9/11 - 20 Years On: ‘There was this creeping realisation we were trapped in the city’

Gerry Harte says he may return to New York some day but if and when he does the memories of what happened the last time he was in the city are sure to come flooding back - not that they ever leave his consciousness for long.

Twenty years ago he and his wife - artist Noreen Walshe - paid a visit to the Big Apple and become embroiled in one of the most dramatic events in modern history. The date has since become infamous: Tuesday, 11th September 2001. 9/11.

The couple had travelled to the city the a few days before that. Noreen had held a art exhibition in the city that never sleeps and she and Gerry had returned to pack away the remaining paintings for shipment back home. They had booked a return flight to Ireland on that fateful Tuesday evening.

The morning of the 11th had started normally. Gerry and Noreen, who live near Garlow Cross, were in their hotel room beside Central Park close to Harlem, about a 30 minute walk from the Trade Centre. Then it kicked off. Everything went a little crazy. Otherworldly. Mad.

Watching TV in the hotel that morning Gerry, an accountant, found himself seeing and hearing things he could scarcely find believable. Events were unfolding just a mile or so up towards the other end of Manhattan. It was the strangest thing. He could see what was happening but he literally couldn't believe his own eyes.

"I said to Noreen come in, look at this, there's something happening. We could see the impact on the two towers. The TV commentators didn't know what was going on. I could see the first plane going into tower," recalls Gerry from the perspective of 20 years. Shortly after a second plane hit one of the towers.

"The biggest impact, when I look back on it now, and even when I was there, was the shock of finding yourself in such a situation. I saw it unfolding on TV, the two planes going in, all within a space of 25 minutes or so. To see that happening on TV, you're wondering what is going on? Then as the news started to filter through you're wondering: 'Are we in a warzone.'"

The uncertainty of it all was one of the worst aspects of the whole unfolding scenario for Gerry. With a lack of a clear picture of what was happening speculation filled the void. There was talk later of chemical warfare.

"I looked out the window of the hotel and all you could hear was sirens blaring and, of course, within another hour or so it was confirmed that two planes had been hijacked and flown into the tower. Our room was about 10 stories high, but we couldn't see the Trade Centre from where we were.

"As the afternoon went on there was this creeping realisation we were trapped in a city. That was the fear that was emerging, that and the uncertainty. The word was coming out New York was closed off, you couldn't get in or out."

One of the images indelibly seared into Gerry’s memory is that of a group of schoolchildren walking along the street. "It happened around 8.30 in the morning and the schools were open but obviously they had decided to let the kids go home. It was eerie, looking at the lines of kids walking along the streets.

"There was that fear, not knowing, the unknown. There was this eeriness and quietness. Normally walking along kids are playing, laughing. There was none of that. This was serious." There was no plumes of dust swirling around where the couple were but Gerry does recall a certain smell, a pungent smell, that prevailed around the streets later. He thinks it was probably asbestos.

There were various aspects of that trip to New York that were strange. Mysterious. Gerry wasn't originally going to make the trip. Noreen instead was going to go on her own. A few days before she flew out she visited a psychic, a fortune-teller.

"He basically said to Noreen there was going to be trouble and not to go on her own." Gerry took note and decided to accompany Noreen. He booked a ticket without much bother and packed his bag. "Thank God, when I look back, I did go because to be stuck there on your own wouldn't be nice at all." There was another twist. Around 24 hours before the planes hit the towers Noreen and Gerry were very close to the Trade Centre sorting out details about another exhibition. "The proposal was to bring a new exhibition back the following summer, we were about 100 yards from the Trade Centre, needless to say that exhibition never happened."

Gerry also tells the story of how the day before 9/11 he had spoken to this very affable shoeshine man who was based near the Trade Centre. When the towers collapsed Gerry thought of that man, fearing he may have become a victim. "Then about five months later RTE did a programme looking back on 9/11, they talked to people who survived. They interviewed this guy, the shoeshine man. That was a huge relief to see him because he was such a nice guy."

Noreen and Gerry haven’t been back to New York. If they do return the memories are sure to come flooding back.

Memories of the day when the world changed. Changed utterly.

