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An
Eye-Witness Account of the World Trade Center Attacks
from Neil deGrasse Tyson
The
following is the text from an email Neil deGrasse Tyson sent to
his family and friends on 12 September 2001. Neil witnessed the
attacks on the twin towers from his apartment only six blocks
from the World Trade Center. He is Director of the Hayden Planetarium
of the American Museum of Natural History, which is located in
New York City. Neil also serves as The Planetary Society's Vice
President. He has given The Planetary Society permission to share
his eyewitness account with our members.
From: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Sent: 10AM, Wednesday, 12 September 2001
Subject: The Horror, The Horror
My entire family is safe.
We evacuated our lower-Manhattan residence at about noon and migrated
north on foot to Grand Central Terminal (about three miles) where
we took Metro North to the home of my parents in Westchester,
from where I write this message.
We live six blocks from the
World Trade Center, in view of both Towers, City Hall, and City
Hall Park. I happened to be working at home yesterday. My wife
went to work at 8:20AM. I left at the same time to vote in NYC's
Mayoral Primary. My 9-month old son was at home with our nanny.
My 5-year old daughter was attending her second day of Kindergarten
at PS-234, three blocks from World Trade Center. Lineup time in
the yard was 8:40AM in full view of WTC 1.
When the first plane hit
at 8:50, they evacuated the school without incident. I noticed
WTC 1 on fire in a high floor upon returning from voting, about
8:55AM. Large crowds of onlookers were gathering along the base
of City Hall Park as countless fire engines, police cars, and
ambulances screamed past.
I went home, grabbed my camcorder,
went out to the street and started filming. I consider myself
to be emotionally strong. What I bore witness to, however, was
especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will
not soon leave my mind.
1) I first see WTC 1 on fire
at a high floor. Not just flames coming out of some windows, but
four or five entire floors on fire with smoke penetrating floors
still higher.
Upsetting enough, but then...
2) Among the papers and melted
steel fragments fluttering to the ground, I notice that some debris
was falling distinctly differently. These weren't parts of the
building that were falling. These were people, jumping from the
windows, their bodies tumbling in rapid descent from the eightieth
floor. I noticed about ten such falls, morbidly capturing three
of them on tape.
Upsetting enough, but then...
3) A firey explosion burst
forth from a corner of WTC 2 about two thirds of the way up, perhaps
the 60th floor. The fireball created an intense radiative impulse
of heat from which we all had to turn our heads. From my vantage
point, I could not see the plane that caused it, which hit 180
degrees on the other side of the building. Nor did I know at the
time that a plane caused it. I first thought it was a bomb, but
the explosion was not accompanied by the tell-tale acoustic Shockwave
that rattles windows. This was simply a low frequency rumble.
As it burst from the building's
corner, the fireball was so large that it extended all the way
across to WTC 1. The fact the building's corner exploded tells
me that the ignited jet fuel got focused by the sides of the floor
into which the second plane flew, meeting at the corner with increased
explosive pressure. The flames were accompanied by countless thousands
of sheets of paper that burst forth, fluttering to the ground
as though every filing cabinet on multiple floors was emptied.
The fact that the second
tower was now on fire made it clear to us all on the street that
the first fire was no accident and that the WTC complex was under
terrorist attack. Morbidly, I have the explosion on tape and the
sounds from the horrified crowd surrounding me. At this point
I stopped filming, and went back inside my apartment.
Upsetting enough, but then...
4) As more and more and more
and more and more emergency vehicles descended on the World Trade
Center, I hear a second explosion in WTC 2, then a loud, low-frequency
rumble that precipitates the unthinkable -- a collapse of all
the floors above the point of explosion. First the top surface,
containing the helipad, tips sideways in full view. Then the upper
floors fall straight down in a demolition-style implosion, taking
all lower floors with it, even those below the point of the explosion.
A dense, thick dust cloud rises up in its place, which rapidly
pours through the warren of streets that cross lower Manhattan.
I close all our windows and
blinds. As the dust cloud engulfs my building, an eerie darkness
surrounded us -- the kind of darkness you experience before a
severe thunderstorm. I look out the window and can see no more
than about 12 inches away.
Upsetting enough, but then...
