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WTC - After September 11th
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The World Trade Center - After September 11, 2001 - Page Two
Select any thumbnail image to see a larger
photo.
Photo:
www.spaceimaging.com
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You really can't get a good look at Ground Zero as an ordinary, non-VIP pedestrian in New York City. I didn't expect to. There are web sources for that, including great shots taken purportedly from 130 Liberty Street. They will give you a sense of the sheer magnitude of the disaster. So too will the various satellite images (see photo, left) and New York Fire Department photos (see photo, right).
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Photo: NYFD
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| What I really wanted, and needed, was some personal sense of it all. And that you can get, even from two blocks away, even from behind the barricades. Enough to bring tears to your eyes and a lump to your throat. Enough to make you breathe heavily and to sigh often. And what hits you first, and hardest, is the fact that there is still smoke rising from Ground Zero. That is something that will remain with me forever. After all this time, after all that's been done, after cold nights and cold rains and all the rubble that's been removed, something under there is still burning.
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Photo:
www.spaceimaging.com
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From the start, for some reason, it's been the constant smoke and fire that has gotten to me. It was dramatic at first (see photo left, September 12th) and although it let up little by little (see photo, right, September 15th), it didn't ever seem to stop. And when the wind would shift, the smell would be strong enough here in New Jersey to make you think something nearby was on fire.
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Photo:
www.spaceimaging.com
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Then there are the vertical supports -- those skeletal pieces of the building frames that feature so prominently in the photos of Ground Zero you see on television. They loom up even from the two-block-plus distance. On TV, they do look large and dramatic, but it isn't until you see them from the distance of the barricades that the real size and magnitude of it all starts to hit.
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You can also get a look at the skeleton of another building. I'm pretty sure it's what's left of WTC5, though I suppose it could be WTC7; I can't tell any more. What's left of it is dark in color (that may just be the charring). How it can possibly still be standing is beyond me. When I say I'm not sure what building it is, I mean that I had no frame of reference. I realize now how much I have always oriented myself in that area by the towers. Without them, I really didn't know where I was. And one building skeleton looks like another...
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