NewsHour Special Reports: Terrorist Attack

U.S. Response

September 11
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Washington D.C.

Attack Investigation

New York

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Students react at NYU

By Erin Kandel, Age 18
New York, NY

Even in her morning grogginess, 19-year-old New York University sophomore Lauren Billings knew it was unusual for church bells to be ringing at 9:00 am on a Tuesday morning.

Yet on September 11th, the bells of St. Luke's Church were doing just that, blaring loudly and continuously, almost harmonizing with the swelling sirens of emergency vehicles tearing down Hudson Street toward the Financial District.

It was enough commotion to drive Lauren, and most other West Village residents, from warm covers to her apartment window.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing!" she recalled. "I couldn't believe a plane had hit the World Trade Center!"

Indeed, at 8:49 that morning, a commercial airliner, hijacked by unknown assailants, kamikazed into the south World Trade Center tower, leaving a gaping abyss of smoke and fire in the building's steel structure.

Moments later, after sleeping through the clamor of the first crash, Amanda Rowe, a student from Jacksonville, Florida, received a similarly rude awakening.

"The phone rang at 9:10 and when I picked it up, my mom was yelling 'Turn on CNN now! The World Trade Center got hit by planes!' "

By then, the Financial District disaster had worsened when a second commercial air jet crashed into the initially unharmed north tower, sending more flaming wreckage into the streets below.

By 9:30 a.m., the two terrorist attacks had certainly proven that September 11th would not be an average day for Manhattan-dwelling college students. From apartments, dorms, and classrooms, alerted teens flooded any street corner with a view of the blazing buildings. Most convened in startled conversation about what they had seen or heard, while others huddled close to radios blaring news reports or snapped pictures with their cameras, eager to capture the horrific moment in U.S. history.

"My first instinct was to grab my video camera," Billings remembered. Her Greenwich Street dorm offered a dramatic view of the smoldering buildings and of the increasing crowds of onlookers.

In general, the mood of the observers was of shocked disbelief. "It all seemed so surreal," mused Roger Chi, who viewed the attack from his Lafayette Street dorm, "and at that point, a lot of people still thought that it all could have been some kind of freak accident. We hadn't even heard about Washington yet."

But disbelief soon heightened into fear and panic when, at 9:58 am, the southern World Trade tower collapsed upon itself, followed by the northern tower moments later, leaving only a burst of gray dust and debris where two magnificent spectacles once stood.

Suddenly, awestruck students realized the magnitude of the attack. "I found myself just clinging to the girl standing next to me in the park," said 18-year-old Sarah Cheslawski, who was among a crowd of student onlookers in Washington Square Park when the second tower collapsed. "We didn't even know each other, but we were both so scared. I felt so helpless."

Feeling also powerless were the friends and families of New York City students who could not reach them do to jammed phones lines. "All my parents really knew was that I live downtown on Water Street," said Laura Garret, an NYU sophomore from Houston, Texas. "I knew they must have been so worried about me, but I couldn't get through to them to tell them I was ok."

As the hours wore on, many students overcame their initial feelings of powerlessness and offered to lend in a hand in any way they could to help assist those affected by the tragedy.

With classes cancelled, many devoted their day to standing in hot sun outside St. Vincent's hospital eager to donate blood. Students in safe areas uptown opened their doors to friends and fellow students whose downtown residence halls were closed due to the attacks.

"We should not be afraid to turn to one another for help," NYU President L. Jay Oliva and President-Elect John Sexton assured students in an Internet message, "and we should be quick to offer it to one another."

Now, as the initial panic subsides and phone lines free up, students are eager to resume their normal lifestyles. But breaking news reports and perpetually moaning sirens remind them that the terror lives on. "As much as my friends and I wish all this would just end, we can't just ignore people in need," 19-year-old Lauren McLaughlin stated. "It won't just go away without our help, and we're ready to do whatever we can."

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