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SEPTEMBER DAY By Larry Schweikart, author of the best selling, "A Patriot's History of the United States" OFFICIAL WEB SITE |
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2ND EXCERPT - From Section Two - The Day |
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World Trade Center, Marriot Hotel Complex, 8:46 AM, September 11, 2001 Columbia University seemed an odd place for Constantine Cataris, a good Greek Orthodox boy. Oh, he more than belonged there academically and intellectually. His studies on the history of banking panics and financial institutions were internationally regarded, and a quick search in the academic databases showed that he was cited nearly as frequently as some Nobel Prize winners, although certainly few in the general public had heard of him. Constantine---or Connie, as everyone at Columbia called him---liked it that way. Anonymity did not bother Connie in the least. He looked like an academic---often slightly askew, office papers stacked high. He played squash instead of basketball, listened to opera instead of Nellie. So in many ways he fit the part, unless you knew him. Connie’s father was Spartan, literally, and married a nice girl from Naxos. Connie, his brother, and his two sisters grew up in D.C., and he was used to big cities, so New York didn’t bother him. Despite Columbia’s overpowering climate of liberalism, where race, gender, class, defined everything, Connie nevertheless easily stood his ground in debates, thanks to his superior mind, and, besides, a good mix of political views existed within the business school, which was not generally true of the rest of the campus. Of course, the B-school situation was unique, and Connie knew it. Hell, at almost any American university, the operative phrase was“ Who’s zoomin’ whom?” as Aretha Franklin once sang. That’s the new academic mantra in America. Who’s oppressing whom? It was straight out of Marx and the Manifesto. Of course, the faculty and the administrators all knew it. Occasionally the students figured it out, but parents and donors rarely did. They blindly went on funneling money to these sick cows of higher learning, assuming that, after all, it’s the IVY LEAGUE! It’s COLUMBIA. But the truth was, COLUMBIA, like most of its sister institutions, was sick. It was near terminal. Decades of ignoring the key principles that made America great had produced the desired result. History classes no longer dealt with important ideas or key developments, but “themes” designed to show the evils of America and the West. Sociology classes explained why those who chose not to work were “victims,” or why those who murder are “misunderstood.” Philosophy professors reaffirmed that there was no God, and that man was little better than a “tool-making animal,” and yet offered the goofy paradox that animals should have all the “rights” of humans. Political Science insisted that American government was hopelessly corrupted by money and dominated by the “elites.” In his own research on economics and finance, of course, Connie had called into question several of these myths. Government regulation produced financial instability---not the reverse. Private markets worked pretty well, unless they were strangled by bureaucracies. Entrepreneurs, not the state, produced wealth. But each new study he churned out, none of which could be refuted by his peers at academic conferences---seemed increasingly like firing a pea shooter at an elephant. To add insult to injury, he couldn’t even make the elephant mad. The academic system hurdled along its fatal path, sucking genuine knowledge and spiritual understanding into a pathetic vortex of nihilism and hate. Every university had a few voices who still spoke of honor, western values, God---but they were overwhelmed by entire departments of “women’s studies,” “gay studies,” or “peace studies.” That’s a good one, Connie laughed. Peace studies. The solution to everything is to let the enemy kill you. Yah, you’re at peace all right. You’re dead. These trends, among other things, had prompted Connie to work on other projects. He was a fellow at the Hudson Institute, as well as board member of a small New York bank---a position he inherited from his father. Amazing how much more real his economic theories became when bank employees and thousands of depositors relied on him to make the sound and moral decisions for his company. As he did three days a week---an academic’s cushy schedule---Connie left before Jan, and his two girls, Nikky and Sophie were up. He’d call Sophie later that day, as he often did. For now, he re-focused on his speech about global financial structures to the National Association of Business Economists in the Marriott Hotel at the World Trade Center complex. Connie followed his normal habit of taking the train from the Hartsdale Station near Scarsdale to Grand Central Station, and from there he grabbed the subway to the City Hall stop. Coming to the City never bothered Connie. He’d grown up in big cities, worked at Northwestern in Chicago for years, and was not intimidated by the tall buildings and bustling streets, even though any time he left Jan