Day of Infamy

Yesterday me and my friend decided to see with our own eyes what had happened, maybe in part to it just not seeming real. My stepmother's art gallery is almost directly across from the towers, and she actually witnessed the 1st plane hit. She locked the store and ran. The city was completely closed so we headed towards Jersey City, directly across the water from the WTC. Most of the highway exits, and highways themselves were closed.

We pulled off the NJ turnpike and with binoculars could get a good view of the scene, it literally looked like a volcano erupting. We were here looking at this a good 10 hours later and it was still just spewing smoke. A caravan of ambulances and emergency vehicles streamed past us, in both directions. Eventually after about 3 hours and a lot of u turns, we entered Jersey City, it looked like it had been occupied. National guard troops were everywhere, traffic anywhere near the water was banned. All the while we could see the massive cloud of smoke and ash covering the bottom of the island. We took a highway named Rt.3 back toward home, near the Giants stadium complex. It was closed, a van had been stopped and explosives were found.

We sat parked, about 30 minutes later a Bergen area Special Operations Group caravan pushed thru traffic. 2 more hours and we were let back on the other way. There were sites set up in J.C. with vans and trucks bringing in bodies, occupied by Haz Mat teams. Also in the Giants stadium parking lot. Vehicles steadily bringing bodies in. The whole region is a no-fly zone and there are no reporters in this area whatsoever. NYC hospitals are nowhere near capacity, doctors are worried that there will be few survivors. The primary hospital is the one I was born in... Not many news reports are making reference to the casualties, besides those of the brave firefighter, police, and EMS teams caught in the collapse. It is known that daily, 40,000 people work in the towers at that time.

I don't really think I have digested it yet, but the feeling of just nausea seeing the smoking city, looking at the skyline and it just looking wrong, and all those ambulances and trucks heading away from the city, and seeing people jumping from the building holding hands, it's just a feeling no one should have. Here in NJ, Paterson, near where I live has one of the largest Palestinian populations in the country, and ppl are acting up over there also. I send prayers to all the victims and their families. People have ignored the fact that this could happen here, but no longer have that luxury. May the cowards responsable for this be swiftly struck down.