9/11: Twenty-two Years Later (2023)
Alumni Remember and Reflect 
Thank you to the alumni who have submitted articles. Further contributions or comments should be sent to news@chasealum.org.
 
 

hazmat showers

By Mario Rosellini

 

I went through the Trade Center on my way to uptown just before the planes hit.
 
I along with our staff were not allowed to leave the office until the afternoon, when we were allowed to walk over to the Hudson River to get boats to Hoboken.
 
There were lines of people for blocks .Ambulances from my hospital [I was on the board and still am] were going downtown. People were walking uptown with white ash all over them. When we got to Hoboken, we were all put though hazmat showers and sat on the train for hours all wet.
 
We could see the smoke across the river at the Trade Center.My family didn't know what happen to me for hours.
 
Several of my friends were lost that day.
 

car problem

By Dan Brazzano (retired in 2003 after 38 years of service to Chase)

 

I remember the day all too well. My office was, if I remember correctly, on the 26th floor of 1 Chase Plaza when someone said they heard that a plane hit one of the towers. It was believed that it was a small private plane. Little did we know that it was a commercial aircraft. We went to the window to see what happened when yet another plane hit the second tower. It appeared to be mass chaos. Some of our colleagues were coming in from New Jersey. The train station was at the WTC building.

Dust and debris overtook our view. We were immediately told to stay put and not to attempt to leave the building. Later we were told the elevators were turned off for fear our building was also damaged. As the day went on, it came to our attention that the towers were collapsing. 

The outside atmosphere appeared to look like fog, though it was dust. When the buildings finally collapsed, the entire area appeared black as if it were midnight. Chase Plaza was next to the Federal Reserve building. You could not see the building.

As the day went on and some of the dust settled, we were allowed to leave the building. Some of us had to walk uptown to get transportation to Westchester and Connecticut. Others like myself walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to catch a train in Brooklyn to Hunter’s Point to the Long Island Rail Road. I believe I finally got home about 9 pm. I had driven in that day, however, and my car was in the Chase underground garage. For the following months we worked out of offices in Brooklyn. I retrieved my car some months later from the garage since the entire area was locked down.

This was the most horrific experience I ever encountered and will remember it for the rest of my life.

 
 

the memory is fresh

By Debbie Raif (retired in 2002 after 31 years of service to Chase)

 

Twenty-two years ago. I was at work at Chase Manhattan Bank where I was the help desk manager for the Global Trading Department. One of the department secretaries came over to my desk to tell me a bomb had gone off down by the WTC. We ran to the help desk room where there were numerous TV screens – all tuned in to different news stations – so we quickly realized what was happening. We were watching this tragedy unfold on the TVs as we stood there in shock and disbelief. Most of the rest of the day is a  blur. I remember sitting later on that night with my supervisor, Tom Matteo, in an office and watching the names of some of those killed scroll across the TV screen. I distinctly remember seeing Mychal Judge’s name, as he had at one time been a priest in a church where I had lived. 

My office was at Park Avenue and 47th Street – always a noisy area as Grand Central Station is right down the block. The silence in the streets was eerie. No horns honking, not much vehicular traffic. All air traffic had been halted, but at one point a helicopter flew overhead and the four people in my office and I all dove under the table, because, honestly, we were terrified that it was another attack.  

One of my co-workers, who worked downtown at Chase Manhattan Plaza, walked up to my desk. He was wearing a black suit but it was tan from the debris. He had walked from downtown to our office.  

Once we realized our next shift of technicians couldn’t make it in because subways were halted, I knew I was going to have to stay there all night. A few of us went out to buy toothbrushes and, frankly, just went out to try and clear our heads. Streets were empty – people silently walking in the streets. We had heard that there were cots set up somewhere in the building if we wanted to sleep. We were the help desk for our trading offices around the world, so we stayed up all night monitoring trading services in the global trading offices. 

The next day, after having been up for 24 hours, I was finally heading home. I lived in Fort Lee, NJ, which was basically shut down as they had turned it into a triage center. I took the PATH train to Hoboken and was able to get a bus to Cliffside Park. Nothing was going in to Fort Lee or Leonia where my car was parked. My house keys were in my car, so I walked from Cliffside Park to Leonia (about 3.5 miles). The streets from Leonia to Fort Lee (it was literally a five-block drive from where my car was parked to my house) were all manned by police checking IDs. It took me about a half hour to go five blocks. I had left the office that morning at 9:30 and got home just after 3 pm. I remember walking and thinking how blue the skies were – just as they had been the day before. I remember the horrible smell that permeated the air for weeks after –  the haze of smoke when I looked out my windows towards downtown New York City.  I didn’t return to work until the following Monday. As the bus rounded the turn on the helix going into the Lincoln Tunnel, you could see the hole in the skyline where the Twin Towers once stood. It was overwhelming.  

I often used to sit with a gentleman on the bus, Michael Asciak, who died that day. I bowled with a man whose brother and cousin both died that day. We worked with Cantor Fitzgerald and realized we would never speak with those colleagues again. An eye-opening moment when the realization life would never be the same again set in.  

Twenty-two years later and it’s still as clear in my mind as if it’s been only 22 days since it happened.  

(posted September 20, 2023) 

 
Visit Part One / Twentieth Anniversary(2021)