Steven Laise, Chief of Interpretation, Federal Hall National Memorial
Interviewed by Chuck Smythe, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropologist
December 19, 2001 at Federal Hall National Memorial
 Go to Audio Excerpt section
CHUCK SMYTHE: Could you tell me how you first became aware of the situation at the World Trade Center? I mean, you started that day as kind of a regular day didn't you?
STEVEN LAISE: Yes, I arrived at Federal Hall as I usually do by bus from Staten Island. And … the first stop is in Lower Manhattan at Battery Place not far from the World Trade Center. That was about 8:30 in the morning. And I walked from there up to Federal Hall and I guess I got here around a quarter of 9. And the first I knew that there was anything was going on was one of our staff who had been listening to the radio came and told me that a plane had hit one of the World Trade towers. … I was the senior person on staff who was on site. And I decided to turn on the radio first of all and try to get more details. And second, to go downstairs and have the staff close down the building as it appeared when I got news that the second plane had hit the second tower, that this was not simply an accident as I guess we had all assumed at first. But there was more to it, and so I had the building closed and the public left. And the law enforcement ranger Chris Keenan and I swept the building quickly for explosives. We went through all the floors and checked for any parcels or packages that didn't belong here. Didn't find anything. Then we went out on to the street - on Nassau Street. There's a door at street level there. And I went around the block and saw the flame and the smoke and so on pouring out of the tower number two. I did not see the impact. And by the time I got back here to Federal Hall the first tower had collapsed and so I was very aware of the sound and we felt a sort of a shaking.
And shortly thereafter people began running toward me, coming down Nassau Street and down Wall Street from the direction of the World Trade Center. And so the law enforcement ranger and I were both at the street level door and as we saw people approaching we saw the enormous cloud of dust and ash and debris and so on envelop them. The cloud was moving faster than people were able to run. And it became dark and it was difficult to breathe. So we urged those who were coming our direction to come inside. And people were desperately looking for shelter. So they were happy to come in and we got eventually about 250 people inside Federal Hall. The basement area is fairly congested and that filled up quickly with people and with dust because the people who came in were covered with this gray dust and ash. And so we began moving people up stairs to the first floor, which is more spacious, and into the rotunda. But what I hadn't realized was that two of the windows on the second floor had blown open and so we were getting dust directly in to the rest of the building as well including the rotunda. So it was really pretty difficult to breathe up there.
Fortunately, we had bottled water. We were able to get people cups of water. And a lot of them went in to the restrooms and rinsed off their faces with the water and paper towels. And we had received a shipment of dust masks for the use of our maintenance crew just a week before and so we had a couple hundred dust masks that we handed out quickly. Our maintenance guys knew where they were and went and got them and distributed them. So we were able fairly quickly to give people a place to sit down, to get a little bit cleaned up, to have a drink of water, and to put on dust masks. And everybody was wearing a mask … because the atmosphere was difficult to breathe in here. … At that same time a lot of people wanted to call their families to let them know they were all right. And so we had a lot of cell phones going and a long line of people waiting to use our regular telephone lines. And I was going around trying to reassure people. I mean, a lot of people were very panicky. The question in everyone's mind was first, what had happened and then were there going to be any more attacks of whatever kind? People were very cognizant of the fact that Lower Manhattan is the home of the New York Stock Exchange. And that was in our minds a logical target for some terrorist activity. So not knowing when the thing was going to end when we heard on the radio that the Pentagon had been attacked as well and another plane had been highjacked. There was a lot of uncertainty and people just didn't know how long this was going to go on. That was I think the major cause of anxiety at that point. For the people who had gotten out, was what happens next?
We had several severe asthmatic cases and two women who were pregnant. One of them was experiencing pains and so we had her lie down and we tried to assist the asthmatic cases. But we called for an ambulance and eventually, perhaps an hour or so later, one made its way down here and we were able to transport these cases to downtown hospitals with the assistance, by that time, of the U.S. Park Police who had come by then. They were helpful with the transportation. They provided a vehicle.
CHUCK SMYTHE: They're not normally here -
STEVEN LAISE: No. But they came from their duty station at [Gateway NRA and] the Statue of Liberty … So we had a couple hundred people in the building for perhaps two hours or so. But by the time the atmosphere began to clear people were eager to go home. And I think probably the last of the public left maybe 1, 1:30 in the afternoon. But several of us remained here because we wanted to assess the damage. We walked around the outside and observed all this - layer, a thick layer of dust and ash and papers all over the place because of the papers from people's offices that imploded were strewn in to the air. And it happened that the wind was blowing in our direction that day. It was blowing from the West and we lie East of the World Trade Center site. And so we were getting a heavy dose of the cloud of dust and ash at Federal Hall. And curiously, Castle Clinton which is another one of our sites and is just as close within four blocks of the World Trade Center didn't have any dust or ash at all, none at all. That was just a result of the way the wind was blowing.
CHUCK SMYTHE: What did it look like when you went outside then after both - I guess after both towers went down?
STEVEN LAISE: I went out after both towers had gone down and as I said, we felt and heard the sound of both of them collapsing. The air was gray, it was dark. Initially it was just black as night. But later on it began to clear up somewhat, but still gray. But it looked as though everything were - were gray. Everything was covered with gray ash and dust and all kinds of debris. Bits and pieces of building materials, and lots of papers as I say. It was several inches deep. On the Pine Street side of the building which is the closest to the World Trade Center site there is a portico with a colonnade and then inside that there's a sheltered area. And that area had I would say six or eight inches of dust and debris built up. Also up on the roof - I went up on the roof just to check the condition of the glass, our skylight, we have a glass skylight in the center of the rotunda, because we had so much dust in the rotunda I wasn't sure if that had failed. And so I went up to check that and again there was several inches of dust and debris and all kinds of paper and bits and pieces of things you couldn't even identify all over our roof. So it looked like to me what Pompeii must have looked like after Vesuevius erupted. It was just covered in ash.
CHUCK SMYTHE: Monochromatic?
STEVEN LAISE: Monochromatic. Everything was kind of gray. And curiously enough, if you walked the streets for weeks afterward and this is after the clean up had been going on for some time, the asphalt which is normally more or less black was gray. The dust had been swept first of all, but in sweeping it, it was swept in to the surface of the asphalt. And so the streets of Lower Manhattan were a gray color for weeks afterward. And of course, afterward, in addition to what we could see going on around us with respect to all the, you know, emergency vehicles and, you know, the security precautions that really prevented people from coming in to this area without a proper identification. But in addition to that the major difference that you were immediately aware of was the smell. There was a very strong odor, and it's still - occasionally you still get a whiff of it. But originally it was very strong. Kind of a, I don't know, a chemical smell, a smell of broken plaster and plaster board. It's a little hard to describe, but if you smelled it you would recognize it.
CHUCK SMYTHE: And were you able to escape that by coming - when you came inside Federal Hall?
STEVEN LAISE: No. No, it was just as strong inside … because our air conditioner had been running on the morning of September 11 it had pulled all of that dusty air into the air conditioning ducts. And so of course we turned it off afterwards, but the building was so full of dust and the air conditioner system had to be totally cleaned as was the rest of the interior before we could let our staff come back in and use the building. The staff remained out of the building for about a week while this emergency clean up went forward. We hired a professional cleaning crew with hazardous materials equipment and suits and so on. And they came in on a weekend and cleaned the building when nobody else was here, and did a good job. .. But the odor remains, you know, it's just embedded in the fabric and it's in the rug.
NEXT  TOP
|
MORE PARKS - Home/Map
more photos
