of ambulances with body bags being stationed along the West Side highway. At the same time, like everyone else, we watched events play out on television, complete with audio from phone calls made by people from inside the towers.
As unbelievable as it may seem, when the first tower fell, I felt a slight wave of relief. The unimaginable had happened, signaling that the worst was over. We didn’t know what we didn’t know.
After the second tower fell, we were told to evacuate our building since it was unclear if there were other landmark buildings that might be targets. The journalists on the news floor stayed put. I walked a long, hot 60 blocks home, crossing through an eerily empty Times Square where the jumbo screens were filled by fires and the smouldering wreckage.
Closer to home, people started gathering at St. Vincent’s Hospital to post photos and photocopies of those who had gone missing.
Over the next 48 hours, there were enough posters to fill an entire brick wall outside the hospital. And in the details on those posters, there was a deep sense of loss—the clothes people were wearing, the company they worked for or the WTC floor they worked on, the time of last contact or sighting—and the best number to call when they were found or identified. There still seemed to be possibility.
On Friday, September 14, it was no longer sunny and hot in New York. I remember waking up to the sound of pouring rain and flipping on the news to see the latest from Ground Zero. The rain was good for the fires, which continued to burn, but for me, it evoked a sense of loss that was beyond any I’d felt to that point. The shock and adrenaline brought on by the crisis was waning and the magnitude of the tragedy was settling in. Three days since the attacks, there was no longer possibility.
Tuesday, September 14, 2021 marks 20 years since that terrible rainy day. My heart still goes out to people I never knew—the first responders, the family and friends of the 2,977 people who died and the many others around the world who experienced their own sense of loss.
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