Twenty-two years
September 11, 2001. Memories play funny tricks on us all and there are certainly elements of that day that now seem hazy. It’s hard to work out if my mind has decided certain details are unimportant or if it’s instead filtering my recollection to protect me. Here’s what I remember.
It was, famously, a beautiful late summer day. Not a cloud in the sky. I’d been up late, as usual, in my role as the New York correspondent of The Australian Financial Review (I typically worked until about 6pm Sydney time, which was 4am in New York City). I’d just woken in my apartment on West 76th Street, the Today show was on the TV, and coverage suddenly switched to a plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. It was 8:46am.
The immediate theory was it was a light plane; a tragic accident. My foreign editor and I decided it was probably worth a brief, so I began tapping something out with one eye on the TV and the other on the clock, as it was nearing 11pm in Sydney. The Today crew was still talking about a small plane accident—with a steady shot of the smoke rising from the north tower—when I saw a flash across the screen and the eruption of the south tower. It was 9:03am, and I immediately said aloud, “This isn’t an accident.”
The plans changed. I began writing about a potential terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the article was pegged as the page one splash if true. It was. I was constantly revising the text as more information came in, but first-edition deadlines in Sydney meant we had to call it with what we had. I threw some clothes on, grabbed my gear, and headed out, miraculously nabbing a cab and saying, “Take me as far south as we can get.” It was around 9:50am.
After a few minutes of silent driving, listening to the radio—and watching people on the streets, crowded around cars doing the same—the south tower collapsed. We couldn’t get any closer than 14th Street, about two miles from the World Trade Center, where pedestrians were streaming north, pushed by a police cordon that was doing its best to evacuate lower Manhattan. Two planes had hit the towers, one tower had collapsed, and no one was sure of the extent of the threat. Air traffic across the US was grounded.
I kept walking south and the flow of people changed as those covered in ash from the collapse of the south tower began to commingle with everyone else. Then, at 10:28am, the north tower crumbled. I was around Canal Street and getting any closer seemed … less than prudent. Just being on the street felt risky, and the lack of information made it worse. So, I absorbed what I could and turned back.
It took me about 90 minutes to walk the four miles home and, in that span, the whole world changed. The city felt weirdly normal in the couple of days that followed, as people tried to assume some degree of defiant business as usual. But it was a facade, exposed as the wind shifted and the acrid smoke of the still smoldering attack site drifted north. Nothing seemed the same.
As a foreign correspondent, you tend to give some thought to the work that will define your tenure. I’d landed in New York in June 2001, and was still trying to figure that out when events beyond my control made the decision for me. Almost two years of non-stop work followed, without much consideration of what—if any—personal effect had resulted from being in the city on that day, hearing what I heard, and seeing what I saw.
I’m still not sure. I know I was reluctant to be in large public gatherings for a while and, of course, reflexively flinched whenever a low-flying plane went overhead. And, having been at the Twin Towers just six weeks earlier when Australian company Westfield touted a splashy deal to run the retail space, there was certainly that sense that your number could be up at any time.
Yet here we are today, 22 years later. For many, it feels like 9/11 was yesterday; for an emerging generation, it’s something they read about. For me, it was professionally draining but rewarding, and the kind of seismic event where journalists get the chance to write history’s first draft. But at a personal level? That storyline wrapped in tragedy remains uncertain, even after all this time.