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September 17, 2001
'I Love you all, and I'm here!'
By Jennifer McNulty
Heart-wrenching stories of survival and offers of assistance are among the messages
UCSC alumni in New York City are sending the Alumni Association Office on campus.
Recent Porter graduate Noah Buchanan ended his eyewitness account with the unmistakably
life-affirming words, 'I Love you all, and I'm here!'
Buchanan (Porter '00), a graduate student in New York, was coming out of the subway
just a few blocks from the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11 when,
he wrote to friends and family, "the buildings were literally blazing above
my head, and debris was falling from the sky and the burning buildings."
He had arrived just seconds after the second plane struck the twin towers. "People
were running and screaming everywhere . . . it was total chaos," he wrote. "I
looked at the burning buildings and heard people screaming, 'Oh God, people are jumping
out of the building!' It was truly terrible to stand on the street and watch as dozens
of people fell to their death, right in front of my eyes."
Buchanan was on the telephone reassuring his mother that he was fine when the first
tower collapsed.
"I heard intense screaming and panic out on the street. As I looked out the
window, I could see people running in masses away from the trade center, and yelling,
'The building has collapsed!'"
Outside, the sky was "raining ash and debris, and everyone was covered in it.
Everyone was running down the streets, and ambulances, fire trucks, and police were
everywhere, sirens everywhere."
Moments later, Buchanan watched the second tower fall to the ground. "People
around me were crying out for loved ones still inside the building," he wrote.
A second cloud of ash and debris covered the area, and people on the street were
covered in blood and ash. The city closed in on itself as the transportation system
was shut down.
Buchanan asked paramedics if they could use volunteers at the disaster site, but
they told him to leave the area, suggesting that he donate blood. He spent the rest
of the day walking to four different hospitals, where droves of people offering to
donate blood overwhelmed hospital staff. Finally, at 5 p.m. he arrived home, feeling
exhausted and traumatized.
"I Love you all, and I'm here!" he wrote, expressing thanks for the calls
he and his mother had received. "I would love to hear from you if you can get
through."
Buchanan's story, which he sent to Bob Giges, academic preceptor at Porter College,
is one of several that have come in to the campus since the terrorist attacks on
New York City and Washington, D.C.
"I live in Brooklyn, so I was close enough to see but far enough away to be
safe," alum Stephanie Paige Sweet (Oakes '97) wrote in e-mail to the Alumni
Association. "If you know of New York alumni who need assistance, I am able
to provide it."
Michael Graydon (Cowell '70) watched the destruction of the World Trade Center from
the 31st floor of 1 Penn Plaza, about 50 blocks north of the catastrophe.
"I cannot describe the horror of seeing the second plane as it approached and
struck the South Tower," he wrote. "The sound as each tower collapsed was
an eternity of thunder. The roar of military jets passing over midtown Manhattan,
thousands of New Yorkers walking across the bridges, the absence of honking taxis,
all herald a change we barely comprehend."
Just last month, Shannon Key moved to Manhattan, settling in an apartment three blocks
from the World Trade Center. She and other residents of the building gathered near
the elevator to evacuate after the second plane crash and the collapse of the first
tower.
In an e-mail to friends and family, Key's mother wrote that Shannon and others were
making their way south with wet T-shirts on their faces when they heard, "The
second tower is coming down--run!"
"They started running when a shower of dust and smoke and debris came at them,"
the e-mail continued. After numerous attempts to reach her mother by cell phone,
Shannon got through with the good news that she was safe.
Key's apartment is within the evacuated area, however, so she spent Tuesday night
in a hotel and has stayed with family friends since then.
"Thank you all for your prayers, as I am sure we will all continue to pray for
the other families that have not been as fortunate as we have been," concluded
Lynda Key-Tusoni.
Also in New York was Solana "Sunny" Pyne ('01), who was scheduled to start
a new job at Discovery magazine on Tuesday. In e-mail to John Wilkes of the
Science Communication Program, Pyne wrote that she was walking to work when she saw
the first tower burning. As word spread of the attack on the Pentagon, too, Pyne
joined others on 17th Street to watch the horror unfold.
"People were running up and down, women crying," she wrote. "A woman
had abandoned her sandals in order to run faster."
Just after 10 o'clock, Pyne decided to go to work. "I was walking down to 16th
when people gasped and screamed," she wrote. Looking up, she saw the first tower
collapsing. "People were yelling and more crying."
About half the magazine's staff made it to work that day, but everyone was glued
to television and radio reports. The offices were closed Wednesday, when an eerie
quiet had descended over the city, she reported.
"People are wandering blankly around the streets," she wrote. "It's
amazingly quiet except for the sound of sirens. The worst is the feeling that there's
nothing to do. It feels very unreal. The only physical evidence is the cloud of dust
and smoke that has begun to drift uptown."
Another graduate of the Science Communication Program, Bryn Nelson ('99), wrote friends
and family that he "used to boast how my bedroom window in Brooklyn had a perfect
view of the World Trade Center. I really wish I hadn't seen it on Tuesday."
A science writer at Newsday on Long Island, Nelson was getting ready for work
Tuesday morning when he saw flames shooting from the North Tower of the World Trade
Center. Television reports filled him in until the second jet crashed into the South
Tower and the station went black.
With binoculars, he watched what he thought was debris falling from both buildings
only to learn later that it wasn't only debris but also bodies. He was talking with
a neighbor when the South Tower collapsed "in a plume of white smoke and dust.
I will never forget sitting on my bed soon afterwards and seeing the North Tower
also collapse in a terrifyingly graceful implosion."
Like New Yorkers across the city, Nelson is coping with his "jittery nerves,"
aware that his pain pales in comparison to the grief of others, including colleagues
who have lost loved ones. "Their families and many others need our prayers,"
he wrote.
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