North Plainfield resident Maxine McCormack often travels at night to the edge of the Hudson River at Exchange Place in Jersey City. She quietly looks across the river to where the World Trade Center once stood and remembers her father, Jersey City Fire Dispatcher Joseph Lovero, who was killed in the attacks.
“I haven’t had the nerve to go there,” McCormack said of Ground Zero. “It’s nauseating to me – just thinking about my father lying there.”
Joseph Lovero never hesitated to hop on a fire engine that was answering a call, often assisting the firefighters any way he could. Sept. 11 was no different when he joined Engine Company 18 to head to the site of the attacks to record the event with his camera and aid the firefighters. His volunteering led to his death.
Six months after the attacks, McCormack said the mourning process has not even started yet. “There’s been too many other issues with the whole event,” she said. “It was a big, big loss for the family.”
Since the attacks, the initial minute-by-minute paranoia has subsided, said residents, city officials and mourners. However, everyone confirmed that the attacks altered their perceptions of security, reality and life as they continue to reflect on that day’s events and attempt to put them into perspective today.
“I think things are getting back to normal,” said Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham. “But I think there’s a concern for everybody that our lifestyles have changed. We’re as close to normal as we’ll ever be.”
While the proximity of Hudson County to the attacks directly affected eyewitnesses, family and friends of the victims, the mourning process will continue for some time, Cunningham said. However, many residents have overcome the initial panic that surfaced in the wake of the attacks.
Residents agreed that the fear has dropped and something that resembles normalcy has emerged.
“I felt that the initial panic may have subsided, but in general, there is a feeling of uncertainty that exists,” said Sonia Maldonado, president of the Newport Waterfront Association. Maldonado coordinated a panel discussion on security a few weeks after the attacks. Representatives from the Fire Department and Police Department assured residents that both departments were taking every precaution to ensure safety, including drastic increases in police presence.
Tenants of the Newport high-rises are not as paranoid now, Maldonado said. “I think what’s happened is that it’s stabilized,” she said. “That’s the best we can do. We have to deal with life.”
Karen Elkind, a city activist who was one of the thousands of people volunteering on the waterfront during the attacks, has found that the unthinkable events of Sept. 11 have freed her from previous inhibitions. For Elkind, the things that have frightened her in the past or caused her anger have become insignificant as she re-evaluates her priorities.
“If my car gets scratched, I’ll live with it,” she said. “If my window breaks, I’ll live with it.”
However the attacks on the Towers affected people, the residents of Hudson County are constantly reminded of that change is as present as the view.
“I’m still readjusting,” Elkind said. Coming home from work on the Turnpike, she often expects to see the Twin Towers standing as though it never happened. “I’m still in mourning for the buildings. I loved those buildings,” she said. But rather be driven away from the Hudson by fear, Elkind began to rethink how she lives her life. “I think the impact it had on me was how I viewed my relationships with people,” she said. “They’re more precious than they used to be.”
Also, Elkind discovered a sense of leadership she never exhibited before. When her husband went abroad on business in November, she took over as president of the Hamilton Park Association. “I’m finding that I’m actually successful at it,” she said of managing the meetings and representing the organization in front of city officials.
For others, the attacks have spawned fears about the ongoing war that has emerged. Erik-Anders Nilsson, a Jersey City resident who rushed to Ground Zero as the towers crumbled to volunteer his time, has been active in protesting the war since the United States began to bomb Afghanistan. As a member of the Hudson County Coalition for Peace and Justice as well as World Peace 911, Nilsson has been voiced his opinions in public forums for the past six months.
“Being a peace activist, a lot of people think we don’t care about what happened,” Nilsson said. “That’s completely untrue. I say we care even more. We don’t want anyone else suffering.”
But dealing with the images he saw on the day he traveled to Ground Zero has scarred him emotionally. Recently, he entered a photography exhibit dedicated to Sept. 11, and had to leave within a few minutes. “I was just getting too emotional,” Nilsson said. “When I was in a room covered in pictures of it, it was very upsetting.”
Charles T. Smith, a captain for the Fire Department, also said that the images have haunted him since his engine company traveled to the site on Sept. 11.
While he can bring up those images in “full color” any time he wants, he has learned to shuffle them to the back of his mind. “It’s hard to put in a reality state,” Smith said. “It’s a bad dream.”
Smith served in the front lines of the Vietnam War between 1968 and 1969. He said that he had never witnessed anything like the destruction and carnage he saw on Sept. 11.
Staying alert
Police and safety officials have remained on high alert since the first plane struck the North tower. Army officers dressed in camouflage still stand in front of the toll booths at the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. The National Guard is visible on the banks of the Hudson River.
“We’ve modified everything where we have sector cars checking on strategic areas,” said Edgar Martinez, deputy director of the Police Department. According to Martinez, the Police Department has been educated on terrorist strikes, weapons of mass destruction, and emergency plans since the attacks. “We’re putting into effect a critique of what we did wrong during 9/11 and what we can learn from those mistakes,” Martinez said. He said that the Police Department was not prepared for aspects of the crisis, like how to manage the widespread volunteer effort that surfaced on the waterfront.
While the volume of emergency calls have drastically declined since November, the Hazmat unit of the Jersey City Fire Department has continued to handle calls about suspicious packages, Anthrax-related fears, and other false alarms for the entire county. “Any routine thing that comes through the dispatch, we question,” said Jose Cruz, deputy director of the Fire Department. “We don’t think anything is normal anymore. We’re suspicious about everything.”