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I was quite moved by Frank Kehl's letter. This is indeed an enormous
tragedy.

I live in the New York University Housing on 100 Bleecker Street on the 27th
Floor looking south. I am a professor of linguistics. I have an unobstructed
view from New Jersey to Brooklyn, and watch planes land at Newark and
Kennedy. If the pilot had missed the world trade center, he would have been
in my living room.

        I heard the boom, and it knocked over a lamp near my window. Schrapnel hit
my window. I thought a plane had broken the sonic barrier and knocked the
antenna off the roof. I looked over and saw the hole in the WTC and saw the
flames. While we watched the burning building (some friends, students,
faculty, etc. came by) the second plane hit. We did not see the plane and
throught it was an explosion.

        The fire spread lower and lower through the WTC building, probably as the
jet fuel ran out. Flames came out of every window in both buildings on all
sides. The planes hit one building about  1/3 way from the top, the other
about 1/4 way from the top. Descent for those above in the WTC was
impossible since all floors near the impact were aflame.

        People went to the roof and, after 20 minutes or so or increasing heat,
jumped off - frequently in pairs holding hands.

        My Thayer School engineering training came back, and I realized that with
that intensity of heat in a building in which the steel girders were
insulated with asbestos, it had to collapse within one hour. I called the
fire department, police, etc. and told them the building was guaranteed to
collapse. I was told that 911 was only for emergencies, and I should call
somewhere else.

        After about 40 minutes, as I saw (I have telescopes, binoculars, etc.) the
top segment of the building listing about 3 degrees, I left my apartment and
went out to walk in the street. Buidlings collapse if they list more than 3
degrees. As I walked down Bleecker Street, people gasped as the building
collapsed. Like Lord Jim, my imagination surpasses any reality. I should
have stayed and watched. I did for the second tower.

        I bought some milk, water, beans, etc. and went back to the apartment. We
watched the second building, and I noticed it was more than 3 degrees, but
as the telescope revealed, that was because the beams were buckling on both
sides. A building like the WTC does not 'break off in the middle' and fall
like a tree. Rather, each floor can support a certain amount of weight, and
the floors above are supported by the steel girders. If a top floor
collapses onto a lower floor, it must collapse onto the floor below, etc.,
etc., etc. And the building implodes. All of the people that were in the WTC
building are squished into a sort of accordian structure between floors
constructed of reinforced concrete.

        As each building imploded, an immense amount of burning kerosene, moulten
aluminum, white hot steel, cement heated into dust, and sundry smouldering
flammables spread out in an inverted mushroom cloud - inverted in that it
spread along the earth, and unlike an atom bomb did not spread out above.

        As each building imploded, this burning cloud of asbestos laden dust spread
out from river to river and as high as the original erect World Trade
Centers. I imagine that most of the deaths of the rescue workers came from
being enveloped in this thousand degree dust cloud. On one ambulance caught
up in the cloud, all of the paint was burned off of one side, according to
one radio report.

        I have never in my English speaking life owned a television set. The goal
of the media is to make the world palatable, not comprehensible. I only own
a TV in France or Germany, mainly to learn the language. I even watch French
and German soap operas to learn basic 'hello, good-bye' type stuff, and of
course, the curse words and their tidy use in proper social situations.
English speaking TV is abominable. The only thing worth watching are the
commercials, and even those are not very good.

        My friends who have watched the WTC collpase on TV do not grasp the
Hiroshima-like horror.

I heeded the call for blood, and began to walk towards the hospital, about a
distance from Tuck/THayer school to the Dartmouth Gym. Freshly showered and
in a crisp new white pressed buttondown shirt, I arrive at 6th avenue and
Houston Street, where I see hundreds of men and women of all ages walking
towards the hospital. Badly burned, clothes torn and shredded, bleeding,
some with (I am not a doctor) apparently broken or dislocated limbs, they
are dragging themselves towards the hospital. One 17-19 year old boy I tried
to help did not seem to even know that I was trying to help him, or perhaps
even, that I was there. He was waving his arms trying to keep people away.
>From his jargon, I think he had been trampled in a stairway.

        Crisply and cleanly shirted I walked faster than most towards the hospital.
Different than I expected. They had the 'sick' people on the sidewalk, and
the 'sicker' people were steered off towards something else outside. Only
the 'sickest' people got in. Some advice: If you are ever in such a
situation, no matter what your ailment is (broken ribs, crushed whatever) be
certain to cut your forehead (with a found shard perhaps) and bleed all over
your head and shirt. This will guarantee you get inside the hospital.

        There were about 500 people ahead of me donating blood, and they parsed the
line. They seemed to want O type, which isn't me. So I will go back
tomorrow.

