The Michigan Daily - Monday, September 17, 2001 - 5B
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
The
recovery
FMourners view changed. skyline from across river
By David Enders
Daily News Editor
JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Residents here joined
people across the country in lighting candles
Friday evening, but with one difference: Here they
were aware of perhaps a more poignant reminder
of Tuesday's destruction than most places in the
country - the forever changed New York skyline
directly across the Hudson River.
Thousands of people showed up to sing patriot-
ic songs and grieve. "It's nice to be around all
these people," said Alfred Martino of Jersey City.
Standing next to Martino was his friend, Alisa
Weiserman, who graduated from the University of
Michigan in 1989.
"It also reminds us that this country is made up
of a lot of different faces," Weiserman said, refer-
ring to the ethnic and racial diversity of those
attending the vigil.
Across from the changed skyline, Gauri Mohan
sat beside her husband, P.S. Mohan, who works
near the World Trade Center.
"I couldn't find him when the building fell -it
was the worst feeling" she said. "Every time I
close my eyes, I see people falling out of those
windows."
Gauri Mohan comforted Jersey City resident
Diviana Marin as she wept. Marin said her broth-
er had escaped from the 84th floor of the North
Tower after the attack.
"I just think it's so sad that people come to our
country to learn to destroy it," she said:
"The symbol of the buildings is home, it's a lot
of things - I couldn't believe they could collapse
for any reason," Weiserman said. "If you haven't
seen the World Trade Center up close, you have no
idea."
Lt. William Costigan of the Jersey City Police
Department estimated about 1,500 people were on
the waterfront by 7:30 p.m. Friday. More were on
their way, marching through the streets toward the
waterfront carrying flags and singing.
Residents have been donating supplies and
putting them on boats to send across the river,
Costigan said.
"You had people here in four- and five-thou-
sand-dollar suits helping out, Costigan said.
"We'll be shipping the supplies over as long as
it takes," he said. "People have been phenomenal
... It's a shame it took something like this."
Jersey City resident Miriam Smith works near
the World Trade Center.
She and her friend Stephen Mohr said they
found themselves in the midst of a stampede as
people frantically tried to get away from the Trade
Center. Not knowing planes had crashed into the
buildings, they initially thought the city was being
bombed.
"I thought I was going to die," she said.
"We were just running and screaming and cry-
ing and praying that we wouldn't get hit by bombs.
... It was unreal," Mohr said.
"I'm here tonight because I got away and I'm
here tonight for the people who didn't" he added.
Mohr said he hasn't gotten much sleep since the
bombing, constantly watching news coverage on
television instead. "These past few days have been
filled with every emotion," he said. "I tried to go
to work yesterday but there were bomb threats all
over the city."
David Anderson had a view of the World Trade
Center from his Jersey City apartment.
"I was just looking out the window in disbelief
and I saw the other plane deliberately crash into
the building," he said.
"After that, the Star Spangled Banner has much
more of a meaning."
- Daily StaffReporter Elizabeth Kassab
contributed to this report.
Some try
to return
home for
necessities
By David Enders
Daily News Editor
NEW YORK - Thousands of
lower Manhattanites crowded in
front of barriers manned by New
York police and National Guard
Troops yesterday, waiting to reoccu-
py areas closest to the rubble of the
World Trade Center.
Utility crews swarmed Wall Street,
preparing for the planned reopening
of the New York Stock Exchange
today. Other crews hosed soot and
dust off buildings and picked up
glass from broken windows.
"We don't even know if we're
going to be let back in," said 13-
year-old Stephanie Millan, who
waited with her mother for a
National Guard escort to take them
to their apartment in Battery Park
Place. In front of the crowd, a
guardsman barked out addresses on
a megaphone.
Millan said she was at school
when the towers collapsed Tuesday.
Her mother was at work.
"We didn't have any chance to
take anything with us," she said.
Security will be tightened all over
the city, especially in the financial
district.
"We don't even
know if we're going
to be let back in ...
We didn't have any
chance to take
anything with us."
- Stephanie Milan
Battery Park Place resident
Joey Perez, a security guard who
works at 50 Broad St., said his,
building has hired two extra securi-
ty guards, among other precautions.
Normally there are only two, he
said. In the rest of the city this
weekend, security guards were sta-
tioned in front of many buildings 24
hours a day.
"We have to check packages,"
Perez said. "If you feel suspicious
about an individual, ask them more
questions."
For many, coming back to home'
and work seemed to be a step in
returning the city to normal.
"There are a lot of people by the
twin towers who work out at our
club," said Greg Barthelemy, an
employee of the New York Sports
Club on Wall Street. "Maybe they'll
try to get back in their routine."
Whatever routine people fall into.,
there are still considerable
reminders of what happened here.
