Tale from 7 years back
Laura wrote this to a friend in 2001:
Here’s the whole story (it’s kind of theraputic to tell): We felt the second impact and the first collapse in my building — I had gone out to look in Battery Park a little after 9am — after they evacuated us, some of us walked down into Battery Park — it was completely dark and there was ash and concrete dust everywhere — like a blizzard. I know that some people from my office went back upstairs to wait until the air cleared a little more. but a few of us walked down through the park and then up Water Street toward the Seaport, where there was a bar open, giving out water and first aid (which thank God we didn’t need although my eyes were pretty scratchy).
We kept walking north, then somewhere in Chinatown a city bus stopped and the driver just said, get on, I’m taking people up First Avenue, don’t bother to pay. So we rode the bus uptown, and my friend Laura Perez got off in the East Village, where she lives. I stayed on until 23rd St. and then walked to Andy’s office at 36th and Madison. I was completely covered in white dust. So I cleaned up there, and then we left the building around noon — I was surprised how seemingly normal everyone was acting. We tried to get some food in a deli next to the Empire State Bldg but as we were ordering one of the employees started panicking, so we walked east, and went to the Queen-Midtown tunnel, where the cops were lining up pedestrians and stopping drivers to ask them to take people into Queens, and this nice lady dropped us off somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and we flagged down an off-duty cab, which took us close to home, and we walked from there. And then I took a shower and we went to get burritos.
