By Gunter Hampel

1st Report: Around 11 am, September 11th, 2001

I was as close as 120 yards on my bike. Hardly any cars driving on the streets. Empty streets, except people were standing around in bundles on sidewalks, parking lots, anywhere from where you had a chance to see the World Trade Center.

As a former architect, I have shot a lot of photos and videos during the last years, whenever I found a street corner from where I discovered a view onto the Twin Towers, as we New Yorkers say.

Now those views aren't anymore. Now I hear army planes securing the air space above. One hour too late.

Just minutes ago I had witnessed with my eyes and senses and feelings the bursting and shattering of the trademarks of American power-the world trade center, falling and splitting into ashes..

The waves of dust and pressure and the yelling of people next to me on the streets made me believe to feel and hear the death-cries of the many thousands of people, inside the towers, which were falling to their deaths at this very moment.

My family is o.k. It only appears to me that this could be the beginning of a most dangerous WAR. Like Vietnam. Or worse. There doesn't seem to be a particular battlefield anymore.

What happened today is worse than Pearl Harbor.

Then it was military against military action. This were innocent people.

Let's pray.

2nd Report: Around 9 pm, September 11, 2001

Today: horror... the devil grins his most scornful laughter out of poisoning sulfur-clouds into my face. His poison-cloud-body stretches far up seeable in the blue sky above the whole, from which he seemed to have risen.

His floating gestalt consists of the many thousands of bodies which he just devours, which are still, 8 hours ’"after’", burning beneath.

whummmmmmmmms, another 42 store building just went down and adds new fuel, adds new rubble, burning plastic-stuff, mixed with ugly dirt to the disappearing, discharging, devil out of the latest gap between New York's teeth...

Realizing my limitations I was mesmerized in having to watch, 150 meters away from me how that devils stranglehold crashed the building. Just like, that.

We all just stood there. Watcher of a play, what we humans until now had seen in the movies only, Agamemnon or that great one, the one Emmerich made with Will Smith: Independence Day.

I had been on the way to my lawyer, that's why I was up so early. The closer I was getting to her office, the stranger my usually mostly already challenging bike-ride became: I heard an explosion and followed the staring people's eyes, which had grouped grapes-like together on odd parts of the streets, to stare, seemingly being totally out of their mind about what they saw, onto the World Trade Center.

Someone was absentmindedly saying to me, that just an airplane had crashed into one of the towers, when suddenly another airplane appeared out of the deep blue, shining, sunny sky and drew itself into the other tower and exploded inside with black and very red flames.

Immediately everything started to burn, next, above and underneath the whole, the ingoing, exploding airplane had cut.

Parts of the building, people, parts from the airplane fell very gentle, almost like feathers out of the tower, down.

(Everything was so hot from the explosion, even the metal was burning into ashes)

I rushed forward to get a better look. Until now I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams, that the towers were anywhere in danger. As a student of architecture and still a fan of the unbelievable architecture which had developed here in New York, I had loved the two towers. (We New Yorkers call the world trade center TWIN-TOWERS, but dig this: symbolic: two times a 1. So we have an 11, and what date do we have today? September 11th.)

I loved the towers because of it's ingenious construction: grand structure. A masterpiece. I have often stood and compared my music with that particular skyline, I have put that even on my CD, 2 years ago, Sept 9, 1999 (another symbol), well, the architect had planned it so, that even when it burns, the structure would still stand and only the inside would burn out. He also had designed it, that even an airplane could have hit it or a helicopter could fall on the roof, and stuff like that, but that one day, there would be living a human to become a kamikaze pilot and would from all places in the world dive midway, like a bomb into his building on purpose, with an airplane filled with 158 scared and screaming, their death in front of them, people, plus how many gallons of burning, exploding kerosene...

I do not think the architect could have foreseen that scenario.

Me too, as a witness, in front of whose awake but unbelieving mind this all happened, in real, without music in the back or explaining commentators. I had never thought, that the towers, even when they burned out, wouldn't be there any more, they were simple THE symbol for the unbelievable power and energy and potential and might of mankind, to conquer and to move things. I live here since 30 Years and see the towers simply every day, sometimes more than once, I live with them the way you do live when it comes down to street corners, names, and buildings: They are there, you go into them, or pass them. BUT THAT I AM STANDING IN FRONT OF THEM.

(Do you remember all the King Kong movies, where we watched him climbing up the tower?)

And SEE with thousands of others, millions of other people how one floor after the other starts to burn, above and inside.

Inside, hell was loose. Tounging flames, which burned the outer shell or let it sail downward in flaming pieces. People jumped out of the devastating heat into their death, driven also by the poisoned burning gases.