5) Outside my window, after
about 15 minutes, visibility grows to about 100-yards, and I notice
about an inch white dust everywhere outside my window. That's
when I realize that every single rescue vehicle that had parked
itself at the base off the World Trade Center must now be buried
under 110 collapsed floors of tangled debris, and multiple feet
of dust. This collapse took out the entire first round of rescue
efforts including what were surely hundreds of police officers,
firefighters, and medics.
As visibility increased and
I could now see the blue sky, there was blue sky where WTC 2 used
to be.
Upsetting enough, but then...
6) I decide it's time to get
my daughter, who was taken by the parents of a friend of hers
to a small office building, six blocks farther from the WTC than
my apartment. As I dress for survival: boots, flashlight, wet
towels, swimming goggles, bicycle helmet, gloves, I hear another
explosion followed by a now all-too familiar rumble that signaled
the collapse of WTC 1, the first of the two towers to have been
hit. I saw the iconic antenna on this building descend straight
down in an implosion twinning the first.
This dust cloud was darker,
thicker and faster-moving than the first. When this round of dust
reached my apartment, fifteen seconds after collapse, the sky
turned dark as night, with visibility of no more than about a
centimeter. It was getting harder to breathe in the apartment,
but we were stable.
At this point I offer no hope
of survival for any of the rescue personnel who were on the scene.
Upsetting enough, but then...
7) The cloud settles once
again, now leaving a total of about three inches of dust outside
my window. Another dark cloud of smoke now occupies the area where
two 110-story buildings once stood. This cloud, however, was not
the settling kind. It was smoke from ground-level fires. At this
time the air in the apartment is getting harder and harder to
breathe and it becomes clear that we should evacuate -- especially
with the likelihood of underground gas leaks. I load up my largest
backpack with survival items, put my son in our most nimble stroller
and leave with our nanny, who then walks across the Brooklyn Bridge
toward her home.
I go to where my daughter
was held, which was upwind from all debris on a quiet street.
She is in good spirits, but clearly upset. I have a crayon drawing
of hers, sketched while waiting for me to arrive, which shows
the Twin Towers with smoke and fire coming from them, as only
a 5-year old could draw. "Daddy, why do you think the pilot drove
his plane into the World Trade Center?" "Daddy, I wish this was
all just a dream" "Daddy, if we can't return home tonight because
of all the smoke, will my stuffed animals be okay?"
Upsetting enough, but then...
8) From the calm of an upholstered
couch in the office where my daughter was kept, with my son under
one arm and my daughter under the other, I realize that, fully
loaded, each tower off the WTC holds 10,000 people. From what
I witnessed, I have no reason to believe that any of them survived.
In fact, I would not be surprised if the death toll reached 25-30,000.
Beneath the Towers is an entire universe of six subterraneous
levels containing scores of subway platforms, plus a hundred or
so shops and restaurants. The Towers simply collapsed into this
hole -- a hole large enough to have supplied the landfill for
the World Financial Center across the West Side highway from the
World Trade Center.
Upsetting enough, but then...
9) I realize that if the death
toll is as high as I suspect, this incident is much, much worse
than Pearl Harbor, where several thousand people died. It's more
spectacularly tragic than the Titanic, the Hindenberg, Oklahoma
City, car bombs, and airplane hijackings. The number of deaths
in one four-hour period will be nearly half of the American death
toll in all of Vietnam. I reconnected with my wife by 4PM, meeting
her just north of Union Square Park, before we hiked another mile
north to Grand Central Terminal for our ride to Westchester, above
New York City. I will never be the same after yesterday, in ways
that I cannot foresee. I suppose that my generation now joins
the ranks of those who lived through unspeakable horrors and survived
to tell about it. How naive I was to believe that the world is
fundamentally different from that of our ancestors, whose lives
were changed by bearing witness to the 20th century's vilest acts
of war.
Peace to you all
Neil deGrasse Tyson
New York City
Responses
to the Attacks on September 11, 2001
Show You Care - by Kathryn Sullivan
A Letter to The Planetary Society - by
Konstantin M. Pichkhadze
Excerpts from A Pale Blue Dot -
by Carl Sagan.
World
Watch - by Dr. Louis Friedman
 Site
Map
Copyright (c) 2001 The Planetary Society. All rights reserved.
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