Some stories should not be rewritten with the benefit of twenty-five years of hindsight.
The account below was written by one of our community members, Richard W. Turnbull, on September 15, 2001, only four days after the attacks on the World Trade Center. He had been heading to work near the towers that morning. Within hours, he witnessed the destruction of the World Trade Center, ran from the collapse, escaped Manhattan by boat, found his way back across the Hudson, and reached his children’s school still covered in ash.
We are publishing his account as he wrote it.
Richard W. Turnbull
9/15/2001
Dear friends, I want to thank each of you personally for checking to see that Deb, the kids and I are OK. And I would like to share with you this note I wroteSaturday morning after the attack. I wrote it in one sitting – it just flowed out and has helped me to begin ‘processing’ what just happened. I am sure this process is going to take a lifetime for all of us. Please feel free to share it with anyone who wants to get an idea what it was like near ground zero, for whatever reason. I hope it helps in some small way.
Thank you all again. We are all forever linked, now more than ever.
Rick Turnbull.
“Sept. 11, 2001. I was running about 20 minutes late, as both my wife and son had jumped in front of me for the shower that morning. I got out of the subway at Rector St. around 9:15 a.m., three blocks past my usual World Trade Center stop. The second plane had just hit directly above the street I cross every day to go to One World Financial Center and the conductor was told not to stop under the towers. Thank God.
“As I emerged from the subway I saw that the street was littered with glass and shoes, mostly pumps and high heels, and everyone was gaping at the towers three blocks away. Hearing murmurs of a plane crash, I realized it must have been some explosion for people to have jumped out of their shoes and ran, and glass to have been blown over three blocks. Smoke poured out of the towers, and I thought I saw someone jump, but others said it was only debris fluttering down from the higher floors. I walked past a landing gear from one of the planes which police were just putting yellow tape around at the southeast corner of Rector and West Streets. Scores of emergency, police, and fire vehicles were racing to ground zero north along the West Side Highway but I managed to dodge across to try to get to my building at 1 WFC.
“I ran into one of my assistants wandering dazed from the sight of countless body parts scattered across the highway and in the parking lot across from our building and the WTC, probably from the explosion of the second plane. We saw people streaming out of our building and immediately changed our plan, heading west toward the Hudson River by Battery Park City. Looking up and seeing the intensity of the flames and the number of floors being rapidly consumed by raging fire was horrific in its own right, but then the horror was punctuated by an unmistakably human form emerging from the smoke over 90 stories up, first seemingly drifting down, then plunging faster and faster to certain death below. Over the next 10-15 minutes we stared transfixed in sickness and awe as we saw at least 12 more poor souls leap from the upper floors, choosing death over the ferocity of the smoke and flames engulfing them.
“Finally turning away, numb, incredulous, and sickened, we started walking south along the water to look for our group. After several moments an earsplitting roar, like a squadron of jet bombers, vibrated the air and ground and we thought another group of attack planes was coming. But looking up we saw the absolutely most unthinkable sight imaginable to someone who as a preteen watched these icons of New York get built and cherished their sight from every vantage point around the city: the first tower was cascading down in a horrific rumble of glass, steel, smoke, ash, and concrete chunks and powder. We ran for our lives. Hundreds were running for their lives. We ran for one or two blocks, south along the Hudson in Battery Park City. Worried that the buildings in Battery Park City might get toppled like dominoes, we kept close to the railing preparing to jump into the river if necessary. Pausing to look back for a second to see if we were out of range of the collapsing tower, we were now confronted with the horror of a 30-story tall, 5-block wide cloud of smoke, ash, dust, and concrete powder racing toward us in a rage of suffocating fury. This was the second time in less than a minute that I literally thought I was going to die. We raced further south to try to outrun this cloud of destruction but were soon enveloped. Kneeling down by the river railing we covered our faces with our shirts and, for a brief moment, prepared to plunge into the Hudson to seek an air pocket along the base of the seawall. With tremendous relief we found that, though the air was black and visibility zero, we could close our eyes and breathe through our shirts; the fumes were not overly toxic and our shirts, handkerchiefs and other bits of cloth served as adequate filters for the dust ash and concrete powder. After a few minutes the cloud began to thin a little. We again began moving south quickly along the railing.
“We found the rest of my group, except for about five people. We rested on the grass for a few moments, trying to catch our breath and discussing the ongoing horror and our best options to get to a safe place, as it appeared we were under attack. Amid these discussions another roar and rush of dust and debris as the second tower collapsed. Police exhorted people to keep moving south, but as the wind was freshening from the northwest, I shouted to a cop that the towers were already down, so our greatest danger apparently was now gone, and we should move back north into the wind to get out of the cloud as quickly as possible. We reversed the tide of people and started everyone moving back north along the river railing and minutes later the freshening breeze began to blow the dust south toward the ferry terminal.
“With the air briefly clearing, we hurriedly began to flag boats in the Hudson to rescue us from this suffocating debris cloud and unknown future perils. Within the next 20 minutes, scores of small ferries, fireboats, police boats, tug boats, etc. raced to our aid and lashed their boats to the railings. With women and children first, hundreds of us quite methodically and in an orderly fashion scrambled over the 4-foot railing onto the waiting boats. I was one of the last because of tremendous mixed emotions. I had heard that all of the bridges and tunnels were shut down by now and knew that if I was evacuated over to New Jersey it could be days before I would see Deb and the kids, and I wanted them to see that I was OK. However, surveying the destruction and potential targets that the World Financial Center now represented to the north and the lingering, growing cloud to the south, I realized a boat to New Jersey might be the only reasonably safe way out. Several policemen helped me to make my decision, shouting ‘everyone must leave the area on one of these boats–now. We are evacuating!’ After helping a fireboat unlash from the railing, I hopped the rail onto an Army Corps of Engineers boat. We picked up about 40 remaining stragglers and headed to Liberty Park in NJ.
