NYC-WTC_000230724

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

I

City’s Underground Heroes Kevin Moore climbed out of the Fulton Street sub­ way station into the apocalypse. Hundreds of people were running from- the Twin Towers, gasping for air. Some women ran without shoes while windows shattered 100 stories above and shards of glass rained down on the street in the Between the Brooklyn Bridge / City HaD station, help. - — - moments after the first hijacked jetliner struck the where Moore works, and the Wall Street stop on the With a flashlight, Moore trudged tlirough a World Trade Center that crazy September morning. 4 and 6 lines, three trains were stuck with hundreds smoke-filled subway tunnel to the Wall Street ste- Moore, 45, a transit supervisor, was standing out­ of nervous commuters. tion, a few blocks .away. He needed to be sure there 13 side the Pulton Street station when, in a mighty i One, a northbound train, was a couple of subway wa.s no train at Wail. He headed back to Fulton and, I cloud of smoke, the first tower collapsed. Though 41 i cars into Pulton Street. A southbound train barely on foot about 30 feet in front of the subway, guided , mornings have passed, it remains so vivid to a city of got into Wall Street. Another southbound train was the train operator and his human cargo to the next unfortunate witnesses. ' © stuck in the tunnel between Pulton and Brooklyn station. ■ There was no place to run,” Moore said. “I ran Bridge. Transit radios crackled with frantic calls for Moore avoided the deadly third rail in the smoky back to the subway.” _____________________ _________________ station. In another stalled train, some anxious pas- Straphangers and transit sengers stood in the dark between cars, looking

I IN THE SUBWAYS workers were practically fight­ ing each other now to reach the platform — jumping turnstiles, down at him. “Some people were yelling, ‘Please get us out of here’ Please help us,’" Moore recalled. The power s shoving and pushing for their lives. Even police officers sought ' for the lights was still on. But the problem was that we had to turn off the AC because we didn’t want it § the unlikely refuge of the sub­ way. The day demons dropped : to draw up dust and smoke into the subway cars. Peo- ' out of the aky, everyone headed [ pie were starting to panic,” for the underground. Dennis Dillon, 41, who, like Moore, works as a § O Hl Ray Sanchez Behind them a volcanic burst ; of dust, smoke, glass and cement . particles ripped through the crowded Fulton Street station. train service supervisor, climbed behind the control of the stranded subway. He hod to guide the packed train, against the flow of traffic, to the Brooklyn Bridge station. ss Moore and Dillon normally monitor the perfor-, H "We kind of held each other as mance of train operators and conductors. Now they re hC the debris went through,” Moore I recalled. “You ever open up a hydrant as a child and were the operators, guiding the train back along the GJ the water conies out with such force? The dust and tracks, manually hooking down the “stop arms” on debris came into the subway with that intensity." subway signals, which are designed to keep trains SI O Now the men and women who know the subways went to work. from moving in emergencies. At the Brooklyn Bridge station, hundreds of passen­ 8 They are train operators and conductors and gers were evacuated safely under a clear, blue sky. O o token booth clerks and transit supervisors who usu­ “I never heard so many people say, ‘Thank you,’ ” I ally get blamed when you’re running late. said Moore, who has put in 21 years aa a transit o Kevin Moore was just one of thousands on duty on worker. .Sept. 11. . - “It was unbelievable,” said Dillan, who started hisi New Yorkers enjoy a curious love-hate relationship transit career as a subway cleaner 16 years ago. 00 GJ with the workaday grunts in the employ of New York “They usually blame us for everything." City Transit. That Tuesday would be the exception. ( There were scattered third-rail and signal power outages in the subways one hour after the first plane i struck at 8:48 a.m. At 10:20 a.m., transit officials fi- > ' nally shut down the entire subway system. Packed trains, meanwhile, were stranded all over.

NYC-WTC_000230724