Jerry Zanjac, Maintenance (Woodcrafter) Statue of Liberty National Monument
Interviewed by Mark Schoepfle, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropologist
January 30, 2002 at Ellis Island

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Mark Schoepfle: Jerry, the first question I'm going to ask you is, from the moment you were aware that something had happened, what went on?

JERRY ZANJAC: Well, it's interesting … the initial thing that I saw was - actually the first thing is that we heard a boom. Now just a little background what we're doing. I'm in the building and utilities division. And we were working at Liberty Island and we were in the process of excavating a sewer pipe that we were going to replace. So our crew was out there at approximately 7:30 on a typically normal day. And, we were excavating this pipe and - we're standing kind of on the promenade between the administration building and the restaurant building. Basically our backs are turned to the World Trade Center. And we hear an uncharacteristic deep, not so much loud, but a deep, resonating boom.

And we have heard explosions or similar kinds of sounds in the past because somewhere in Jersey or somewhere, industrial or commercial or something is going on then you'll hear something. But this was a little different, you know. And we kind of looked at each other and just basically said, "Gee, that's - that's different," and not automatically but slowly we kind of were curious and we started looking around and then we looked toward the World Trade Center which is very prominent on the horizon. The vista from Liberty Island looking towards Lower Manhattan is very spectacular, very attractive. It's a good picture-taking spot, you know, so we have this beautiful panoramic view of Lower Manhattan. The World Trade Center is very prominent.

MARK SCHOEPFLE: I've taken pictures from there. Yeah, I know what you mean.

JERRY ZANJAC: Yeah. And you can't help but look in that direction. You can't help but kind of always see the World Trade Center, you know, dominate the skyline there. But what we see is a plume of black smoke coming basically out of the western side of the World Trade Center building which is tower one, kind of as we're looking at the left-most tower. And we know this is something serious, something extraordinary because, you know, something in that amount of smoke was substantial…

Now we're basically craftsmen, tradesmen, you know, blue-collar types and when we look at that the immediate reaction was, "Gee, something exploded; something went off in the World Trade Center." And we started speculating and we said, "Wow, what could that be?" You know, a substantial amount of smoke immediately. And right away we're thinking that there's some kind of mechanical problem or catastrophe, an explosion, maybe something in air conditioning or something. And we couldn't figure it out. So we were standing there speculating this and kind of proceeding and we figured, "Well, it's an explosion" You know, things happen in big cities and all and … It wasn't normal, but and it wasn't abnormal. …

MARK SCHOEPFLE: Sure. …

JERRY ZANJAC: And we're standing there and then all of a sudden from I guess the opposite end of Manhattan which is kind of Staten Island, New Jersey, looking kind of south or so, and there's a canopy that's over the dock and all of a sudden we hear this roar. And it's an obvious roar of an airplane, you know, jet engines, very familiar. And anybody who's been near an airport or going to an airport, you know how substantially loud or different the roar of a jet engine sounds when you're at an airport or when you see planes taking off or landing and very close.

MARK SCHOEPFLE: Right.

JERRY ZANJAC: It's a deafening, very, very ground shaking kind of roar. And just out of nowhere we start hearing this roar and it just got louder and louder and louder. And then all of a sudden we turn around towards the direction of the sound, which is looking right opposite Manhattan. And then coming from over the canopy, just appearing out of nowhere there's an airplane on a very steep bank, very low. It's one of the things I noticed that it was very loud and very low, you know. And [un]usually low for any of the normal flight patterns or such, because planes are always flying over the sky, you know.

MARK SCHOEPFLE: Right.

JERRY ZANJAC: We have Newark Airport very close to us and, you know, the approaches to Laguardia and the approaches to JFK sometimes and, you know, it's normal everyday, but planes are never, never, ever that low.

MARK SCHOEPFLE: Yeah.

