DAY THREE:SEPT 13:
New Yorkers are doing a remarkable job of responding to chaos. But it's hard. Nearly every form of transportation both into the city and within the five boroughs is disrupted. On a mundane personal level, for example, none of my usual subway approaches to Manhattan from Brooklyn function any more because they all traveled under the World Trade Center. Nor do I have the option of riding my bike to work, as the Brooklyn Bridge and all other nearby bridges are now closed. So getting to work takes a lot of time, a fair amount of patience and some creativity. As everybody else is in the same boat, the few functioning trains are extremely crowded.
This is further exacerbated by the now every-minute bomb scares and threats. This morning, for example, I passed two bomb evacuations on my way from home to the subway station, a distance of 7 blocks. The first involved a suspicious vehicle parked in front of the NYS Appellate Courthouse. The other was inside Polytechnic University. In each case huge numbers of people were compelled to stay outside until bombs were found or the buildings were ruled safe. Now, that was a distance of only 7 blocks, over a few minutes time. Multiply that times thousands of neighborhoods and you get the picture.
Newsday's NYC HQ, located in Queens, has been evacuated so many times over the last 3 days that I cannot believe we have managed to get out a newspaper. (It is, unfortunately, in a buidling that houses FBI offices -- a frequent target.) This office where I sit in Manhattan had to be evacuated last night. Both Grand Central Station and Penn Station were shut down for a while today amid bomb threats.
The entire city resonates with one sound: sirens. Nonstop. In every direction. There are thousands of emergency vehicles, most of them in Manhattan and Brooklyn. that have descended upon us from every county and state in the Northeast. Last night emergency teams poured in from as far away as California and Puerto Rico, with more vehicles and personnel. And hundreds of Humvees, loaded with National Guard, poured down the Westside Highway.
The only frame of reference I have for what this feels like is Tel Aviv during the Persian Gulf War. As in that situation, the danger was very real, very palpable, but also compounded by public jitters and psychos. The jitters? everybody who sees an unattended package or box thinks it's a bomb. Every stolen car on a street near a government building is considered a possible carbomb. People are genuinely terrified. The psychos? lots of creeps, most of them apparently high school aged boys, are calling in crank bomb threats. Ha ha. I think they should go to prison for years. In this climate NO bomb threat is a prank or joke. Calling in a bomb threat in NYC today isn't free speech, it's pure evil.
On the subway this morning fellow passengers were debating loudly about who should pay for what we are going through. The men, by in large, thought somebody should feel the full force of the US military. The women, by in large, asked, "but who? No country did this, it was terrorists. Who do we bomb?" The NY Post actually called for the nuking of Kabul in today's paper, a stance I find so reprehensible as to constitute a clear violation of all aspects of journalistic ethics. I am proud of Newsday's reasoned, careful stance. It may not be a perfect newspaper, but at least it's not run by a bunch of hotheads.
My colleague, Ellis Hennican. wrote a brilliant column in today's Newsday asking, "Where is George Bush?". And it's a damned good question. Rudy Giuliani has been shining (remarkably) throughout, and risked his life --- nearly dying in a building collapse -- to be on the scene, providing leadership if in no other way than to show defiantly, "NYC government is here, and will take this in hand. Screw the terrorists." But Bush? Where is he? He hasn't set foot in New York, nor has he made much in the way of public comment. He has been hiding, seeming fearful of attack. If he is exercising leadership, his actions are invisible. He certainly has not displayed courage.
Courage has, however, been shown by thousands of average New Yorkers, by our firefighters and police --- who have lost hundreds of their comrades. And by the hordes of search-and-rescue experts who arrived from all over the USA and Puerto Rico last night to help find the living, and remove the dead.
Sadly, few are expected to still be alive, and as many as 20,000 dead (that's the high end estimate) may be buried in the rubble. In today's Newsday I looked at what it will take to identify all those bodies and body parts --- the most massive forensic effort in world history.
Today I spent hours with search and resuce personnel. And as one LAFD chief put it, commenting on the more than 200 firefighters who have persihed so far, "The saddest sound I know is bagpipes."
And then he choked up. And so did I.
Gotta go back to work.
Laurie Garrett
