Note: This informal diary by Ed Silberfarb, a resident of New York City, began in response to an email message he received from his son Jacob on Tuesday, September 11, following the attack on the World Trade Center.

Day One

Hey,

All circuts are down to New York. If you get this, email back ASAP.

Jake

Hello Jake-

Yeah, we're okay. Today was the primary election. Mom and I were both out at 6 a.m. working the polls. I was doing it for money as a paid election worker assigned to the polls at P.S. 75. Mom was a volunteer campaign worker drumming up support for your favorite CFD candidates. Both of us were on the Upper West Side so we never got near Ground Zero. I went out for an early lunch (about 10 AM, watched the horror show on television briefly, then returned to the polling site only to learn that the election was suspended. The whole City is shut down. No subways, no buses, no traffic in or out through bridges and tunnels, airports shut down. On the north-south aves. vast numbers of people hiking up from lower Manhattan. No word yet on casualties, but it's got to be awful. That's all for now.

Here's an afternoon update. Sharon returned after trying to take her mother to vote. By then the election was cancelled. My day as a poll worker ended by 11 a.m., but I'm told I'll be paid for a full day. I may have earned it, though, because we had to close up the machines amidst the chaos and uncertainty and with people, including myself, who didn't know what we were doing. I have had CNN on all afternoon on one tv set, Channel 5 on another and WCBS news on the radio.

I went up to the roof of our building, but could see only a vast billow of smoke rising from Lower Manhattan. Then I went down to Riverside Park where there was an eerie calm overall. The River was peaceful. The Henry Hudson Parkway, which borders the Park, was almost empty. No traffic southbound except police cars, and very few private cars northbound. Several restaurants in the neighborhood were closed because their staff couldn't get to work. The neighborhood supermarket was jammed. People lining up from the cash registers into the grocery aisles. Apparently they thought the Great Famine was upon us with no trucks being able to make deliveries.

Subways and buses resumed running by mid-afternoon and traffic was leaving the City via bridges and tunnels, but most people heading for Jersey from Lower Manhattan did so by ferry.

There have been all sorts of scary "might have happened" stories. Daniel McGrail, whom Jake and Joe know, works for a broker in the World Trade Center. When he heard the first explosion, his boss said to stay in the building, thinking that might be safer than a panicky exit. But instead, Daniel said "I'm outta here," and he left before the building came down. A Hadassah friend of Sharon's works in a building across the street from the WTC. She was late for work and was stuck in the subway two-and-a-half hours en route to her office. And of course today's election kept me out of the World Trade Center where I would have been this morning to get half-price theater tickets for Sharon's birthday tomorrow.

This will be it for the night. You probably know as much about the big picture by now as I do, but here are some of the less prominent happenings. A friend of ours visited a neighborhood firehouse and was told that all the firefighters from that engine company who went into the World Trade Center, six of them, "were lost." And the Mayor said the Chief of the Fire Department was also. There were apparently many cops and firemen killed, but no one yet is saying how many. Even the City's Medical Examiner was injured. It was premature to say the river tunnels were open. They remained closed until this evening, and even now only outbound traffic was allowed. No one except emergency people will be allowed south of Canal Street tomorrow, and everyone else is asked to stay home. One emergency throughout has been a need for blood donations, and people have been flocking to the hospitals to contribute. And hospitals in Jersey as well as New York have been receiving the injured. Several synagogues will be holding special prayer services tomorrow. Telephone circuits still seem to be out in many areas. Calls we try to make outside the City don't go through. The more we see and hear of this, the more sickening it becomes. It's not just steel and concrete and the big gap in the beautiful Manhattan skyline, but the individual tragedies are becoming more real.

Day Two

As the second day ends, only cliches seem to describe what's going on. I'll say only that I was 11 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and nothing since, until now, fits President Roosevelt's "a day that will live in infamy."

Today was Sharon's birthday, but fortunately we had not planned a party or even a small get-together, which we would have had to cancel. We went out to brunch and on the way we visited two of the neighborhood fire houses and the local police precinct. That police station house on West 82nd St lost only one cop, but they seemed remarkably hopeful that he might surface from under the debris. In fact, two cops last night were discovered buried, but alive. The guess now is that about 30 cops city-wide have died. The engine company on West 83rd lost one fireman, but they too are hopeful. In the meantime, people put flowers at the doorway, and someone put a picture of the missing fireman with children whose class he had visited. Then came the ladder company on West 77th Street which lost an entire team, six firefighters including a lieutenant. The mood was grim, to say the least. One of the firefighters we met there was wearing a t-shirt indicating that this year was the 100th anniversary of that unit. It's believed that about 200 fireman have been killed, an incomprehensible number. Each year a few fireman may die on duty in the City. How many years would it normally take to lose 200? And the victims include the Department brass as well: the First Deputy Commissioner, the Chief of the Department, at least one, probably more, battalion chief, and the Fire Department Chaplain, a priest who was much beloved by people of all faiths.

The streets on the Upper West Side today were like an early Sunday morning, hardly any traffic, but the brunch restaurant was jammed. People weren't going to work. After brunch we headed for the nearby New York Historical Society, but found it closed, and realized all the museums in the City were closed, as was Linclon Center, which had barrier gates across the entire front of the plaza. Nobody, not even pedestrians other than emergency workers are allowed below 14th St. unless they can prove they live in Greenwhich Village or the Lower East Side. People who live in Battery Park City, in the immediate area of the World Trade Center, were evacuated to New Jersey where, I'm told, they're staying in school gymnasiums. In the evening we experienced a somewhat subtle scare. There was a prominent smell of acrid smoke in the air. The wind had shifted and the smoke and dust from Lower Manhattan had reached us on 90th Street, at least five miles away.

