Fear, reaction lasted through that surreal season |
Once the Twin Towers burned and collapsed in al-Qaida’s murderous airplane attack on Sept. 11, 2001, homeland security became a visceral national mission. The sense of emergency persisted for a long time.
The World Trade Center catastrophe happened on primary day with voting underway. Municipal elections were rescheduled for Sept. 25.
One day during the resumed campaign, mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer sat in the back seat of a car waiting to enter the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. An Army tank was positioned in the middle of the plaza. Soldiers patrolled nearby, scanning vehicles.
Softly, Ferrer said to a reporter beside him, “We’ve never had this before. Not in this country.”
It was a surreal season full of public traumas too secondary to make the main news cycle. One evening, for example, an NYPD officer ran east down East 33rd Street toward Madison Avenue, shouting at those on the sidewalk to clear the area: “There’s a bomb in the Empire State........