“Six months later, I returned to the scene of the attack and there was still a smell of smoke” “Journal La Capital de Mar del Plata

By Luciana Mateo
@LucianaMateo

Sirens, bullfights, people covered in dust. But above all the smell. A constant smell of smoke, sweet, very strong, which permeated everything. These are the first memories that come to mind of Patricia Muñoz, a journalist from Mar del Plata living 28 years ago in the United States who worked on September 11, 2001, half a kilometer from the World Trade Center (WTC), at the time when two planes hijacked by terrorists identified with Al Qaeda hit the Twin Towers in New York.

“At 6 months I returned to this place and you could still smell that smell in the air; It took me several weeks, even months, to process all this, ”he confides in an interview with LA CAPITAL.

“This Tuesday was a beautiful day, this week the lessons had started”, he reconstitutes. My boss was Chilean, so we were talking about Argentina celebrating ‘Teachers’ Day’ and in Chile it was the anniversary of the attack on Salvador Allende ”.

Patricia, who was 35, translated and wrote Spanish financial news for the Dow Jones Company from an office in the Harborside Financial Center – an extension of the WTC across the Hudson River – 15 minutes from Las Torres by train and half an hour on foot.

At 8:46 a.m., while preparing for the pre-open market commentary, he heard the thunder of a detonation and, from a window facing the World Trade Center, saw smoke billowing from the tower. North.

He thought it was just a fire.

“One of the premises of Dow Jones is that for something to be news, it has to ‘move the markets.’ My boss thought that didn’t move them, so everyone just continued with what they were doing,” comments he does.

A few minutes later, it’s the second tremor.

Then he saw the plane: it was United Airlines Flight 175 to Los Angeles, commanded by five Al Qaeda operatives, which, at more than 800 kilometers an hour, plunged into the tower. south, making it clear that it was an attack.

“Dust in the air stuck to the nose”

It is impossible to imagine at that first moment the magnitude of what was happening, hard to believe that it was the worst terrorist attack against the United States, an event which soon after the 21st century would go on. mark the history of the world with fire.

Later, it was learned that there were 4 hijacked planes and that in addition to the Twin Towers they had struck the Pentagon in Washington and a field in Pennsylvania, killing a total of 2,977 and injuring over 25,000.

“We were in New York,” says Patricia. “And there’s always something going on in New York. Two days before we had a Frenchman hanging from the Statue of Liberty with a parachute, ”he recalls.

This is why – he assures – “it took us a long time to fall. I think the smoke was there for a long time and covered everything; the day he left and the hole where the Towers were, we realized that there was something huge there ”.

What followed is known.

“They evacuated us all. The street was total chaos, a lack of siren control, there were people full of dust and dust in the air stuck to their noses, ”he recaps.

And he adds that “for weeks we had this constant, like sweet, very strange smell of smoke. And the lights… already on the road the spotlights were visible because the rescuers were looking for bodies all night ”.

“It took several weeks, if not months, to process all of this,” explains the journalist from Mar del Plata.
“When I was 6 months old I came back and I still could smell this odor in the air,” he remarks.

“Everyone has been affected in one way or another”

This September 11, the world followed the fall of the Towers through television screens, dozens of people photographed or filmed various sequences and still today unpublished material with recordings of the moment continues to appear.

Patricia says that “we had cell phones but no one had a connection because the antennas were at the World Trade Center, so when I was able to communicate with my husband I had already taken the girls (who were 2 and 5 years old) ) from school and my old wife whom I had already called, in despair ”.

He also remembers that he was not able to get home until midnight when the roads were cleared.
“I had to return several calls and, the next day, return to my place of work,” he recalls.

The window in his office through which he saw the attack was closed because many people found it painful to bring up the image.

“Everyone has been affected in one way or another,” he said.

“I live in a very small town, in Old Bridge. There, we lost 8 people and there are towns that lost a lot of people, ”he says.

“The fear did not last long”

Two decades later, Muñoz describes the impressions the attack left on him.

“I had a feeling it was going to change American history, and it really was,” he says.

And he analyzes that “here there was a feeling that whatever went wrong was going on outside, so it was hard for a lot of people to understand that they weren’t that safe here. , that it was not so easy to isolate themselves from the world and protect themselves. “

The journalist, who currently works at Rutgers State University in New Jersey, points out in this regard that what most affected American society has been the loss of the sense of security.

“I always say I’m from a country where people are used to things going wrong, and that’s why they have a plan B, C, D and E. But here they believe everything will turn out to be okay. good all the time. , he says, and explains that “so I saw that the fear did not last long because we had to move forward, we had to raise the country, something very typical of North American pride.

“At that time,” he recalls, “President George Bush said, ‘everyone is shopping to spend money because it’s the only way to go. If everyone locks themselves in their homes out of fear and stops buying, it stops and they win.

“That was the message,” he concludes.

The 20-year debate

Twenty years after the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, each decision related to the commemoration of September 11 is put into consultation and social debate.

“Every little thing that is done was and is a conversation, everything is very sensitive,” says Patricia Muñoz from New York.

In this context, he recalls that after September 11, “we spent a week during which the only thing that the television showed 24 hours a day was the fall of the towers. After a year, they ceased to be broadcast, they were even removed from the films, and at 5 years old, the subject was brought up again ”.

“At the same time, they started to debate what was going to happen in New York, if a cemetery would be built, a Memorial, how it was going to be preserved …”, he tells LA CAPITAL.

And he explains that “10 years ago it was decided that the memory of 9/11 was over and instead 9/11 started to be taught in schools because the boys who entered it didn’t had not already experienced it “.

On this anniversary the lights will shine again: two beams of blue light simulate the Twin Towers.

“With the emission of the Covid, everything is more controlled, but relatives will read the names of the deceased, which already makes it a ceremony of nearly 3 hours,” says Patricia.

And he points out that “there are still people in New York who don’t go to work that day, who take the day in a special way.”