Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

More News from My Uncle-in-Law
I receieved this email from my Uncle-in-Law from NYC yesterday -- it expands upon the previous email as to what it must've been like to be in NYC during the World Trade Center disaster:

Since last year we have all been reading letters from Israel about how life 
goes on the midst of catastrophe. Well now it's our turn in New York. 
Thank you for all your messages. We are just incredibly sad and numb 
and struggling to get on with life. 

It's early Wednesday, another beautiful day like yesterday. The long cloud 
of smoke that passed over us here in Park Slope all day yesterday has 
shifted to the South. 

A layer of fine ash coats everything. And sometimes whole singed pages 
of books or printouts, float down from the sky -- law briefs, spread sheets, 
security specs, etc. there is an acrid smell in the air and rumors of asbestos. 
Everyone is riveted to the TV. We don't have cable so we can only get one 
channel dimly, because the others all broadcast from the World Trade Tower. 

Lisa and I went out early yesterday to vote in the primaries at a neighborhood 
elementary school, and as we left the polling place, a woman came screaming 
down the hall that a plane had crashed into the world trade center. We followed 
her into a small security office in the school, that had a TV and stood there with 
a cop and a few others watching in horror. The cop's radio was reporting on a lot 
of police activity as we watched. Then we saw another plane go by the building 
very close. I went 'Oh!,' thinking it had passed too close, and then there was a 
huge fireball -- you've seen that footage many times. We all screamed, some 
wept. A woman started crying, and Lisa went to comfort her. The woman said 
she worked in the WTC when the bomb went off in '93, and had just taken that 
day off. But friends had died and she has never set foot in that building again. 
But she has many friends who still work there. 

We walked home, stopping many times to talk to people with daughters and 
friends in the towers, and watched the smoke that was already beginning to waft 
over. When we got home I went up on the roof and saw the two buildings. Smoke 
poured out and I could see flames. It was what you saw on TV but it was 
incredible to see it full scale. After the buildings collapsed I went back up, but all 
I could see was smoke. Now there isn't as much smoke, but of course there is 
nothing there. I can see new jersey. It's unreal. Everyone keeps saying it's like a 
movie. 

No one went to work. We spent the day going in and out of neighbors houses, 
and them coming in and out of ours; standing on the stoop or the sidewalk, 
going to the corner to get cash and supplies -- earthquake procedures someone 
called it. Our upstairs tenant, Annette, who is a flight attendant for Delta 
identified so closely with the crews on the planes, knew the plane was American 
Airlines or United before the media announced it, because of the names of the 
airlines -- 'They don't even know Delta exists.' She also guessed that the planes 
hijacked were transcontinental flights because of the amount of fuel in them. and 
she said Boston was the perfect place to hijack from, both because of 
compromised security due to repairs going on at Logan and because it is a very 
short flight from Boston to NY, but enough to take over a plane. We wept 
sometimes and talked and just sat together in shock. I'm sure you did the same. 
The phones didn't work very well. We tried to call family and friends and find out 
about people we know who lived near or worked in the towers. We all had our 
wireless phones there and kept answering each other's calls. 

Late in the afternoon our congregation and a neighbor one gathered. About 100 
people came, some who had never been there before. It was awkward and 
tentative at first. Lisa led us in some songs and then the rabbis invited people to 
speak what they were feeling. It didn't work very well, deteriorated into thinly veiled 
disagreements about Israel, about whether we should be talking politics or just 
praying. So we said Kaddish, sang some more, and then there was a break and a 
second round for later comers that focused on song and prayer. There were people 
who had lost near ones in a hijacked plane, who had friends whose husbands were 
in the building and hadn't been heard from, children whose friends had dads and 
moms in the buildings, children who had witnessed everything from the windows of 
their schools. No one wanted to be alone. We brought several people home, and 
we all sort of sat together stunned, watching the TV.

Today the weather is perfect again. It should be cold and gray and drizzling. We are 
trying to figure out what to do, what we have to do, if we can get anywhere. Lisa has 
to go to her office in DUMBO (in Brooklyn, under Brooklyn Bridge). She could get 
there by subway, I think, but I just insisted that she take a bus instead. I'll probably 
go down to meet her later. I doubt I can get in to JASA in midtown, so I'll do some 
work at home, and keep the TV on. 

Thanks again for all your concern and good wishes and messages and attempts to 
call. We feel very lucky to be here in safe Park Slope with only some ash to deal with. 

Yesterday afternoon we also got a call from Erika's Father, who is in France. Turns out his wife, Verula, was in NYC at the time of the disaster, and in fact was staying in a hotel only 6 blocks or so away from the WTC. She called Josef several times in succession, initially after the first plane hit, then again when the second plane hit, and finally a further time when the buildings started to collapse. She is, thankfully, alright. She is, however, stuck in NYC -- in fact she apparently can't even leave Manhatten, as they've apparently closed off outgoing traffic according to her. In any event, she won't be flying back home to France anytime soon it seems.

I read an interesting comment from Jon Katz of Slashdot (whom I rarely agree with normally) late yesterday to the effect that while the traditional media has covered the large scale of the tragedy well, the Internet has effectively been capturing the more personal aspect of things.

Couldn't help myself but I also spent part of last night going over the engineering anlyses of why the buildings failed and eventually collapsed. I had thought that the WTC was designed to take an air-crash, especially after what had happened in the 1940s to the Empire State Building. They were, but as one architect pointed out, the planes in the 60s (when the WTC were designed) were significantly smaller and carried much less aviation fuel than the ones that slammed in the two WTC towers.