Editor’s Introduction. Liz Weber has been in the background of Planet Waves for a few years, and recently I discovered that she is both a writer and also has a profound story to tell about her experiences on Sept. 11, 2001. She lived in Battery Park City, which was directly in the line of fire. This is a long article, but it’s a real article. I encourage everyone with direct memories or eyewitness accounts of the Sept. 11 incident to record those memories in writing. There will come a day not long from now when they are lost to history. Here is an older collection published on Planet Waves at the one year anniversary. If you want to contact Liz, write to us at editorial – at – planetwaves.net. -efc
I WOKE UP around my usual time, 8 am. Mondays and Tuesdays are my days off from working with Thomas. I did my usual thing — got out of bed, turned off the A/C in both the living room and bedroom. It was a beautiful, crisp morning. The kind of morning that makes you realize the Summer is over and Fall is on its way. I opened all the windows in the apartment to let the fresh air inside. I had to move my car by 9 am, so I put some clothes on в?’- nylon breakaway pants, a white tank top and sneakers. It was too cold to wear flip-flops.
I came back upstairs from walking the dog and began to check my email with one eye on the clock because I had to move the car at 9 am today for street cleaning. In the midst of this, I heard or felt on odd thing, that later would be described as a sonic blast. It was on odd feeling; the building felt like it shook for a second and I immediately felt a change in energy on the street below. I could actually hear exclamations of “oh my god” outside. Something had happened.
I’m not one to look out my window to see what’s going on if I hear sirens or screaming. It’s just not a very New York thing to do. Not because it’s uncool, but more because until that day, as a New Yorker, I’d pretty much seen it all so not much surprised me.
In spite of this, I felt compelled to get and look out the window and onto the street. There was a group of people standing outside looking up to the north at what I thought, was the building next to mine. The energy was so intense that my immediate thought was, “oh my god, someone must have jumped from the building next door.” I’m not a TV person, so the TV wasn’t on and I was winding down my daily computer log-on, so I had no clue what was going on. I just knew I had to go and move my car.