Isabelle Coelho-Marques worked at the Consulate General of Portugal in New York that morning on September 11th. Luís Mendes is an architect and, on the same day, he was called to lead the twin towers’ debris removal teams that two planes taken by terrorists linked to al-Queda destroyed in just under two hours of suffocation.
“When I woke up it was the perfect day”. Isabelle Coelho-Marques never forgot what she saw and lived in the early hours of September 11, 2001 in the city that never sleeps.
Daughter of Portuguese parents, Portuguese-American living in the USA since 1993, she arrived in Manhattan and, as usual, took a traditional bright yellow taxi to the Consulate General of Portugal, where she worked at the time, next to the Rockfeller Center. What seemed like a normal day, quickly became one of the most memorable moments of his life.
“The taxi driver started to say a plane crashed into one of the towers [do World Trade Centre]. English was not enough to understand and I thought: you must have noticed the wrong news “.
But on arriving at work, confirmation came. A plane had crashed into one of the towers of one of the most emblematic buildings in the city, about 8.8 kilometers from where it was.
“Shortly afterwards, they started talking about a second plane that crashed. Then we all realized that this was going to be an attack. On the loudspeakers of the building they started asking for the building to be evacuated, to leave, not using the elevators and to leave by the stairs “describes Isabelle, who roamed the squared streets of New York while the police circled with megaphones asking people to go to the banks of the rivers and leave the city center.
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“We started walking, going to the West Side Highway, where the Towers were. There were a lot of people and people were slow. I remember at one point hearing one of the Towers had fallen, even before reaching the water, where could have visibility “, recalled Isabelle, who had her ex-husband also working in the city and close to the World Trade Center.
“He managed to talk to me, told me to go to the West Side Highway. When I arrived there was smoke and a building had already fallen. I think that was when I got a real sense of what was happening. everything was paralyzed, there were no comments, there was no hysterics, people were looking, in shock, and crying when they saw that. Meanwhile I saw the second tower falling “, recalls Isabelle with emotion.-
The attempt to leave the city after the attack was a real challenge for the Portuguese-American, who was in transit for eight hours.
The shock reflected in the faces and the difficulties of the teams in reaching the ground are still some of the most present memories. “I will never forget for the rest of my life the ordinary passenger cars leaving the city and the route, until I get home. Ambulances, fire department cars … Just as we were having trouble leaving the city, they they were having difficulties getting in. It was congestion on both sides. But on our side we were fleeing and on the opposite side they were going to meet in order to help “.-
On September 11, 2001, while Isabelle tried to leave the city, Luís Mendes, a Portuguese architect, was called to help. He headed the teams to remove the wreckage from the Twin Towers and was involved in the project to rebuild the entire area surrounding Ground Zero, where the towers were located.
Luís was in the office when he received the call that would take him to the center of the attack with an emergency team. “A police car came to pick me up and when I get to Manhattan I see a scene, I thought it was in a movie. I was in a surreal situation, I couldn’t believe it. On 1st Avenue I only saw waves of people running, it was totally brutal. I hope I never see such a thing again “.-
In the following days, Isabelle, with the ambassador Cruz de Almeida, had the mission of assisting Portuguese citizens in search of relatives who were victims of the attacks.
“A line was opened at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for people who wanted to know about family members with whom they had no contact for 10, 20 years. We had many requests for the location and identification of Portuguese citizens who died in the attack. It was a job quite difficult and long “, he admits. Five Portuguese died in the Twin Towers.
19 years later, Isabelle considers that the attack is still present in the memory of New Yorkers.
“There is a noise over the buildings, an airplane or a helicopter and people immediately have a tendency to look. 9/11 was indeed a milestone for all New Yorkers. There were many people who chose for going out, looking for jobs outside the city. I am still in love with the city “, she admits.
“Sometimes I still have difficulty in identifying what happened. I am afraid whenever I go through the tunnels to access the city. I only feel good when I get out. It is not because I am afraid of anything, it is because any day can be a target again “.-
For Luís, participation in the project was essential in his career, but although he felt the weight of responsibility, he quickly devoted himself to other jobs “too complex for the city to be” protected “, not only laboratories, hospitals, but a better, more effective technology for attacks that could happen “.
The Portuguese was vice-president of the 9/11 Memorial and a key element in the project for the reconstruction and transformation of the space that keeps the stories of the first attack of the century. The attacks left their mark, but Luís prefers to look to the future. “September 11 little by little went by. You can’t always be thinking about that one. Everyone remembers, but the city has returned to its normality”.
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Photos: Carlo Allegri/Reuters, Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters, Mike Segar, Peter Morgan/Reuters, Ray Stubblebine/Reuters
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