Greenwich Time
Sept. 12, 2001

By Vesna Jaksic

Karen Wright could barely hold back her tears as she waited yesterday at the Greenwich train station for her son to arrive from Manhattan, hours after two buildings of the World Trade Center collapsed. Like other local residents, she had come to the depot to anxiously await the arrival of family members leaving Manhattan in the wake of terror.

“My son lives three blocks from the World Trade Center,” Wright said in a shaky voice, as she glanced toward the platform to see if there was any sign of the train. “He called to say he was OK, right after he heard the explosion, but for all I know the Trade Center could have fallen on his building,” said Wright, a chiropractor who was at her Greenwich home at the time of the explosion.

Minutes later, she finally smiled, as she ran to hug her son.Odin Wright, 25, told his mother he still couldn’t believe what he had seen just hours earlier.

“I was in the shower and heard a bang. I thought it was thunder at first,” said Wright, who was at his friend’s house a few blocks south of the World Trade Center at the time of the explosion. “Then I heard on the radio about the explosion. I threw some clothes on and ran outside. The building just had this huge cut in it. I went around to the west side, saw people jumping out of the building þ just floating in the air.”

Shaking her head in disbelief, Karen Wright said she couldn’t bear to listen to the words coming from her son, who moved from Greenwich just months ago.

“I felt (the ground shaking),” he continued. “The lights went off, all these leaflets of paper started flying around þ it was a complete chaos,” said Odin Wright, who explained it took him a few minutes to realize the seriousness of the situation. “I saw 13 people fall, that’s 100 or so stories high, and I just couldn’t do anything,” he said. “I just couldn’t watch anymore, so I turned around and had to leave.”

An art director in Manhattan, he pulled a small digital camera out of his bag and showed pictures he had taken of the damaged World Trade Center, engulfed in black smoke.He eventually made his way through the chaotic Manhattan streets and took a Metro North Railroad train back into town, just like Greenwich commuters did yesterday.

Eric and Kim Fox embraced for nearly a minute after he stepped off the 4:07 p.m. train. At 9:03 a.m. Eric Fox had watched the World Trade Center become engulfed from his office in the World Financial Center across the street.

“I was talking on the phone with my wife when I saw there was a fire across the street,” the Norwalk resident said. “I didn’t think it was the end of the world. I hung up and about 10 minutes later my building shook and my wife called me back. I got out of there.”

As he walked, he saw glass and bodies showering the street from the two skyscrapers, he said, and also witnessed the black mark where the plane had hit the building.

“It was like the silhouette of a plane where there was the impact. When I was half a mile away and I heard this awful explosion,” he said, “I turned around and one of the towers had fallen.”

“It’s just surreal,” Kim Fox said. “This is so awful.”

Rick Parisi, a landscape architect in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, said he stepped out of his office with his co-workers after hearing the plane fly over the building.

“It was really loud, so we ran out,” he said. “The whole building shook, so we knew something was wrong. We knew the plane was going to crash.”

After watching both towers collapse, Parisi said, he knew he had to get out.

“That’s when I started to get nervous, so I started walking uptown,” he said.

After reaching 125th Street a couple of hours later, Parisi said he had to let a few trains go by before finding one he could squeeze into.

“The trains were packed, but it was kind of quiet,” he said. “It’s not the kind of thing people were talking about.”

Six officers from the Greenwich Police Department were at the station throughout the day, along with a few state troopers and Greenwich Emergency Medical Services Inc. paramedics.

“We’re just waiting to see if there’s anyone injured so we can take them to the hospitals,” said police officer Ron Bliss.

Two members of the Connecticut National Guard also arrived on the scene just before 6 p.m. to assist with any emergencies. Orange cones were set up at the station’s entrance to ensure ambulances could exit quickly in case any passengers needed transportation to hospitals. All Manhattan-bound trains were canceled for the afternoon, but trains from the island kept arriving in Greenwich at 20-30 minute intervals, the first one getting in just before 2 p.m. While none of the passengers had serious injuries, some warned the situation in town can still get worse.

“We don’t know what to anticipate in terms of the aftermath,” said Charlee Tufts, executive director of GEMS. “We’re prepared for when people arrive home, and understandably, many of them may be in shock.”

GEMS, whose staff was doubled to 12 paramedics yesterday, also sent two of its members to Manhattan in police boats, she said. As of 6:30 p.m. yesterday, only one passenger who arrived in Greenwich was transported to Greenwich Hospital for a minor eye injury, but some commuters said they saw hurt people on the train.

“There was this man, his hair was a mess, just glued to his face and he had chunks of stuff all over him,” said Catherine Giandurco, after stepping off the train and hugging her husband Jeff, who came to pick her up. The two got in touch through e-mail after they couldn’t make a telephone connection.

“I saw the second plane crash into the building,” said Catherine Giandurco, who was at a business meeting in midtown Manhattan at the time of the explosion. “I saw the smoke billowing in the air. It was just horrific … Chaos, sadness, shock.”

A dispatcher with Greenwich Taxi said he saw many distressed commuters.

“I saw plenty of people crying,” said Juliano Abadia, who recalled people with their clothes spattered with blood stains. An unidentified co-worker said he saw some other commuters who were covered in dust. Standing beside an idled New York-bound train with all doors open and empty of passengers, a Metro North Railroad conductor spoke in disbelief at the still unfolding events.

“I just can’t believe it,” he said over and over. “It’s like a bad dream.”

The conductor, who declined to give his name, said the railroad had trained its personnel in the event terrorism halted train service.

“They always said something could happen, but who would have thought this would happen?” he said.

Staff Writers Martin B. Cassidy and Neil Vigdor contributed to this report.