        Many of the severely injured people at the hospital seemed to be NYC
officials (fire, police, etc.) that were trapped in the collapse of the
World Trade Center. The blazing hot inverted mushroom cloud burned off their
clothes and damaged their lungs and eyes.

        Back home, I looked towards Brooklyn  and saw thousands and thousands of
people on each of the major bridges (Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg)
walking out of Manhattan. It was like a hundred marathons, except that
everyone was walking slowly. No one seemed to be carrying anything (remember
I have an astronomical telescope that can see Jupiter's moons and canyons on
the moon). They left Manhattan empty handed, at most, helping some friend to
leave. In my life I have never seen anything as moving as this immense
exodus of bobbing human heads (they were shoulder to shoulder, back to
belly) slowly groping their way across the bridges. It appeared that noone
had a laptop.

        I was feeding my daughter supper when the third building collapsed (only 50
stories or so). It seems to be (or was) a telephone central, since when it
went down my building fire alarm went off, my lights flickred, and my
internet connection died.

        After supper, I walked around and saw no more burned, bleeding, crippled
people dragging themselves towards the overloaded St. Vincent's Hospital.
Only young couples out on hot dates, each on a cell phone talking to someone
they presumbly would rather be out with.

        So. What moved me to write this letter. Well, my intention was tomorrow to
jump in my car with my daughters and go to our farm in New Jersey to avoid
the mind boggling amount of asbestos that must be floating in the air. (At
one time in the 70's - having studied with Noam Chomsky - I was a protestor
of sorts, and vigorously protested the spraying of asbestos as fireproofing
on steel girder buildings. The WTC were asbestos insulated.) If you live in
NYC, particularly Brooklyn where all the smoke went, buy a mask. Avoid the
'gray dust'.

        But now I might not be able to leave. On Houston Street, 27 floors below my
window, I see enormous numbers of trucks (300?) lined up blocking my
driveway. They are from out of state (Conn., NJ, etc.), the National Guard,
and various carting companies. Many of the trucks are empty. Some are huge -
like they could carry a tank - but empty. A small number of beat up old
trucks are full of lumber, or I thought they were. I went down to ask when
the street would be open so I could get my hot 1989 Volvo Station Wagon out
of the driveway to speed my family towards the supernatural ecstacy of
rurual New Jersey. Anytime, it turns out. All streets are blocked below 14th
street, but residents can get a pass to escape.

        I asked what they were going to build with the lumber I saw neatly stacked
in the beat up old trucks. After a bit of a confused discussions (I
contributing all the confusion since I saw the trucks from my professorial
ivory tower), it turned out that the trucks do not have lumber, they have
small, narrow pine coffins into which one apparently places the body bags.
Well, the joke was on me.

        People who know where I live have been calling me all night.

        My feeling is that the TV has made the situation politically palatable so
it can fall into the mainstream database and be manipulated into endlessly
repeated segments of Hollywood titbits - 15 second plane crashes, 13 second
building collapses, etc. My guess is that the same TV newscasters that
present this unspeakable situation will be back in another year telling us
that there is a plan to evacuate New York City in eight hours if the Hudson
River Nuclear Power Plant blows up. Or that a nuclear war isn't really that
bad if you prepare for it beforehand and stick your head between your legs
at the moment of nuclear detonation.

        For me, there were many moving experiences. I was impressed that the blood
donation center had more donators than it could handle. The line contained
people of all walks of life, all ages, races, religions, genders, and social
classes. There were even tourists in the line. I will never forget the tens
of thousands of bobbing heads stumbling across the East River bridges. Or,
the dazzled tattered bleeding blackened crowd walking north from the scene
up Broaday, Green, Mercer, 6th Avenue... - that was moving.

        But above and beyond everything, the one thing I will never forget to my
dying day, is the view of the people on the roof and higher floors of the
World Trade Center lined up in the windows and on railings. You cannot see
their expressions, but it is amazing what a 40 power telescrope reveals.
They often huddled, probably talked about their chances, and sometimes went
back into the building, or maybe, just laid on the floor. But then, some
went to the edge, and jumped.

        Some jumped in pairs, holding hands. I doubt if they were married or
lovers. I think it was just two people, alone, desparate, black, white,
oriental,who cares - the telescope didn't allow me to distinguish age and
race. They would just pair up and jump.

        I have thought all day about this. If I were on the roof, and I saw flames
on all sides of the building, I would almost certainly jump rather than fry.
And if I saw another trembling human alongside of me, I would be much
happier holding their hand, and jumping as a pair. Somehow to jump as half
of a pair, even if the other half is an ad hoc recent acquaintance, seems to
me an infinitely more human way to pass on to the next step, than to take
the next step alone.