and the girls, he felt a brief, small tinge of foreboding. Dumb, he reassured himself. I’ve never been mugged, never even been yelled at by a NYC cabbie. I work downtown all the time. Sophie, the youngest, was born with an eye problem that had been corrected by surgery, but not until she had virtually lived at the hospital for about a year. At times, Connie wondered if she would ever attain full sight. When she did, in gratitude Connie felt he owed God a renewed attention to his family---an inclination that neither Jan, Nikky, or Sophie did anything to dissuade. They had enough money for him to be home several days a week. It was a blessed life indeed. Actually, it was a life that Connie’s phenomenal intellect and skill with both numbers and history had brought them. He could, at the drop of a hat, go to work for a brokerage or a financial consulting firm and made double or triple what he earned at Columbia. But then . . . then I’d be working for myself, and I wasn’t put here to just benefit me. As bad as it gets, the university is my mission field. I’m put here for a reason. The Truth was a noble goal, and few found the Truth in the statistical potpourri of antebellum economic data better than Connie. Had he been corrupt, he easily could have twisted any finding to advance a particular political agenda, and, no doubt, with great fanfare from the press. Instead, he let the numbers speak for themselves, with a unrelenting resonance that few Marxists or Keynesians could resist. And today’s excursion into finding the Truth, insofar as it involved economics, was making a presentation about the International Monetary Fund at the World Trade Center Marriott on the World Bank. Tuesday was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky. Connie wanted to walk the four blocks from the City Hall stop to the World Trade Center. He’d visited the WTC many times, usually in a professional capacity, yet oddly enough, he had never really studied the buildings. There’s time. The sun is out. Look at the World Trade Center. Really look at it. Truly amazing. He’d read the stats: more than half a million square feet of glass, 200,000 tons of steel, 1,200 bathrooms, and every floor covered an acre. When everyone showed up for work, the towers contained 50,000 people. But today, it wasn’t the massive size that impressed him as much as the beauty of the towers. Enjoy the view. It is a perfect sky. Flawless. As he looked up, Connie remembered that the architecture critic Vince Scully had once derided the “twin towers” as giant boxes, lacking in grace or style. Today, however, as Connie walked the World Trade Center Plaza, he thought they were beautiful. They positively shimmered. How incredibly majestic they are against such a blue sky. Why have I never noticed this? After walking the half perimeter in front of the two towers, Connie finally headed into the Marriott, where he located the large ballroom. Dutifully pinning on his name tag, he grabbed the obligatory glass of orange juice so that he would have something in his hands during idle conversation. Other participants were taking advantage of the copious food provided at such shindigs, including bacon, eggs, potatoes, but Connie wasn’t hungry. Besides, he hated talking on a full stomach. Even at a fairly non-combative conference like this, critics couldn’t wait to slice and dice. He held his own in these exchanges, but even after many years, he developed a knot in his gut. Better lay off the bacon. It was 8:46 a.m. . . . The president of Morgan Stanley had gathered his notes and placed his water glass to begin his breakfast speech, then Connie would have his turn in the morning session. He recognized a few of these people, knew others from previous meetings and conventions, and knew still others from their name tags, mostly by reputation. Amicably he sipped coffee with an economist from MIT and some banker from London as they pondered the future of the Euro. Then he heard . . . a subway? No, it was an approaching train. No, it’s over our heads. The cavernous ballroom shuddered and industrial-sized coffee pots rocked. The lights went off momentarily, then flickered back on. New Yorkers in the room looked at each other. They well knew the 1993 bombing, and Connie got word that the head of the Israeli central bank was giving a speech that day. They’re bombing us because of an Israeli? Few people spoke: all knew a bomb had gone off. Within seconds, everyone stood, then moved out of room in an orderly and quiet manner. This is remarkable. There is no panic, no questioning, no screaming, no running, no hysteria. Hotel representatives gently directed people to the appropriate exits. Connie prayed, crossing himself. Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us! He repeated this to himself, in English and in Greek, all the way to the nearest exit, then onto the plaza. Emerging from the dark hallway, Connie suddenly stumbled into blinding sunlight. He squinted, then instinctively looked to his left, to the first tower. It’s on fire. Smoke poured out of Tower 1, the North Tower, but it didn’t mesmerize Connie as it seemed to do others. Along with perhaps a hundred other people from the ballroom, he kept moving, yard after yard, until finally he stopped to look up at grey-black plume billowing out of the side of the building. That’s no accident. OK, Connie, one foot in front of the other. Keep going. This is serious. We’re being attacked. Keep moving. There is a street sign. Connie realized he was nearly a full block away from the Marriott, somewhere to the south, and then looked down at his feet, where debris covered the ground. Origins unknown, he wanted to say, but he knew better. These pieces are from an airplane. One hundred feet away, a small crowd of people gathered around . . . . . . an aircraft engine? Now it was raining, except it wasn’t rain. It’s confetti. Confetti? Connie stretched his hands out, collecting shards of what was 8 ˝ x 11 paper that still blew out of the offices. But there is something else here. What is this other stuff? Did he want to know? Some of it was the remnants of office furniture, copy machines, telephones. Flesh? Did I really see that? He looked at a half of a picture of what was, in another time, a happy couple, and resisted the urge to pick up a handful of this confetti---to touch it. These are human lives. Or pieces of lives. To his right stood an economist from the conference, the fellow from London. A voice came from behind the two of them, “A plane hit the building.” Another voice---a large black woman---simply sobbing. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Then another woman wept hysterically as she saw a body sailing 80 floors down, seeming to land right next to her, even though it was nearly a block away.. Others looked up, mesmerized by the jumpers. Connie couldn’t look. Instead, he could only stare at the eyes of the others, who followed the people as they fell . . . all the way down. Connie blurted to his English colleague, “It’s bin Laden.” The Brit stared back blankly. Anger welled up inside Connie: This guy doesn’t even know who bin Laden is. You shouldn’t come to the World Trade Center if you don’t know who Osama bin Laden is. He nearly turned to look at the tower with everyone else when a voice inside him suddenly shouted “Leave,” but his legs wouldn’t move. He was nailed in place. Engine Company #71, 8:48 AM “We got a fire at the WTC. Let’s go, let’s go. All units.” Callahan clapped his hands together hustling the men along. As per his habit, he walked around the firehouse in “pool shoes”---the flexible waterproof slippers that people wear to the beach to keep their feet from frying. He found that they not only worked well when water got inside his boots, but they further insulated his feet within the heavy boots. The dispatcher’s alert had all the members of Engine Company #71 in their gear within a minute and a half, and the truck was rolling by 8:51. Already the members knew things were bad. There had never been a “borough call” before as long as any of them had been with #71. A “borough call” was above a “five alarm” fire---which is thought to be the highest-level emergency situation. A five-alarm fire meant that 15 engine companies and 10 ladder companies would be dispatched. A company had four officers and up to 25 firefighters, meaning that a five-alarm fire brought out 420 firefighters. Today, that wouldn’t be enough. “Ever fought a fire in the WTC?” asked Brian Brennan, a rookie who’d only been with the force a few months after graduating training. He looked at the other men in the truck, and the answer lay in their eyes. What he saw made his face pale. “Not a big fire, and never in the top floors,” answered Ed Young, a 20-year vet. “We’ve never fought a big fire in the Twin Towers? I thought the place was bombed in the early ‘90s.” “It was,” replied Young soberly. Young recalled going to the WTC that day. “Arabs tried to take out the WTC with a truck bomb, but all the fires were on the first couple of floors, where we could get to them easily.” And these are on the top floors, Brian thought as he completed Ed’s sentence. No ladder goes that high. Aircraft will be hard pressed to drop slurry because of the winds. Holy Mother of God! They’ve never fought a fire like this before. New York City has 12,000 firefighters. Today, we’re gonna need all of ‘em. Other veteran firefighters saw the fear in Brian’s eyes, but steeled themselves with a confidence that defied logic, and Brian took reassurance from them. Ok, they must know what they’re doing. They’ve done this a hundred times before, I’m sure. Yeah, this is tough, but we’ll get it. That’s what we do. We’re firefighters.” “Movin’ out,” shouted Callahan. “Roll ‘em.” Engine #71 pulled out the doors as Young, the last man, leaped on. Weaving through traffic, Engine #71, followed by ladder #12, arrived at the base of the WTC within minutes. Without pausing to look up, the crew donned their heavy jackets, helmets, and grabbed their oxygen tanks, and marched into the massive, five-story lobby, whose windows lay in shards on the ground outside. As they walked in, three people came running out of a stairwell on fire. One of the firemen had a small extinguisher and put them out, and paramedics quickly took over. Methodically, Chief O’Bannon, a loudspeaker in one hand, and a radio in the other, made