9/11 Memorial Tour

I am still processing the 9/11 tour. My guide was Ed, a retired firefighter from Staten Island. We waited until 12:10 before we realized that I was going to be the only person for the noon tour. Ed took me to Firehouse 10 10 (10 engines, 10 ladders). These were the first-responders. There was a mural on the side of the firehouse in honor of the 400+ firefighters and cops who died that day. An older and crazed black guy was bellowing on the sidewalk about 9/11 conspiracies to passing tourists, while two PAs from the CBS show "Bull" were checking out a site. We crossed the street toward the abyss waterfall/fountains. The names of the deceased are printed on a metallic ring that encircles the waterfalls set on the site of the North and South towers. We went to the south tower waterfall first. You really can't stare down into it. It's so deep and massive that it seems to flow into a bottomless void. Most people don't know this, but there's stone shelf under the names. A river of water flows on this shelf and goes around the fountain. Ed said the idea behind the water was so that people could put their hands in the water, take them out, and put their hands across the etched names of their loved ones. It's supposed to be a visceral experience of sight, sound, and touch. I put my hands in the river, took them out and gently wiped them across two names as he told the story of these two people. I found myself crying. The ablution, the tactile feel of the water on metal, my fingers tracing the names, made me very present. An older white woman was standing next to us and saw our ritual. She put her hands in the river, smeared it across the names she had been staring at, and then she cried. After a moment she put her hands to her chest, nodded toward us, and went off. Ed said that on birthdays, a white rose is placed in the names of the deceased. We walked around the two waterfalls. Ed talked about the engineering of the towers, how the South tower was hit later but fell first b/c the plane was going at a higher speed and hit the building at a lower point. And then Ed dived into his own story. He was off work and on Staten Island that day. He saw the smoke billowing from the tower and had his son drive him to the Staten Island ferry. He just missed a ferry filled with Staten Island firefighters and cops who were headed toward Manhattan. He waited for what seemed like a long time. When his ferry arrived there were even more firefighters jostling to get on in order to rush into the chaos. The South tower collapsed while they were still on land. The North tower collapsed as the ferry was making its way across to Manhattan. On the boat, the firefighters organized themselves into teams so they could run out with their equipment toward the WTC. When they arrived at the Manhattan station it was flooded with office workers trying to flee to Staten Island as firefighters and cops were fighting through the crowds to rush toward the buildings. The smoke was so thick that none of the buses were running, so most of the firefighters went on foot. He thought he had accounted for everyone in his family, but Ed's wife reminded him that two of his firefighter nephews had also gone to WTC (were they possibly in the ferry Ed had just missed? Ed didn't speculate this, but I did.) There was no response from his nephews for six days after the attacks. Their remains were eventually found under 7 stories of rubble and debris. Ed said that he was shocked by how everyone rallied together. A firefighter from Mexico City drove all the way to NYC and begged him to do something, so Ed put him to work as crews began digging through the hundreds of feet of twisted metal and smoldering concrete. Ed took me to the names of his two nephews. We dipped our hands in the water and ran our palms over their names.