Frightening Flyover
The picture says it all. I was standing on the pier in Jersey City, waiting for a ferry back to the World Financial Center when this fiasco occurred. People began to rush out of 30 Hudson and other buildings nearby. They were scared, many of the women with their heels in their hands so they could run if they had to. Everyone on their cell phones. The plane came over again, and then again. People were unnerved–some running, and others screaming. I was shaken by it, too. I, like many others out there on Monday, was downtown on September 11, 2001.
I’m pleased that President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg were so upset about the photo-op. But I still don’t understand how anyone in the position to approve such a maneuver could be so callous, so out of touch.
I rode the ferry back to my WFC office with a guy who said he was leaving work and not coming back that day. He worked on the 29th floor and said he thought the plane was headed directly for his building. He heard the police say that it was a drill, but didn’t believe that it was a military operation. Why should he have?
When the ferry arrived across the Hudson, many of the people in my office were still downstairs, on their cells, looking skyward. I walked past them to Columbus Bakery and grabbed a coffee. I rode the elevators back up to the 42nd Floor and sat at my desk. I took a sip of coffee and logged on. Among the e-mails in my inbox was one from my wife with the subject line: Miss you. I felt as if I had never missed her more than at that moment.
Jet Flyover Frightens New Yorkers
It was supposed to be a photo opportunity, a showcase of Air Force One alongside the sweep of New York City skyline.
But as the low-flying Boeing 747 speeded in the shadows of skyscrapers, trailed by two fighter jets, the sight instead awakened barely dormant fears of a terrorist attack, causing a momentary panic that sent workers pouring out of buildings on both sides of the Hudson River.
“I thought there was some kind of an attack,” said Paul Nadler, who sprinted down more than 20 flights of stairs after watching the plane from his office in Jersey City shortly after 10 a.m. “We ran like hell.”
Read more at www.nytimes.com
