The Atlantic Monthly has been running print and online campaign for the upcoming series on cleaning up the wreckage of the World Trade Center, written by veteran war correspondent William Langewiesche. They emailed subscribers a PDF with selections from the series today, as well as a link to an HTML version. From the two pages they excerpted, this looks like it’ll be an amazing read:
For thirty years the Twin Towers had stood above the streets as all tall buildings do, as a bomb of sorts, a repository for the prodigious energy originally required to raise so much weight so high. Now, in a single morning, in twin ten-second pulses, the towers released that energy back into New York. Massive steel beams flew through the neighborhood like gargantuan spears, penetrating subway lines and underground passages to depths of thirty feet, crushing them, rupturing water mains and gas lines, and stabbing high into the sides of nearby office towers, where they lodged.
…
They went out in single file. Lombardi found himself on a sidewalk, but otherwise noticed no change from the conditions that had existed inside. He lost track of his companions and walked down the street in confusion. He remembered the roar, and again thought of the bombing in 1993: had something gone off in the underground? He passed the south pedestrian bridge, which he recognized, and headed south on West Street. He had a scratch on his forehead that was bleeding. People came up to him offering help, and someone gave him some water. Finally he got far enough away to look back. He saw the North Tower standing, but not the South. He thought, “Wait a minute. The North Tower is there. I know the North Tower is there. But what happened to the South?” It was confounding, and he could not conceive of an answer. He was an engineer, but human, too. He walked on for a while, until for the second time that day he heard a roar. He stopped and turned and watched in disbelief as the North Tower fell.
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