And then happened the incomprehensible:
For a second the left tower wrapped itself into a coat out of white-gray-brown dirt, as if a magician had thrown a magic blanket on top of it and under this coat of dirt the tower was falling into itself, grumbling and earthquake like. The ground on which I stood, trembled, rumbled. Women fainted, fell down, some kneeled to pray and a screaming outcry, mixed with pain and "oh my god(s)" broke out the thousands of bystanding people. In addition there was this pain, I was able to feel many thousands of people in front of my eyes tumbling, in pain, to death.. Downwards.

From down under the dirt-fumes rose again, like a ball which had hit the ground, and still grows sky-high after 12 hours with the smirking visage of lucifer.

Brave Police and firefighters plus many important people drove closer to the rubble. The stinking dirt and the hitting debris made me leave.

But like being hypnotized I turned my bike around again.. I had still 3 pictures in my aps-camera.

When the first tower was coming down I was too shaken to take pictures. I am used to a lot of heavy stuff I saw in my life, but this was history in the making. This here is WAR and not a MOVIE.

I saw how more heat was starting to develop in the still standing tower. The air above the tower vibrated. Like a flickering film the hot air was winding itself around the tower. I said aloud: "This one will come down any minute."

The indescribable pain which had befallen all of us lamed us, thousands of people. Hypnotized we saw how the still standing tower, but bleeding out, with its last strength raised itself for a moment, much different than the first, probably by the enormous heat, and then collapsed, insofar the inner part of the tower, with the heavy antenna first fell into itself first and then down, making a mushroom, like an atomic explosion, this incredible sound like a dying dinosaur, the shriek of the yelling people, the on the top of their lungs yells by the police... I had only one thing in mind, to get out of here as fast as I could, all my memories of WWII came back, I hit the pedals of my bike and shot out, like Lance Armstrong, of the danger zone.

When I hit Canal Street, the Chinese had already closed down all their stores. I hit home and got my son on the phone, to make sure he was allright, and now I am hanging here in New York.

I am supposed to go on tour in Europe on September 25th, when the plane is going and things are hopefully, kind of getting back to normal.

Now I am living in the FROZEN ZONE. Everyone living underneath 14th street is in it. No one, who doesn't live here is not allowed to enter, no cars, no busses, no subway is stopping here.

It never was so quiet in all the 25 years I am living here.

I consider, that there will be more attacks. Probably not anymore the tactic with the hi-jacked airplanes. Something else and extremely unexpected. They probably send pigeons with chemical or BIO weapons, or they gonna strike at extremely unexpected places and areas.

At the moment the world economy, most communications are stricken by the terrorists...

All stores have closed, no subway. I have never seen so many people doing miles by foot above the ground in NYC. 1/2 hour later suddenly a stream of cars, everyone who has a car seems to be leaving town, and now it is empty here, like in a science fiction movie...

I had enough impressions and experiences for one day. And my court day has been moved to January...

3rd Report: Wednesday, 7 a.m., September 12th, 2001

Yesterday I wrote down my first impressions. Latest News are: I am now below 14th street in Manhattan,in a "frozen zone" meaning: you can't get out or in, unless you live here and have a kind of a proof that you do. Manhattan is closed.

The frustration, that something like that could have happened, is enormous. So far we all had believed that mighty America could defend us from those kind of attacks. The Achilles-heel of a great machine, a country with the greatest, most courageous soldiers in the Army, Navy and Air force of this age is vulnerable, like in Vietnam, by terrorist and out of nowhere single and fast attacks. When you see your enemy it is already to late for you.

Since it is common politics in the USA, to never let you know too much about the U.S. politics in foreign countries (in contrast to German television, where you see in pictures and words about any country of this world, the condition under which each country lives, etc.), hardly anyone here in New York can actually try to understand the reasons, why it is happening, what is happening, and everyone is occupied to get revenge.

Young men, around me on the streets want to enlist spontaneously to lead a heavy felt revenge attack, only at this time nobody knows against WHOM.

PS. We are still under shock. Us, the survivors, we hope, that this does not lead to more escalation of revenge and re-revenges period, instead we hope, that no one in the future has to rely on actions like terrorism again. We have to think out other ways. We hope that Governments and people inform each other in that way that before such actions lead to murder and wars, will be solved verbally and we all realize that we all are brothers and sisters. Let us all build the future that way. To begin with something, let's start a better education and information worldwide for everyman/woman...and create the desire in people to learn,..and.....and........and...............

Gunter Hampel
composer, vibraphonist, bassclarinetist, flutist
www.gunterhampelmusic.de