a quick introduction. “This is Henry D’Onofrio, who is in charge of maintenance here. He tells me that all the elevators are out.” D’Onofrio looked exasperated. “Out, hell! I was standing right over there when I heard the explosion, then there was a ‘swoosh’ and I instinctively knew that something was coming down the service elevator. I don’t know why, but I dove behind the reception desk in time to see this fireball blast the doors out. One door hit a woman square on, and knocked her outside about 30 feet. I think someone got her already. Then, just as fast as it came down, the suction took the fireball right back up, like nothin’ happened.” He surveyed the firemen as they stared at him dumbfounded. “Don’t you get it? These elevators ain’t ‘out,’ they’re incinerated,” he concluded. Oh my God, Brian thought. Everyone there knew their job had become much tougher. “Boys,” said O’Bannon. “You’re gonna have to climb.” Young looked at O’Bannon in disbelief. “The fire’s on the 94th Floor, Chief. Chief?” Young wasn’t a Rhodes scholar, but he could add. It will take us an hour to get up there by stairs---those people will be dead by then. There won’t be an 94th floor left. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked, “Was it an airplane?” O’Bannon nodded grimly. “It’s war. We’re at war. This was deliberate,” and the hard eyes of the firefighters showed they understood. “Come on, we’ll set up a mid-level command post on 23. Call in when you get there.” His instructions were interrupted by a sharp crash. Some object hit the outside lobby roof. Debris? Another instantly followed, then several more. Human bodies of jumpers were hitting the overhangs and glass skylights that extended out from the base of the Tower. As the cause of the sounds sank in with the firemen, one probie puked all over the lobby. Brian wanted to, but held it. Another engine crew, with a pair of French television documentarians, had actually been responding to a suspected gas leak less than a block from the WTC when the cameraman heard the sound and turned his lens to the sky, capturing the only film of the aircraft hitting the building. They relayed the word quickly, and O’Bannon picked it up on his radio. He already calculated the time, the distance, the likely heat of the fire, based on the color of the flame and smoke. It was a standard question on the lieutenant’s test: “What is the expansion factor of a one-hundred-foot steel beam as it reaches the inherent heat level of 1200 degrees Fahrenheit?” Translation: if this fire is 1200 degrees---as it surely looks like it is---the floors don’t have very long before the collapse. Unless they can put out the fire quickly, the people above Floor 94 have no hope. Even if the fire is brought under control, it could take days to get them out with ladders and ropes. With the smoke, they won’t last more than a couple of hours. Callahan began to run other numbers through his head. He actually knew a little bit about the WTC. It’s designer, Minoru Yamasaki, had based his concept on the bamboo reed made square. A reed, he reasoned, would bend in the wind, not break. Except, unlike a reed, where all the weight-bearing was on the tube, Yamasaki designed the twin towers with 60% of the weight borne in the center of the building, using the core of elevators and stairwells, and 40% placed on the outside walls. This increased the usable space in the towers by about 1/3, but it also meant that anything that compromised the middle of a tower would utterly destroy it, as the outer shells could not sustain the weight. If that occurs, thought Callahan, the building will come straight down, imploding in on itself, rather than breaking off. And if that happens, two-hundred thousand tons of steel, more than used in the longest suspension bridge in the United States, will drop straight down. Callahan was shaken out of his thoughts by Ed Young, who turned to his crew and calmly instructed, “Saddle up. We have to hoof it. We’ll do 10 floors, then rest a minute. We have to have something when we get to the fire.” Firemen instantly slung heavy hoses, axes, and other equipment over their shoulders and started up the stair well. Michael Callahan, toting a hose, brought up the rear, and shot a glance at Brian Brennan. “How long does it take to hike 90 floors?” Brian asked, causing most of the activity to halt momentarily as he was met with stares. “Oooooo-kay,” he shrugged, and movement continued upwards again. Everyone knew that it took about a minute to climb one flight of stairs with gear, but obviously they were going to slow down after several flights, no matter how many breaks they took. To climb 90 floors would take close to two hours, even under good circumstances. These people don’t have two hours. Not even close. The party marched off---whether confidently or not, Brian couldn’t tell---as D’Onofrio remained behind to assist the Chief. They had climbed steadily for almost ten minutes. Only about 75 more stories to go before they started encountering fire. Suddenly, WTC 1 shuddered again. Aftershock? wondered Brian. Enclosed in the insulated stairwell, they could not see what had happened outside. It was 9:02 a.m. . . . . |