Walls of buildings and subway sta-
tions have become impromptu
memorials for the missing, and fires
still burn at the World Trade Center
site.
Firefighters mourn their
comrades, keep working
By David Enders
Daily News Editor
NEW YORK - James McRoberts
still can't believe 15 firefighters are miss-
ing from the Engine 54 Fire Station.
"Nobody ever can turn around and say
they lost 15," said McRoberts, a lieu-
tenant with the Southfield, Mich., fire
department. His nephew, who is alive, is
a member of the Engine 54 station at the
corner of Eighth Avenue and 48th Street
in Manhattan.
Outside the station, relatives of fire-
fighters lost when the World Trade
Center towers collapsed wept and lit can-
dles, so many that the entire sidewalk
was covered with wax.
"This is going on at every engine
house," McRoberts said. As McRoberts
spoke, dust-covered firefighters arrived
from Ground Zero. The crowd around
the station clapped for the new arrivals.
Firefighters and other rescue workers
have been working 10- to 12-hour shifts
at the site, he said, removing what is left
bucket-by-bucket so no remains are
missed.
McRoberts spent time at Ground Zero
earlier in the week, and was planning to
return Saturday.
"It's a logistical nightmare," he said.
"With decomposition (of the bodies) it's
going to be extremely difficult."
The toll on the entire fire department
has been estimated at around 300.
"I think there were more people than
normal (responding to the World Trade
Center) because it was a shift change,"
McRoberts said. "You had guys who
were coming in early and guys who were
still hanging around."
At the Jacob Javits Convention Center
at l Ith Avenue and 34th Street, people
from all over the country stood in a line
that stretched two city blocks, waiting to
become part of the relief effort.
"The crater is 60 feet deep," said
Lance Myck, a structural steelworker
from Queens, N.Y., who was at Ground
Zero Wednesday. "They can't use a crane
(to move the rubble) because it's too
heavy."
Officials announced during the week-
end that they will use DNA to identify
many of the remains.
"We couldn't find anybody" Myck
said. "Everything was pancaked:'
Fires still burned at the site Saturday,
sending smoke across lower Manhattan.
People walked down Wall Street in gas
masks.
On King Street between Sixth and
Seventh avenues, the American Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
was reuniting pets with their owners.
"We're providing food, transportation
and carriers," said ASPCA spokeswoman
Deborah Sindell. "In the last two days,
we've rescued 45 to 50 pets - cats, dogs,
ferrets, guinea pigs."
Sindell said the group was sending
"Humane Law Enforcement Officers"
into areas near Ground Zero to bring the
pets out.
"We've seen some extremely stressed
out pets," she said. "Some with respirato-
ry problems."
DAVID KATZ/Daily
Two New York City firefighters stand outside the Engine 54 fire station after hav-
ing returned from Ground Zero. More than 135 firefighters were promoted in a cer-
emony yesterday following reports that hundreds are still trapped in the rubble.
NYU students adapt to life near Ground Zero
By Elizabeth Kassab
Daily Staff Reporter
NEW YORK - New York University sophomore
Bryce Roebel said he attended class as usual after
watching from Washington Square Park as United
Airlines Flight 175 crashed into World trade Center
Tower 2 Tuesday.
"During class they collapsed, so when I came out
of class and looked south, they weren't there," he
said.
The collapse knocked out power in four of NYU's
residence halls, including the one Roebel lives in.
Like thousands of other New Yorkers who live in
the vicinity of the World Trade Center, Roebel has
not yet been able to return to his home.
Roebel said he has been staying with friends, and
NYU gave students some money to buy clothes and
other necessities they didn't have.
The residence halls farther away from the site of
the terrorist attacks were able to remain open. NYU
freshman Chris H ale still has access to his residence
hall, located near Washington Square Park. He
walked out of his room Tuesday morning for a class,
not realizing what had happened.
"I noticed a lot ofpeople just standing around," he
said. "When I got to the corner, I looked downtown
and saw lots of smoke."
Second-year law student Denise Ryan said she
and her neighbors stood in and around Washington
Square Park watching the destruction of the twin
towers last Tuesday.
"You could see glass coming out and people com-
ing out" of the top floors, she said.
In the streets, people clustered around the cars that
were stopped in the road to hear the radios' explana-
tions of the sight.
Ryan said she listened in "complete disbelief" as
the reports kept coming in.
She then went to the law school, where there were
televisions set up in the lounge. Some of the students
watching had friends, family or fiances who worked
in the World Trade Center.
"When the first tower fell, you knew there were
people in there that you knew, and there was nothing
you could do;" she said.
Tuesday was filled with frantic searches, Ryan
said. Since virtually no telephones were working,
people were using e-mail and instant messaging ser-
vices to try to locate friends and family.
