Use of this site indicates your agreement to the Terms of Service (updated 08/09/2001).

Wally Santana / AP Photo A National Guardsman gives directions to residents Saturday near the site of the World Trade Center attack. Residents cannot move back to their homes yet.

Coping
New Yorkers trickle back to homes
As numbness wears off, residents adjust to challenges they face in a changed city

By Michael H. Hodges / The Detroit News

Steve Wood Jolanta Benal of Brooklyn, with her dog Izzy, placed flowers across the street from her apartment in the growing memorial at Fire Squad No. 1, which lost 12 of its 30 firefighters. Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

   NEW YORK -- The paralysis gripping Lower Manhattan since Tuesday's kamikaze attacks ebbed a little at week's end, allowing some refugees -- but by no means all -- to return to homes and pets they hadn't seen since the world turned upside down.
   New Yorkers are slowly losing the numbness, which has been replaced by rising fury and an awareness of the ways -- from the near-constant bomb threats to telephones that work like they did 100 years ago -- that life has suddenly become more difficult in this always-challenging town.
   Some coped by immersing themselves in their work or the rescue effort. Thousands choked bridges and tunnels to flee the city for the weekend. Many took recourse in anesthesia -- bars have been notably full. Others simply turned off their TVs.
   Until Friday, much of the city was inaccessible, with a disaster zone over a mile square fenced off by police barricades -- roughly the equivalent of downtown Detroit south of the Fisher Freeway between the Lodge and the Chrysler. Nobody but authorized rescue workers get into ground zero.
   Residents of upscale Battery Park City, blocks from the twin towers, will not return home for weeks. One of those, Jim Abramson, figures he might get home in a week or two, but doubts his ex-wife, who lives nearby, will be back in her badly damaged building for a month.
   "We've all been camping out at my father's apartment," said Abramson, who helps businesses stage elaborate events. "I feel very displaced. More than that; I have no desire to go back there."
   The view from his bedroom and kitchen was of the twin towers, "and the thought of having to look at that," he said, "is incredibly depressing."
   After standing on line for almost 12 hours, his former wife, Liz Cruise, was finally able to get into her building Friday to climb the 24 pitch-black floors with emergency workers to rescue her cat Sally.
   At Canal Street, Marion and Bill Hewitt showed their driver's licenses to police officers, returning to their TriBeCa apartment six blocks north of the World Trade Center for the first time since the conflagration.
   They stayed away for as long as they did, said Marion, pushing a stroller carrying beaming baby Diane, "because I was worried about the air with a 6-month-old."
   Concerns about asbestos in the nauseating smoke have been on everyone's minds, although an Environmental Protection Agency official said tests on Saturday indicated no danger except right at the disaster site.
   The smoke's stench is "like a crematorium," said high-school teacher Martin Springhetti on Friday, echoing the widespread assumption that it carries the odor of incinerated flesh.
   Springhetti and his family were walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to get their car and escape the city for the weekend. Hustling in a steady downpour, Springhetti pushed a cart loaded with bags and a bird cage housing their cockateel, Lucy. He joked about looking "like Depression-era Okies."
   The family lives in Lower Manhattan on the opposite side of the island from the disaster site, but like most downtowners, they haven't had electricity or hot water since Tuesday, and have to climb darkened stairwells. Despite this, they're still living at home.
   The worst, said Springhetti's wife, Naomi Teppich, was the full day it took to clean up the soot and dust that flooded through their open windows.
   In Park Slope, Brooklyn, free-lance copy editor Jolanta Benal -- whose foot surgery Wednesday was postponed -- tried three separate times Thursday to give blood, only to be turned away because they had enough.
   "Which is great," she said, "but it's frustrating not to be able to help. Instead, I give money." She and her partner, Sarah Egan, also placed a bouquet across the street from their apartment in the growing memorial at Fire Squad No. 1, which lost 12 of its 30 firemen in the conflagration, and now sports black-and-purple funeral bunting from its balcony.
   Also searching for a sense of utility were Park Slopers Amanda Raji and her mother, Alycia Whitmore, who said they've mostly "been going to mass a lot," and like many New Yorkers, are still too scared to take the subways for fear of attack.
   After discovering that American flags have sold out of stores all over town, they took matters into their own hands.
   "We borrowed a friend's and just Xeroxed it," said Raji, who spent Friday afternoon taping them to 100 shop and restaurant windows.
   "Only one person refused to let us put one up," said Raji, who declined to identify the business. "But," she added, "we're going to tell everyone we know not to eat there."

You can reach Michael Hodges at (313) 222-6021 or mhodges@detnews.com.