Jimmy Breslin: Suddenly, a War at Home

Jimmy Breslin

September 12, 2001

Always, all our wars were somewhere else. The one this time is here.

Suddenly yesterday morning, in the smoke that covered the sun, and in the flames coming in red-orange tongues between the silvery panels of the high floors of the building, that is over a street of people who are looking up at the smoke and fire and sound a loud moan. They look at the building top as they start running away.

The windows of the building do not open and the stairwells inside the building have no effect on smoke except to let it rise at an extraordinary speed.

There is a rumble that shakes the sky and the street. Now there is screaming. Suddenly, the top of the World Trade Center south tower blows up. Twenty stories, 30 stories. Maybe thousands died. The top of the tower blows up in fire and thick smoke. The top of the tower collapses into the smoke.

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Debris comes out of the black smoke and is hanging in the air for an instant. Silvery pieces of the side of the building. Glass in shards. Then everything comes down and hits the street and starts flying like bullets you can see.

The World Trade Center Tower Two is no more.

The cops and firefighters who are closest to the building are running. The people on the street are running.

"Run!"

"Run!"

Now this crowded street runs for their lives from black smoke carrying debris that rolls up the street after them.

What is the street? Liberty Street, probably. Who knows names right now. The street is on the block with the World Trade Center Tower Two. Forty stories of the building turn into smoke in everybody's face.

The people run. They spin into the doors of any open shop. "Get out, I'm closed. I'm closed. I'm closed," one shopkeeper yells. His assistant is reaching for the overhead aluminum grating.

"Smoke!" somebody screams, trying to get into a shop.

"No, no," the shopkeeper says.

Everywhere cops are waving their arms. Keep moving, run, run.

Jim O'Neill, a firefighter, stands around the corner. He gets out. He just does get out of the building.

"We were on a run," he says. "We went right away. There were dead bodies in the lobby. We got to the 20th floor. There was another explosion. The chief said, 'Out.' We're out three minutes. It went down."

His voice drops. "I have one grown daughter. She's in college in Baltimore." He cries and rubs his eyes.

"I love her."

A woman is down on the street with a small circle of people trying to help.