Eyewitness to disaster

Christian Century, Sept 26, 2001

When the first aircraft hit New York's World Trade Center during the morning rush hour on Tuesday, September 11, young children were arriving at Trinity Wall Street's pre-school, staff were on the streets around the center, and Archbishop Rowan Williams of Wales was preparing for a videotaping with Trinity Television. Daniel P. Matthews, rector of Trinity Parish, and a group of colleagues were in a meeting in the parish's office tower three blocks from the WTC.

"We were on the 24th floor, which has a view of the World Trade Center, when we heard the sound, and looked up to see a ball of fire coming from one of the towers. A few minutes later, we saw the second plane hit, and again a ball of fire erupted," Matthews said. He was soon down in the building's lobby, reassuring shocked staffers as security staff sought guidance on the safest response.

Before the first blast, staff on the streets around Trinity heard what to some sounded like military jets carrying out a low flypast before hearing the blast. Within minutes, pieces of paper were raining from the sky onto the church, the churchyard and the surrounding streets.

In Trinity Television's studio a small group of shocked visitors gathered as Trinity's director of television, Bert Medley, asked Archbishop Williams to lead the group in prayer.

Gay Silver went to minister to the teachers and pupils at the preschool. Lyndon Harris, who heads the ministry at historic St. Paul's Chapel across the street from the World Trade Center, set out for the chapel to see how he could help there. Before he arrived, the second aircraft hit the center and he was forced to return to Trinity to avoid flying debris.

Stuart Hoke, Matthews's executive assistant, was among those in the church leading prayers and hymns for shocked passersby some time later when a tower at the WTC collapsed. The power was cut and much of the congregation fled screaming into Broadway. Trinity's office tower shuddered and dust began to penetrate the building down elevator shafts from the top.

Staff who tried to leave the building found the lobby filled with dust, and were forced to return to upper floors to breathe. Outside, the pall of dust that had settled over the financial district with the tower's collapse made it dark as night. Staff designated as fire wardens gathered at the preschool to evacuate the children to the basement. Other staff searched the building, looking for places which were both as low down in the building and as dust-free as possible. Once breathing masks had all been handed out, towels in the preschool were torn up and soaked in water for people to breathe through.

When the order to evacuate the office block came, Trinity staffers and preschool children filed out under the direction of security staff and fire wardens. They streamed down Greenwich Street at the back of the building, heading through the gloom and holding masks or towels to their faces, to the south end of the island of Manhattan. When they heard the sounds of another collapse from the World Trade Center, they dashed for cover in doorways and under alcoves.

--John Allen, communications director for Trinity Parish

Lonely city: These past days the church has been open. People have come flowing in bearing pictures of "the disappeared," sent by St. Vincent's Hospital two blocks away, where the chapel was overwhelmed and the need had become too taxing for a staff readying for the arrival of the victims--victims who never came in anything like the expected numbers.

They are people who claim they have no faith, whose faith is now in question, whose faith is all they have left, who haven't prayed in years but have found a voice for prayer nonetheless. They have stopped and waited, watched and listened, asking God questions that have no earthly answer and lifting up laments that heaven alone can bear. Some come in just to get away from the smell of the smoke and the burn of the smoke in their eyes. But the smoke is in the sanctuary too. There is no refuge from the reality of what has happened.

Five of our church family are missing. Our church secretary's husband was on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center's north tower, the first to be attacked. The nephew of our receptionist, a building engineer on the 45th floor, was described as someone "who would never leave his post in an emergency."

Another is a church-school teacher, the mother of two children. One is the father of a child in our nursery school. And there is the mother of a 14-year-old and a nine-year-old. The tragedy is not barely understood in knowing that more than 6,000 died, but in knowing that each one who died had a name, and were known by God.

I understand now Jeremiah's lament, "How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!"

--Jon Walton, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in New York

Language of terror: For a couple of hours on September 11 I, along with a lot of other people in southern Manhattan, had to face the real possibility of sudden and violent death as buildings collapsed and the streets filled with choking dust, fumes and falling debris. I remember the strong feeling, "Now I know just a little of what it is like for so many human beings, Israelis and Palestinians now, and Iraqis a few years ago."