The rest of New York responded with an outpour-
ing of support, she said.
"People were just trying to find out how they
could help," Hale said. "They told people they need-
ed blood, and then within an hour they were telling
people there were five-hour lines."
Hale said he always took it for granted that he was
born an American.. But the recent events and New
York's response "brings a deeper sense that we are
all Americans. It has made it a little more real," he
said.
Ryan said she is skeptical that the United States
would commit to a ground war, but she adlmitted she
acks
would never have imagined a week ago that the twin
towers could be the target of a terrorist attack.
"If we've ever been justified in going to war in the
past, we're justified now,' she said.
When he was growing up, Roebel said he
dreamed of being in the N'avy. Though he didn't pur-
sue that ambition, he said he is willing to serve his
country now.
"I'd do almost anything if they asked me to;' he
said. "It's time for everyone to come together."
Ryan said last week's events have New York shak-
en, but she said it will get back to normal.
She said New Yorkers have no choice but to con-
tinue walking the streets and taking the subway. "It's
hard. You can't really leave"
The normally busy campus was transformed into
a virtual ghost town in the days after the terrorist
attack, but things are slowly starting to return to nor-
mal. "It was dead silent,".Hale said. "I could walk
down the middle of 5th Avenue in the middle of the
day without people or cars.
Immigrants angered by att
By Elizabeth Kassab
Daily Staff Reporter
NEW YORK - Many of the resi-
dents in Chinatown do not speak fluent
English, but the stars and bars flying in
and around their shops leave no doubt
that they are Americans, and the terror-
ist attack that destroyed part of their
city Tuesday has had a deep impact on
them.
"Every morning when we woke up
before we could see the World Trade
Center," said Nelson To, gesturing to
the blue sky above the buildings. "Now
we see nothing."
The language barrier has proved to
be a problem in the days since Tuesday
as police set up barricades nearby, and
some residents were apprehensive to
leave their homes, partly because they
cannot understand the police, said
Donald Moy, whose father owns the
Mee Sum Caf6 on Pell Street.
. But aside from that, Chinese-
Americans and other predominantly
immigrant communities in New York
feel the same fear, anger and disbelief
as the rest of the nation.
"I feel so sad, you know, so sad. The
buildings were very beautiful," Moy
said.
Near Chinatown, in Little Italy, reac-
tions to the fall of the twin towers was
much the same as elsewhere.
"To see them collapse broke my
heart, said Alfonse Ferrara, general
manager of Cafe Napoli on Hester
Street. "We can only pray and feel
sympathy to the people who have lost
victims in the tragedy, but we must go
on and prevent such an incident from
happening in this country or in the
world."
Ferrara said the terrorist attacks have
caused him to reflect on being
American.
"It's such a great place to live,"
Ferrara said. "I'm always flabbergasted
by how great this country is whenever I
go to other countries. I believe we will
continue to succeed because we are
such a great nation."
He said the community in Little Italy
feels much the same as the rest of
America.
"We're of Italian heritage, but most
of all we're Americans," Ferrara said.
"Most of us were born here, some of us
served in the armed forces."
But Little Italy is hurting economi-
cally, like much of the rest of New York.
The area is all decked out for a cele-
bration that will not happen. The annu-
al St. Gennaro festival, one of the
largest the Italian community cele-
brates, was supposed to be one of the
major events of the year, held from
Sept. 13 to Sept. 22.
Instead of bustling around a restau-
rant bursting with hungry patrons, Cafe
Napoli's waiters walked around vacant
tables to serve their customers.
Ferrara said he increased his staff by
20 percent in anticipation of the cele-
bration but since Tuesday has had to lay
off the extra workers in addition to
other regular workers.
In addition to the drastic drop in
business, Ferrara said the shopowners
in Little Italy are expecting to lose the
money they paid the city to cover the
cost of the festival's maintenance and
clean-up.
DAVIT/Daly
Young Chao Yi, a Chinese-American barber, hung an American flag on the mirror of
the Hip Kee Beauty Salon on Boyers St. In Chinatown. Many immigrants are
shocked and saddened by Tuesday's events.
10:50 a.m.
President Bush labels
Tuesday's attacks "acts of
war," and requests $20
billion from congress to
help rebuild and recover
from the attacks.
8:09 a.m.
Transportation Secretary
Norman Mineta says
airports will be opened and
flights resumed on a case-
by-case basis - and only
after stringent new security
measures are in place.
Late Afternoon
Secretary of State Colin
Powell states that Osama
Bin Laden is the prime
suspect in the attacks.
Morning
White House officials and
congressional leaders agree to
a $40 billion package to combat
terrorism and recover from the
attacks. The figure was double
what President Bush requested.
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