‘I can still see the army trucks and the names of the missing’

NOREEN WALSHE wrote the following account of her experiences of 9/11 shortly after the planes crashed into the Twin Towers. She named the piece 'Ashes to Ashes'

A crocodile line of kindergarten children hurries its way across an open plain in Central Park. Two teachers, one of whom continues to glance behind anxiously, leads them away from the terror that is already marring the bright blue morning sky with rising plumes of smoke. What has been mere footage in the media for the past two hours or so, is now a visible presence rising above the skyline of Lower Manhattan, trailing out long insidious fingers of menace towards the rest of the city.

An elegant black woman pulls a reluctant small boy by the hand. Her high heels are impeding her speed.

Gerry and I have just ventured out of our hotel, nearby, in spite of growing rumours that New York may be in the throes of chemical warfare. It is about 11.00 a.m. on Tuesday the 11th of September, 2001 and we have been watching with horror the unfolding of events, down at the World Trade Centre.

In a massive suicide attack, involving two giant planes, the Twin Towers have collapsed and where there was a normal early morning kaleidoscope of life-ways and living patterns, there is now only a shattered mess of human carnage and a colossus of burning buildings. All illusions of security and sanity have been massacred.

One name is becoming an embedded motif in our consciousness; Osama Bin Laden, leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist group. We have never heard his name before but now we seem to be on terms and conditions of war with him.

What takes about an hour of destructive intent to destroy and devastate takes longer to absorb, if one can use such a facile term to describe the indescribable but two days after the horrendous event, we sit in Starbucks on 5th Avenue with fragments of our perceived images tumbling down lightly like the ashes of human bodies and building debris that fall on the shoulders and heads of the passersby, outside.

We have a copy of the latest edition of the New York magazine in front of us and the photograph that fills the cover is that of the body of Father Mychal Judge being carried from the smouldering ruins. He had been chaplain to the Fire Department and the City Police for many years and has now been named as the first victim, on a rescue mission into one of the doomed buildings.

We are so aware that we are virtual prisoners of terrorism and despite an inane urge to flee, either home to Ireland or to any of our friends in Canada, we are grounded in a zero balance of of emotion and panic. We are also nearly penniless as Gerry is unemployed, having lost his job, just the previous week and our mission to New York was intended to have been brief and business-like.

The Irish Arts Centre had hosted a show of my paintings for the month of August and we had travelled back to the Big Apple to dismantle the collection, pack and dispatch the remaining pieces within five days. With ten dollars remaining in our pockets, we were spending the last night in a hotel on Central Park before returning home to search for employment.

By some strange trick of serendipity, the previous evening, I was introduced to the manager of an eclectic men’s outfitters on Wall Street and we arranged to meet on the morning of the 10th September at 10.00 a.m. We began the day with breakfast in the basement of the World Trade Centre and we purchased two white ceramic angels in a Christmas Shop nearby in the building. Then we went to the appointed store, to look and see how the space allotted to the display of art would suit my work. By 11. 30 we had agreed a very exciting contract. I would hang an exhibition on the walls of Rochester Big and Tall from January to May 2002.

Feeling contented and fulfilled, we spent the remainder of the day on the meagre contents of our pockets, walking around and feeling rich in our dreams. Destiny, however, cancelled our return home and held us in the embrace of the sensory arms of trauma and aggression for a further two weeks.

I still see the moving vignettes of army trucks gliding by every day with the mortal remains of terrorism. I stand again in the gathering places like Lexington Avenue Fire Station and this and other areas are adorned with burning votives and the names of missing people.

Photos hang like Christmas decorations on pillars and walls, mesmerising the curious and hinting a statement of heroic resolution to the question WHY? The motif of the LOVED ONE seems to stitch the tears and anguish together in one broad blanket of grief and heartache.

I can still hear the bells of St. Patrick’s Cathedral chime out a death knell for all the souls who have gone behind the clouds. We have ceased to be tourists but instead have become two of the multi-voiced choir that sings silently in polyphonic lamentation, filling the streets and alley-ways of New York.

Fate relented finally and opened a passage home for us, a fortnight after the shadow of violence had passed over the city of New York.