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Reporter's Journal: Notes From Inside Police Lines

NEW YORK CITY-"Close by, another man rapped his useless cell phone repeatedly on the park bench and then clutched his head in his hands. That one gesture, more than any other, seemed to summarize the day.

By John Salustri | Updated on September 13, 2001

NEW YORK CITY-It began with a call to our offices that the World Trade Center was on fire. Within minutes, the report had escalated to news that a jetliner had smacked into one of the towers. First thoughts turned to a similar tragedy that had befallen the Empire State Building decades ago, but that accident had occurred in heavy fog. This didn’t make sense.

But the news grew only more senseless with the report that a second plane had hit the remaining tower–and that a third had hit the Pentagon. Now it seemed that rumor had outpaced reality; none of this could be true.

But sorting out fact from fiction proved to be harder than anticipated, and we determined to get on-the-scene coverage in an attempt to get the story straight. But the A, B and C subways–the lines servicing the World Trade Center–were quickly bogging down. Giving up on the subway lines, I emerged at 8th Avenue and West 14th Street and walked over to Broadway. The first realization–a total non-sequitor–was that all of the Village eateries were empty–no patrons, no servers. Of course, they were all on the sidewalk, flooding into streets devoid of all vehicular traffic. Their hands cupped over their mouths, people stood wide-eyed, staring up at the site of one tower–Tower Two–engulfed in smoke, the other involved apparently only on the upper third. Smoke billowed from certain floors and what seemed small sporadic fires dotted its facade.

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