five years ago
Five years ago I was working in the Chicago Board of Trade. It was a rather ordinary Tuesday morning. I arrived at my desk early that day to get a jump start on some testing I was performing. Despite my lack of title, I was leading a Quality Assurance team at the time.
I can’t remember what time it was. It all happened so fast. Someone started yelling in the office. A plane had struck one of the twin towers. Our building was being evacuated.
My boss Tracy and I gathered our things and made our way out of the building and into the streets. It was chaos on the plaza next to the Board. Thousands of people were trying to get a cell signal, trying to make contact with whomever they could. Tracy couldn’t get in touch with her husband who worked across the street. I can clearly remember the wild look in her eyes.
We were scared.
Finally she found him and they ran off to their train station. As we parted, I crossed over the river with what seemed like a million people, all swarming like insects toward the train stations. I was numb, and in disbelief as I heard people saying it a plane hit the tower and it was on fire. A guy in a grey suit in front of me was telling his friend
“…the phone just went dead man. Click, and then nothing. Dead.”
At that time I was riding the Metra to work each day. I lived in Rogers Park, the last neighborhood on the North side of Chicago before Evanston. I was riding the train out of Ogilve station, across the river from the Civic Opera house.
The river of people I was swimming in made their way up and onto the platform and began to swarm into the trains. I’d never seen so many people in the train station. The trains looked like fat larvae, sucking up people as some sort of light snack.
I managed to squeeze in one of the trains and the doors shut immediately behind me. There was nowhere to go as I was pressed against the door. For what seemed like an eternity, the trains didn’t move. People were standing outside the doors, banging on them, demanding in loud screams to be let in.
Still numb, I tried to shut them out of my mind. Just as some woman was wildly screaming about death, the trains moved. I was on my way home. Nobody spoke on the train. There were more people that I’d ever seen on the train, yet it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
I arrived at my stop and was in my living room in just a few quick minutes. As I turned on the television, the second plane was hitting the tower. Live. On camera.
I’ll never, ever be able to get that image out of my head.
I slumped down on the couch and started to quietly cry. Over the next few hours I was glued to the television as I made contact with all my family to make sure everyone was ok. I’ve never had relatives in NYC, but since there was so much commotion in Chicago, I just needed to be sure everyone was ok. Thankfully, they were.