Dialogue: Huge sense of loss for this New Yorker as towers fall

The World Trade Center always represented far more than a couple of massive towers to New Yorkers, writes JACK MAGULLIAN*.

I watched it being built, floor by floor, from my grammar school windows. It was a magical time to grow up beneath the grandeur of the New York skyline. People came from all over the world to view its magnificence. I saw it every day for almost 30 years.

New York City has been the city of dreams; the centre of the world's politics and finances; untouchable by its ravages. Now that's all changed. There has been a loss of innocence and an awakening of a sleeping giant.

When my family get together for the holidays, it has become a tradition for the parents and the grandparents to reminisce about where they were "when they bombed Pearl Harbor".

The fear and the uncertainty for the future had left an everlasting impression on their lives.

Of course there was a tremendous sense of loss for all those lives lost to treachery. But it was the level of their own resolve, fuelled by anger and rage, that made them starkly aware that this was not the end but only the beginning.

I now know how my parents felt on December 7, 1941. Instead of sitting in front of the radio, I was glued to my computer for hours after 1.55 am (our time) on Wednesday.

The phones were initially overloaded. My father had heart surgery on Tuesday and I had been in the dark about his recovery.

News trickled in from Dianne Ellis on Long Island, who had been watching the tragedy from a few kilometres to the east and praying for her friends and relatives in Lower Manhattan.

Sue Wright-Ashland, of Maine, the home of many of America's greatest warriors and thinkers, wrote: "I have always had a problem with things that have happened in this world in the name of religion or politics that make people so sick that innocent human lives can pay the price for whatever it is that is being fought for. What good has ever come of it?"

Americans are aroused.

I finally reached my mother on the telephone. My father was operated on and sent home early, even though he is 74, in poor health and the former chairman of the hospital. Every bed was being made available for survivors.

My niece, Meghan Paterson, came to the phone and told me that many of the local people had made their way to the town's baseball fields and were watching the horror unfold across the Hudson River.

It made me remember a day in 1963 when hundreds of bewildered young students wandered the lonely streets not knowing how to mourn their dead President. I was 9 at the time. I've never forgotten how I felt that day. I prayed that I'd never see another like it.

My home town of Kearny, New Jersey, lies under the shadow of the New York skyline. Its population is made up mostly of the descendants of immigrants. Factory workers from Scotland and Ireland settled the area over a century ago.

They came to flee the savagery of their existence for something better. They did their best to insulate themselves from the wars and prejudices of the Old Country. Their children and grandchildren learned to take the 20-minute subway commute under the Hudson River to the offices of New York.

The World Trade Center has been the staging ground for commuters to New York for three decades.

Beneath the huge twin towers is an equally huge underground complex of shops and garages and a gigantic train station. Tens of thousands of people pass through its many corridors every day.

Tourists from every corner of the Earth snapping pictures, sampling the food, taking in the unique smells and sounds of the self-contained metropolis; businessmen in suits, puffing a last cigarette on the sidewalk before ascending to the sterile environment above; and employees, thousands of them, in every type of uniform performing all sorts of tasks.

Gone, all gone.

The World Trade Center was an office building first. It was home to law firms and trade delegations, foreign banks and diplomats. The world's business was conducted within its walls. And what spectacular walls they were.

The view from the top was the finest man-made spectacle on Earth. When my friend from Kerikeri, Lillian Adams, joined me in the States for a holiday last September, the first place that I took her to was the top of the towers, where we ate hot dogs and I played tour guide.

It was the same for visitors from Japan and Boston and a great place to bring a date.

Every year my trade association held its dinner party at Windows of the World, the sprawling penthouse eatery with one of the world's best wine lists.

There was always so much going on. It was pure excitement to be part of it.

It will be weeks before I know how many of my friends have been killed or injured.

I've been making a checklist of the people who I know were in the city at the time of the attack.

I've just learned that my cousins who work in Manhattan are all accounted for. Thank God. News about my classmates and friends will trickle in. I may never know all of the people I lost.

Imagine waking up some morning and looking out across the Gulf from Auckland and not seeing Waiheke Island where it's been all your life or looking further out and seeing Coromandel in flames, knowing that your mates and relatives are there but there's nothing you can do.

Will you be able to think rationally and suppress your anger long enough to make a decision?

Someone will pay for this. Millions of people are affected and many will suffer. Airlines will install vault-like doors to isolate the cockpits and will put security personnel on every flight.

Entry to the United States will be restricted and unchecked immigration will be terminated. The rest of the world will follow suit.

The people who carried out this loathsome act are dead; cowards afraid to address the consequences of their actions. The evil that enticed and motivated them is real and alive.

It has been uncovered and its intentions exposed for every free person to see. The world has again lost its innocence.

And just like December 7, 1941, this day will live in infamy. Our lives will be forever changed. This is only the beginning.

* Jack Magullian now lives in the Bay of Islands.

Full coverage: Terror in America

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Emergency telephone numbers for friends and family of victims and survivors

These numbers are valid for calls from within New Zealand, but may be overloaded at the moment.

United Airlines: 0168 1800 932 8555

American Airlines: 0168 1800 245 0999

NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade: 0800 872 111

US Embassy in Wellington (recorded info): 04 472 2068

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Air New Zealand flights affected

Air NZ flight information: 0800 737-000.