EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY: ‘We thought they might start dropping bombs on us

Tim Saccenti, a 1991 graduate of South Brunswick High School was on his way to work in Manhattan during the events of Sept. 11. Here is his story

By: Tim Saccenti
   Editors note: Tim Saccenti graduated from South Brunswick High School in 1991. He has worked in New York City as a photographer for the past six years and currently lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

   Like many of us, he watched last week’s tragic events unfold on television. But he was only several blocks away from the World Trade Center and left his building just before the first of two buildings crumbled. Until the first of the Twin Towers crumbled, he expected to go to work that morning, even with the buildings on fire.

   Here is what he saw while on his way to work, as told to News Editor John Saccenti.

West 15th Street, 6th Avenue

   "I was leaving the studio, at West 15th Street and 6th Avenue. I had stayed overnight there. (with a friend, Mal Torrance).
   "Mal looked out of the window and he saw dozens of people gathered on the street, staring downtown, on every corner; looking shocked. So we turned on the TV to News Channel 1 and one of the Twin Towers, it said, was on fire, hit by an airplane.
   "Mal rushed downstairs with a camera, on his way to work, while I continued to watch the news. As I was watching, I heard a loud scream from outside, from a group of people at a bank. And, I looked back at the TV and there was a huge explosion on the other tower.
   "At this point, I had to go to work. So I went downstairs to the street. If you’re down on the street, and look downtown, you can see the Twin Towers from 6th Avenue. When you look down the street you see all the buildings, and in the middle of all the buildings is the Twin Towers all the time, so you can see a complete view of the tower. I’m about a mile away at this point.
   Seeing it with my own eyes, it became a very different situation.
   "People were just, kind of, walking around, shocked sort of shocked that the Twin Towers are on fire. No one knows it was a plane. People were saying ‘Oh my God, the towers are on fire. The Twin Towers are on fire.’ "
14th Street

   "When I got below 14th street, all the cars were stopped. People were out of their cars, traffic was getting denser and denser and all the cars were kind of locked together.
   "People were standing. All the cars, all the little bodegas, restaurants shops and all the cars had their radios on really loud. They were all stopped in the street. Their doors were open. People who were taxi drivers were on top of their cabs — all looking downtown at the Twin Towers. All you could here were radio announcers and sirens announcers and police sirens and the crackle of police radios.
   "People were screaming, as I got closer and closer, like to the Tribeca area, there are all these Rastafarians on the street. They’re out there with video cameras and preaching about how its the end of the world and this is all fire in the sky from God.
   "Now there are tons of people on tops of their cars. So, I get to as far as I can go and I’m snapping pictures along the way and I start to notice, I’m looking at this big hole in the building and I get closer and closer and I can see all these people in the hole. And I get closer and I can see people hanging out the windows.
   I’m really close downtown and it’s all the people who got evacuated from the building and all the people downtown, everyone’s out on the street or hanging out their windows or their on the roof tops. They were moving, and crying. It’s complete chaos.
   "And then I see, it looks like little people, dropping off the building. At first it looks like bits of debris just coming from the building. Then you realize that this stuff falling out of the sky isn’t debris, it’s people jumping out of the windows. People jumping out of the big hole that’s on fire.
   "Watching people jump out of the building is, unfortunately, something I’m never going to forget."
Chambers and Church

   "Right when I get down as far as I could here, I can’t go any further, a cop says ‘listen, you people don’t want to be here.’
   "Right when he said that there’s a big explosion in tower that the second plan hit. And I see this building start to crumble and all of a sudden all the sky around has this little sparkly stuff. There were shiny, sparkly bits in the air. All the windows of the building popped out and into shimmery, shiny pieces. Then they popped out more. It must have been pieces of the outside of the building, tiny bits flying everywhere.
   "Then it just turned into kind of a mushroom at the top. Then it fell down.
   "Right when it was falling down, a subway pulled up I guess the Chambers Street subway, and people just started to run out
   "The whole crowd that I was with just started going crazy and crying and pushing each other down and climbing over cars to get away.
   "Because as the building fell down, there was a big white wall down the street and we realized the wall was all the debris coming towards us. At first it looked like it was far away, but I was just six blocks away.
   "Then I started running, and as I was running was passing people who were frozen, crying and screaming that the building was falling down. I ran to Broom Street, stopped, turned around, took some more pictures, then the other started to fall down.
   "At this point people started running around the street screaming that they got the Pentagon, that they got the Whitehouse. That there were terrorists. People were screaming all kinds of things. There were terrorists and bad things going on.
   "We thought they might start dropping bombs on us, that on every corner there was going to be a guy with an AK-47 mowing people down. Every where you looked there were people staring at the street go, crying and screaming, dragging kids out of school, buying water, buying supplies, talking that we’re at war. There was a lot of panic in the street."
   "At this point, decided to go home."
Aftermath

   "Basically, I got back to the office/studio, and just started trying to call mom and dad to tell them I’m OK. I was calling and calling and calling, but the phones didn’t work. Our friends were evacuated and we finally got in touch with everyone and were e-mailing people we know around the country. Went back, probably 3 o’clock.
   "We went back just to see if it was real, because it was so unbelievable, and to say goodbye and that kind of helped. The next few days everyone just kind of stayed together. We kept going back to the area, but it was cut off from traffic and people. It was surreal going to 6th Avenue without worrying about getting hit by traffic.
   "We used to use towers to orient ourselves, but can’t do that any more.
   "We’ve been going around to our friends businesses. We kind of gathered with our friends in different areas, went to our friends bar to make sure he had some business and to our friends store and bought some clothes. We heard everyone’s story and showed the pictures.
   "We decided collectively and unconsciously to not let the way we do things change. None of our friends left the city, everyone felt like we should stay and have solidarity.
   "Today (Monday) we went back to work."