We ended the day at a gathering in our local synagogue where people sang psalms and shared their experiences. One member of the congregation, whose wife worked in the World Trade Center, received a phone call from her after the first explosion, telling him that she was all right. He has not seen or heard from her since.

Day Three

Tried today to resume some normalcy, but in doing so felt guilty because of all the suffering around town. Went to a super-fancy restaurant for lunch, which we had scheduled two weeks ago but World Trade Center talk predominated at our table and the one next to us. Rode a bus uptown, and a very attractive young woman came aboard, wearing levis, a safety vest over her blouse, a hard hat, and a pair of protective gloves in her back pocket. An American flag was stitched on the back of her vest. She looked like one of the volunteer workers from the demolition site, except that she wasn't covered with dust. Maybe she had a chance to clean up. Sharon wanted to take a moment to thank her for whatever she had been doing down there, but didn't have a chance because we reached our stop.

Walked over to Ladder Company 25, the firehouse on West 77th St. that lost six firefighters. There was no word that any had been found. Scores of flower bouquets were piled in front of the building. Photographs of the six were displayed amidst the flowers. The missing Lieutenant had just been promoted a few months ago. There were prayers, poems and letters, including a couple from school children. The surviving firemen there were able to carry on conversation with sympathetic visitors, which must have taken strength, and they were saying goodbye and thanking firemen from out-of-town who had come in to help with the rescue effort. Earlier in the day we had heard that several firemen had been found and rescued, but we later learned that they were rescue workers themselves who had fallen into the rubble. Stories abound and you don't know what to believe. By the end of the day we heard that a cop, who with several others was trapped and buried under a car, was able to call his wife on his cell phone.

The estimate of firemen presumed dead was revised upward, well over 200, and police more than 50. Along with these dreadful numbers, I was reminded that the headquarters of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the World Trade Center, was in one of the buildings. And sure enough, the Director of the Port Authority, one of the most powerful public officials in the region, was among the missing.

I'm the assistant editor of the Columbia Journalism School's Alumni Journal, and this weekend the Fall issue of the publication is put to bed. We wanted to include a story that linked at least one of our alumni to the biggest news event since World War II. So I selected John McWethy, ABC' reporter covering the Pentagon. He was at that burning building throughout that first day. But, as correspondents discover in many war zones, communication failures thwart their best efforts. Throughout the evening I was not able to place a single phone call anywhere outside the City. By nighttime, there was one comforting announcement for people who keep their cars on the street in New York. Because of the World Trade Center calamity, alternate side parking regulations would be suspended again tomorrow.

Week's End

Some observations on small situations: Went to the bank a few days ago to deposit a check. Was told the deposit would be accepted but not processed that day, or even the next. Went to a savings bank the next day to withdraw some money. A line of about 50 people reached the door. A sign said computers were down, but some transactions, including withdrawals, could take place.

Drove to Queens on Friday. Tried to cross Manhattan on 96th Street, but two east side blocks were closed by police. This is the location of the City's largest Moslem mosque. Then I realized that my neighborhood photo processing and photo copying shop, which is run by Arabs, was closed after the attack. Continued out to Queens via the Triborough Bridge and the Grand Central Parkway, normally very heavy traffic on a Friday afternoon, but very little that day. Passed LaGuardia Airport; no planes coming in or going out, just some helicopters above. Passed Shea Stadium; empty and quiet. Went to Friday night services at our synagogue. Among the congregants was the man whose wife was lost in the World Trade Center. She had called him after the first explosion, but was not seen or heard from again. He and his daughter sat together hugging each other.

Friday evening was candle lighting time, not just for Jews, for whom it is a weekly ritual, but for the entire City, and perhaps beyond. The idea was for everyone at 7 p.m. to step outside and hold a lighted candle as a memorial for the fallen. The result was astounding. People lined the streets, collected at corners, clustered here and there. Some marched on the avenues. All with candles of various sizes and shapes. I saw Yartzeit candles, Shabbat candles, decorative candles. At one building they gathered around a bagpipe player. Candles were lined up in front of stores and apartment houses.

Met a friend of mine today who is a reporter for Newsday. She had just come back from the demolition site where she had been interviewing workers. She pulled from her handbag a t-shirt that said "America under attack " with a picture of the American flag. She said it cost $2, but there were other versions that went as high as $10 and even $15. She asked if the profits went to the relief agencies, and was told, no, it was a private enterprise. She learned that the day the planes struck the towers, the t-shirt factories went into production.

Tomorrow, Sharon and I have tickets to fly to North Carolina where we rendez-vous for Rosh Hashanah with Jake, a marine reservist now at Camp Lejeune, and my cousins at Chapel Hill. There have been reports all day of reduced flights, but Delta says this one is still on schedule. We'll find out tomorrow.

Ed Silberfarb was a reporter for 10 years, including seven with the New York Herald Tribune, during which time he covered City Hall, among other local beats. He then worked as an information officer for the New York City Transit Authority. He is the author (with Alfred Connable) of a history of New York City politics, Tigers of Tammany.

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