“On the pier in New Jersey I walked past an emergency triage/treatment center with scores of EMTs, ambulances, and medical personnel patiently waiting for people to help. Few were coming. I walked about a mile, then stuck out my thumb like the old days and began a hitchhiking journey through heavy traffic to try to get a boat or ferry back to Manhattan. The passenger ferries at Hoboken brought hundreds of people from Manhattan, but would not allow any passengers on board to return to Manhattan. Same story in Weehawken. Someone told me about a marina further north in Edgewater, NJ, so I stuck out my thumb again. After about two hours of hitching I was dropped in front of the marina in Edgewater and immediately began scanning all the boats, hoping to find someone crazy enough to try to make the crossing over to Harlem. The first boater I encountered was a 40-something sunbather on a 50-foot yacht, lying on her stomach on the upper deck with her bikini top half down reading her novel, totally oblivious to the destruction and clouds of devastation clearly visible seven miles down the Hudson. Didn’t even bother her. Saw one other boater on a nice 40-foot cruiser, sipping a Coke and chatting on his cell phone, watching the scene from afar. He said the river was closed and invited me to sit for a while which I did.
“It was now 2 p.m., and the kids got out of school at 3. I could see the steeple of Riverside Church about a mile away just across the river. The kids’ school was just 8 blocks south of the church. Thanking my host and excusing myself, I went to talk to the harbormaster to see if he knew anyone plucky enough to brave the Hudson River crossing. He pointed to a buddy of his just pulling up to a dock about 100 yards away in a 21-footer. This guy had just brought two New Jersey folks stranded in NYC across. The guy was great, a commodities trader on the Mercantile Exchange a few blocks from the WTC nicknamed ‘Sarge,’ who commuted to work on his boat. He said he would give it a try. We putted out of the marina and stopped dead in the water to survey the river. Although the 79th Street Marina would have been the easiest place to land, it was too far to travel with the river not yet deemed secure and still officially closed. Directly across from us was 125th Street and the West Side Highway, which was blocked at the southbound entrance by a radio car. We looked at the seawall looming and the police car, then at each other, and decided ‘What the hell!’ With military jets roaring overhead and neither of us really sure what was happening in the skies or on the river or what the rules were in this chaos, we opened it up full throttle and shot across. About 3 minutes later we were confronting the 8-foot high seawall topped by a chain-link fence. ‘Don’t worry, it’s an old boat anyway,’ Sarge shouted as he scraped along the wall. I threw my briefcase over the fence, clambered up onto the seawall, and hopped the fence. Two locals and the policeman just stared at us. ‘How ya doin?’ Pretty crazy day!’ I volunteered. They just nodded.
“I walked up to Broadway and 125th Street and, bizarre as it may seem, hailed a cab and shot to the kids’ school at 112th Street. I got there with ten minutes to spare and picked up Kirsten and Ryder at their classrooms. I didn’t realize until they saw me that my shirt was out and open and soaked with sweat. My hair and shoes were still covered in gray ash and concrete dust. Deb was there. We all hugged and cried.
“We walked home to 101st Street and put on the news. I didn’t leave the house for a day and a half, just lay in bed or on the couch watching the news, trying to fathom what had just happened to our city, our country, our family. I put my ash-covered shoes in two large clear plastic bags as a remembrance. Though the images of that day are of terror, surreal spectacle, horror, and fear, they are also of camaraderie, heroism, and a uniting of spirit. It is a day I will never forget.
“I thank you all so much for your thoughts, prayers, and kind expressions of concern, and for giving me this opportunity to tell the people I care about what one person’s day was like the day the unthinkable happened in New York.
“With great love and respect to you all, Rick Turnbull.”
Twenty-Five Years Later
There is a temptation, with enough time, to turn September 11 into history.
For New Yorkers who lived through it, it was a real morning filled with ordinary decisions, confusion, fear, strangers helping strangers, and people trying to get home to the people they loved.
Rick’s account captures something that statistics, documentaries, and anniversary ceremonies cannot fully preserve. He did not know how the story would end while he was living it.
That matters.
Preparedness is sometimes discussed as though it means expecting disaster. I see it differently. It means accepting that circumstances can change faster than we expect and developing the awareness, judgment, and ability to act when they do.
Rick survived because of many things, including timing, luck, other people, and decisions made as events changed around him. His story also records something New York showed repeatedly that day: people helped each other.
Ferries, fireboats, police boats, tugboats, emergency workers, strangers, coworkers, and ordinary New Yorkers responded to a situation none of them had planned to face.
Twenty-five years later, the responsibility is to remember the people who were killed, the people who ran toward danger, the families who were changed forever, and the people who still carry that morning with them.
We remember September 11 because it happened to real people.
This is one of their stories.
Do something amazing,
Tsahi Shemesh
Founder & CEO
Krav Maga Experts
Relevant Articles
What 9/11 Taught Us About Self-Defense and Awareness — Tsahi’s own reflection on how that same morning reshaped his thinking on awareness, preparedness, and the ethical responsibility that comes with teaching self-defense.
Situational Awareness in Self-Defense: The Common Mistakes — a closer look at why real situational awareness is about far more than scanning a room, and why how you carry yourself matters just as much as what you notice.
Decision Making Under Stress: How Training Restores Access — why pressure doesn’t make people dumber, it narrows the options they can see, and training is what rebuilds the access panic takes away.