JERRY ZANJAC: So we see this thing screaming on a bank flying right over our heads, right over the canopy. Close enough where you feel like you can touch it, you know. I saw the under-bottom of it and all and it's just streaking very quickly. It just flies right over our heads, you know. And we see this thing and we look and we turn around and all of us kind of follow this plane and, like I said we have this panoramic view of Lower Manhattan, and this plane flies over and it's on a bank. … So we're watching it and I don't know how far we are from the Statue of Liberty to the tip of Manhattan there, but it's a couple of miles. So it takes several seconds or I don't know … and I say, well, "Damn what if that's another one?" And the next thing you know, as it's going closer and closer we're starting to realize that, "Hey, this might be another plane." And then a fraction of a second or so before it impacts we see this plane really way too close and then all of a sudden, Pow. It just goes and it impacts, and because of the distance, because of that delay in sound traveling, you don't hear a thing. We just see the airplane disappear. And my reaction was that it was like something like a dart or something being thrown at a porous object and, the building basically absorbed this airplane. The airplane just disappears. And it was on an angle and it leaves this diagonal imprint, you know, of the size of the plane.

And then the split second that occurred is the realization that - this was another airplane. And like anything, something that happens out of the ordinary, it's the sense of disbelief. The disbelief that, you know, "Am I actually seeing this?" I mean, you are, but it's like, "Can this be?" It's, "Can this be? Can this be happening?" You know, this was extraordinarily malevolent, something bad. But you don't get - you know, until later you start really start thinking about it, you know. But this is bad. It wasn't gut wrenching yet, because you don't want to panic. And it's so out of the ordinary that, you know, just you're stunned.

MARK SCHOEPFLE: Sure.

JERRY ZANJAC: And it's disbelief. And at the same time it's like, "Wow, another one." And then it's like, "Oh s and oh f" and all of these expletives, you know.

MARK SCHOEPFLE: Right.

JERRY ZANJAC: And it's like, "This is war." You know, all of these reactions. I mean, you know, something from - everything from serious to like now oh, now God, what's going to happen, you know, this is war. This is not just an accident. This is deliberate and this is audacious, you know, ballsey. And now it's like - and then, you know, because of the distance, several seconds later we hear boom. You know, so that delayed reaction, and a sense of surreal, you know, we're spectating. We're watching this from a distance, you know. We don't put ourselves in that place yet, you know. …

[And I think only a handful of seconds later] the police sergeant said, "Listen, I think it's time for all of us to gather our belongings and waste no time and let's get to the boat dock. "We're going to evacuate this place." And within a couple of minutes, I guess as things were progressing on the police level and everything, you know, all of the emergency modes were, you know, coming into play and all.

… But we got on the boat and we got off at Ellis Island. And as soon as we got off the boat they had made all the people stand in front of Ellis Island, the main canopy area. Security, you know, was already in place, so all the people were forbidden to enter the buildings. … I forget who it was, but one of our upper management people - a superintendent, deputy superintendent, I forget who it was but [she] basically says, "We're all going to be here, we're going to do a head count. You know, we want to see who's around and we're going to have the staff boat stand by and whoever wants to go home, you'll be able to go home. And whoever wants to stay and volunteer, you're welcome to because Ellis Island is a triage location. And we're going to be doing triage for victims at the World Trade Center" because it was a forgone conclusion that there were going to be victims. …

And then when the people did start showing up, there was a orderly disorder, you know. It didn't run like a fine timepiece, you know, where every single person had a specific role. But it wasn't like 30 people rushed to do one thing and there weren't enough people to do other things, you know, so there was a good flow. So a handful of people went to take people off the boats because we didn't have, you know, specifically designed craft to get injured people off. I mean, there was a couple of park police boats where, you know, people have to step off the boat, and there was a ramp and they got off the ramp and this and that. … And then when the people came, I saw there was enough people to take care of the injured. We had a lot of non-injured that we had to steer to another area. They set up an area for the non-injured so that they could be processed, you know. And luckily there wasn't this humongous rush of people, because boats came whenever. And we might have had only 2,000 people show up totally during the approximate four or five hours of the peak which was about from 11:30, 12'ish to about 4 o'clock. And we were expecting a heck of a lot more [injured] people. So we couldn't determine why there weren't so many people, you know. And as it turns out there were very few injured from the collapse of the buildings. You were either outright dead, or you were … out alive.

September 11, 2001 Oral History Documentation Project
Northeast Region, National Park Service

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