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9/11: Five Years and Counting

A Survivor Remembers

By Fred Yager
ConsumerAffairs.com

September 11, 2006

• 9/11: Five Years Later, A Survivor Remembers • 9/11 Losses Reach $9.3 Billion • Pets Rescued Faster Than Elderly After 9/11 • "Freedom Coin" Suit Progresses • Traveling After 9/11 • Red Cross Will Spend 9/11 Donations on 9/11 Victims • On the Road Again: Grounded After 9/11

It's been five years since I looked up and saw that ball of fire and black smoke pouring out of the side of a building I passed by on the way to work each morning. Five years later and the images from that morning are still playing on the flat screen in my mind.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was on my way to work walking across the Trade Center plaza toward the North Tower bridge to the World Financial Center when something exploded overhead.

I looked up and saw a huge fireball bursting from one of the higher floors. My first thought was "another bomb" since I had been there in 1993 when terrorists exploded a truck full of nitrates in the parking garage of the World Trade Center.

As I gazed up at the fireball and black smoke billowing from the side of the tower, it struck me that I should probably move. Pieces of burning debris were falling all around me. As I made my way toward a crowd of people standing under the overhang of one of the smaller trade center buildings, I found a middle-aged woman crying and screaming.

She was looking up.

I followed her line of sight to the ragged hole that had been torn from the building. There, standing in the flaming opening, was a man in a suit. He was fixing his tie, pulling it tight, and then straightening it out. And then he just leaned forward and fell from the gaping inferno. He landed not far from where I had been standing.

I couldn't move. Just then another piece of smoking debris hit a few feet away and jarred me back to reality.

Still, I couldn't get the image of the man fixing his tie out of my head. What could he have been thinking? Must look good for my final journey? What kind of hell was behind him in that ragged hole that convinced him that falling 86 floors and certain death was the better alternative?

It was almost 9 a.m. I was going to be late for work so I started walking toward West Street and the World Financial Center. Along the way, I stopped a policeman and asked if he knew what had caused the explosion. He said he'd heard that a small plane had accidentally hit the North Tower.

In order to get to the World Financial Center, I now had to walk around the North Tower because the bridge over West Street was closed. So I headed north to Vesey Street. I was making my way toward West Street, keeping my eyes on the flaming tower, mostly worried about a shift in wind and how I would deal with that. Everywhere, people were stunned, dazed, crying and in shock. I felt like I was moving through a crowd of zombies who had just had the life sucked out of them.

A Low-Flying Jet

I just kept walking, hoping to make it to the office and sanity when I saw a jet plane flying down the Hudson River. It looked like it was flying pretty low and that seemed strange.

Then the unbelievable happened.

The plane flew out over New York Harbor, toward the Statue of Liberty, then banked to the left, came around, and then flew right into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It ripped through the side of the building like a chain saw tearing out huge chunks of glass and masonry and sent them sailing through the air.

I didn't realize it at first, but a cloud of debris was coming right toward me. I screamed "Incoming! Incoming!" at the stunned people nearby -- urging them not to just stand and look but to run as far away as possible. This was not a safe spot to stand. I ran until I was out of breath and then looked back. Now, the second tower, the South Tower, also had a raging ball of fire billowing out of it.

This was no accident. Two planes meant we were under attack. I started looking for shelter, waiting for a third plane to hit, or a fourth.

I felt like I was back in Vietnam, in a fire-fight, wondering from which direction the enemy would strike next. I'd had nightmares like this. But this was no dream. This was real.

Vietnam Was Not This Bad

In all my days in Vietnam, nothing was as bad as this. This was worse than war. This was hell and the world was on fire.

I tried calling the office but no one was picking up the phone. I figured they must have evacuated the building. There was no way to get to the World Financial Center any more anyway. Police were moving the crowds of people out of the area. I tried calling again but all the phone lines were busy. I couldn't reach work. I couldn't reach home because my cell phone wouldn't work. I couldn't tell anyone I knew that I was still alive.

Eventually, I made my way uptown to Broadway and 66th Street, where my company had a satellite office. A television was on and everyone was watching live coverage of the attack on the Twin Towers. I joined them and we watched as the South Tower collapsed, followed a few minutes later by the North Tower.

A few hours later, I reached my frantic wife by phone and told her I was okay.

In the days that followed, however, I realized I really wasn't okay. Emotionally and psychologically, I was wracked with guilt and horrific images that wouldn't go away. I felt guilty that I survived while so many around me died.

I felt guilty that so many firemen and policemen ran into the buildings to save lives while all I could think about was my family and how much they needed me so I did what I could to stay alive. As grateful as they are that I survived the attack, I still felt guilty.

It's Always the New Guy

My company lost three people that day. I knew one of them and went to his memorial service. He was a young man in his mid-twenties who worked in our department. He was engaged to be married, with his whole life ahead of him. He was the new guy in the office.

In Vietnam, it was always "the new guy" who got it, the new guy who didn't know how dangerous the terrain was. That day the "new guy" didn't know he could get killed just walking to work.

For months following the attack, every time I closed my eyes, I could see the ball of fire over my head and the businessman straightening his tie and then his body falling to earth.

Two months after 9/11, my company let us return to our offices in the World Financial Center. It was way too soon. The fires from the Towers were still burning. The air had the odor of death and decay. Our desks were still covered with dust. I sat in my chair and felt as if I was surrounded by ghosts.

Two weeks after that, the company laid off 30,000 employees, nearly half its work force.

Since I was 55, I was "allowed" to retire. Looking back, if I did not have so much survivor guilt over making it out of 9/11 intact, I might have tried to find a way to salvage my job or at least carve out another job for myself at the company. But that's the tricky part about survivor guilt. It impacts on how you deal with success and disappointment in such an insidious way that it's hard to separate what has to happen and what you allow to happen because you feel that just being alive and physically fit is enough of a reward.

It's been five years ago today when I last walked across the Trade Center plaza, past the giant metal globe glistening in the middle of a water fountain, where children would play and tourists would stop and take pictures.

The plaza isn't there any more. Just a hole.

Five years later and there's still a hole in the heart of the city where the twin towers once stood. Some people complain that it should have been filled in by now, or that a memorial should have been constructed. But I'm not one of them. For me, that hole says it all. A perfect reminder of innocent lives erased, an open wound that should never heal.

I walk by that hole today and gaze down into the emptiness of the gaping dusty crater, with exposed jagged edges and stumps of metal beams, an open grave on hallowed ground. It shouldn't be touched.

The spirits of nearly 2,700 souls reside there now.

---
Fred Yager, a Vietnam veteran and former AP and CBS journalist, was President of Merrill-Lynch Broadcasting on Sept. 11, 2001. He is the author of several novels and lives in Stamford, Conn.

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