For many, attacks hit close to home

Numbing. Shocking. Surreal. Amazing. Horrendous.

And close to home.

These were the words Penn students, alumni and faculty used to describe yesterday's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon.

The University population holds widespread connections to the metropolitan areas of both New York and Washington. Large numbers of students come to Penn from both areas, and both cities claim large numbers of alumni from each year's graduating class.

Several Penn faculty members regularly commute from New York, and students typically work at summer internships in each of the two cities.

"It was just shocking because everybody here at least knows someone in New York," Wharton sophomore Sona Karia said. "We're so close to New York. Either we have family who lives there or works there, or we have friends who just graduated from here who work there."

Elizabeth Murray, director of membership for the Penn Club of New York, estimated that the number of alumni living in the city's five boroughs is roughly 60,000.

The numbers of graduates who were in the World Trade Center towers is not yet known.

According to Career Services statistics, 215 College graduates took jobs in New York and 30 took jobs in Washington in 2001. And a whopping 67 percent of 2000 Wharton graduates are employed in the Mid-Atlantic, many of them in New York.

Eric Tucker, a 2001 College graduate now at Columbia Journalism School, rushed to the World Trade Center site yesterday morning after receiving an assignment from his professor.

"The first thing you could see was the smoke, just black clouds of smoke, from blocks away," said Tucker, who arrived around 10:30, just after the towers toppled. "I think the most startling thing is that this is where an icon of a nation used to be."

Tucker said he encountered lots of police barricades as he searched for soot-covered survivors to interview.

"There was just lots of confusion," he said. "People are absolutely horrified."

Megan McGill, a College junior who is spending the semester in New York, saw the entire scene from the top floor of a Park Avenue building.

"I looked... out the window and saw a big hole about three-quarters of the way up the World Trade Center," McGill wrote in an e-mail to The Daily Pennsylvanian. "Smoke started blowing out of the building....

"All of a sudden -- and this image will stay with me forever -- we saw a plane come very low and very fast right into the second building on the left. Instantly, fear, disbelief and confusion took over me. It's a terrorist attack... I was scared because we were the next tall building in line with the World Trade Center."

Many Penn students have spent recent summers working in both cities -- and several worked in the same buildings that came under attack.

"The first thing that came to mind was the fact that I worked right across the street this summer, and just if this had happened two and a half weeks ago I would have been right there," Engineering senior Zauri Ghatak said.

"You just kind of stare at the TV and try to figure out if you're looking at a movie or not," said Wharton and Engineering senior Andrew Glaser, who worked at the North Tower of the World Trade Center two summers ago. "You realize that there are people you know in there."

Other Penn students from New York and Washington have still not heard from friends and neighbors working in the financial district.

"I was amazed," said Matt Fink, an Engineering senior from Staten Island. "I didn't believe it at first.... I was shaking. I couldn't do anything.

"No one in my family works in lower Manhattan, but I know lots of people at home that do. I can't imagine what's going to happen in the next week or so -- who's going to be alive in the next week. I have no idea."

In Washington, phone systems were shut down, as was subway service. Penn alumni working in the area said that all buildings were treated as government facilities, guarded by top security. Police requested that people stay off the streets, while newscasts asked that they go to the nearest hospital to donate blood.

"Everything was pretty crazy this morning," said Kent Grasso, a 2000 Penn alumnus who works in Washington. "As soon as the Pentagon got hit, our phones went out. There were a lot of rumors going around. It was pretty terrifying."

Four other Penn alumni who work in Washington spent the day watching CNN, concerned both about local attacks and for the many people they knew in New York.

"I live relatively close to downtown, so all my friends who work near the Capitol came to my apartment because they could walk there -- the Metro was shut down," said Carrie Rieger, who graduated from Penn in 2000. "The city's basically in shock. There are people in tears all over the place with family in New York."

"Everyone who was near the Capitol was just trying to get as far away as possible," she added. "Everyone was watching New York, and was in total shock because we all have family there. All the phone lines were busy and all the circuits were busy. It's pretty much trying to get in touch with whoever you can, whenever you can."

Many Penn alumni work on Wall Street, in New York's financial district and in the World Trade Center.

"The first thing on my mind was I have a lot of friends in the World Trade Center," said Jon Awong, a 1998 Penn alumnus who works in Manhattan. "I don't know what their position is -- I hope they got out.

"I know a lot of people at Lehman Brothers at the World Financial Center directly across from the World Trade Center," Awong said. "They were being evacuated so they had to walk along the West Side Highway. They were covered with dust from where the second building fell."

The incident also affected the Penn faculty and staff who travel to the University from homes in New York -- some of whom were temporarily stranded in Philadelphia while public transportation shut down.

"I know there's a lot of traffic between Philadelphia and New York," said City and Regional Planning Professor Eugenie Birch, who lives in New York City and commutes to Philadelphia. "There are many, many people who make this trip."

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