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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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