An Unspeakable Loss

by Regina P. Ciardiello

The morning of Tuesday, September 11, began like any other - I left my apartment in Queens, N.Y. at 8 a.m. to fight traffic on the way to the Long Island Rail Road station where I catch my train that transports me into the City each day. I actually am embarrassed to admit that I yelled at several motorists on my way to the station for driving too slow. How selfish I feel now, considering the events that transpired later that day.

As I walked from New York's Penn Station on the West Side of Manhattan to the Maritime Reporter editorial offices on East 25th Street at about 9:15 a.m. (running late as usual), I noticed a crowd of people gathered in front of an electronics store, which displayed a variety of television sets in its window. I thought nothing of it….Was the president possibly in town? I then heard a woman's screams, but still thought nothing out of the ordinary was amiss.

My morning commute - and the attention/direction of the world - changed dramatically, however when I approached the corner of 6th Ave. and 29th St. A large crowd was gathered on the corner, their heads pointed south and upward. I asked a young man who was transfixed on the site that lay ahead what was going on. He responded that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. "A small commuter plane, right?" I said. "No," he responded. "Two large jetliners. They think it was a suicide mission that was planned by terrorists," he deadpanned. Cell phone in hand, I raced over to our offices on the East side, not knowing what to expect or what the day would bring. I tried to call my family on Long Island, as I knew they would be worried about me, but could not get through. I thought about a friend of mine and how lucky he was that he quit his job in the World Trade Center a mere five months ago. I also thought about how beautiful the Twin Towers, as they were known, looked the last time I saw them from a tugboat on the Hudson River.

Following the Intrepid's annual Tug Races on Sunday, September 2, I had the opportunity to ride back from Pier 86 on 46th St. in Manhattan to Staten Island on the Janet M. McAllister. I remember sitting on the edge of the tug, the waves slapping against the sides, as the powerful vessel motored south from Midtown Manhattan to the Staten Island port where the company keeps its tugs. I vividly remember seeing the Towers as I had never before - from a tug in the Hudson River. I had viewed these buildings from my car, from the subway and from an airplane - and now I had the opportunity to literally see a piece of New York's history from a tug that is part of New York's maritime history. Little did I know that this would be the very last time I would ever see them - for the next time I would view them would be from the roof of my 12-story office building, smoke billowing from the top - collapsing in front of my eyes. I thought about the members of our industry who had offices in the Towers and their surrounding areas, and of course McAllister came to the forefront of my mind as their operations are located at 17 Battery Place, which is just blocks away from what has become dubbed as "Ground Zero." Luckily a letter on the company's web site from its president, Brian McAllister, stated that although their office was not ready for operation, more importantly their staff members and their families managed to make it out of harm's way. A sense of relief was felt at MarineNews when we later learned that employees of both the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and JJ McMullen, both of which had offices in the Towers, reported that all employees were safe.

Ironically, when I turned on my computer the following Monday, September 17, almost one week to the day after the attacks, I received a press release from Northrop Grumman announcing that the USS Cole, which was the target of a terrorist attack in the Port of Aden in Yemen last October, had been relaunched at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss. over the weekend — perhaps a sign of America’s resilience and propensity to come back.