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News story - Sept. 12, 2001

Jackson feels pain of attack
Residents scramble to check on friends, family in N.Y., D.C.

By Jim Stanford and Carolyn Smith

As the nation reeled in the wake of a savage terrorist attack Tuesday, Jackson Hole residents scrambled to get in touch with friends and family in New York and Washington, D.C.

Flames engulfed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center when Zale Hansen got a wake-up call she described as a "mother's worst nightmare."

A friend roused Hansen from her daze with one quick phrase: "Turn on the television, quick."

Hansen's daughter, 23-year-old Tracy Moss, works next door to the World Trade Center. Hansen turned on her TV and watched footage of the destruction, then tried to call her daughter.

Other residents made frantic calls, too. Most got busy lines, dead ends. Fear began to mount.

Hansen thought of a trip she took to New York City over Mother's Day to visit her daughter. "We walked through the World Trade Center because her work was right next door," Hansen said. "I was so afraid that's where she was."

By the time she left a message for Moss, Hansen was in tears. Moss, it turns out, was late for work and escaped the carnage.

"It only took four minutes for her to call me back," Hansen said. "It felt like four hours."

Elizabeth Kingwill fretted about her son, snowboarder Rob, who was in New York promoting Jackson Hole Mountain Resort with Olympic gold medalist Tommy Moe and resort spokeswoman Anna Olson. Biathlete David Gieck was there as well, along with Susie Barnett-Bushong from Grand Targhee, Chris Hansen from the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce and Chuck Coon from the Wyoming Division of Tourism.

Such tours typically take the promoters to places like the World Trade Center, Elizabeth Kingwill said. "Their job for the Ski Corp is to go to places like that and be interviewed," she said.

Luckily, Rob Kingwill and his companions weren't at the trade center Tuesday, his mother said, but "somebody's kid was." Rob, 26, called home shortly after the blast, and his mom carried her cell phone over to his girlfriend's house.

"He sounded kinda scared," said girlfriend Brittney Mahanna, 24. "He just said it was chaos there."

Olson was getting ready to leave the Metropolitan Hotel on 51st Street and Lexington Ave., about three miles from the World Trade Center, when news of the attack spread. She joined the other Jacksonites in the lobby, and the group watched in horror as details of the devastation were reported on TV.

"Our initial thought was this cannot really be happening ­ it must have been an accident," Olson said. "Within minutes it all unfolded and got worse and worse and worse."

In the normally bustling Big Apple, an eerie calm prevailed. "Most people were walking around with a look of shock on their faces," Olson said. "It's beyond one's worst nightmare."

After walking about 20 blocks to film an episode of the "Tim McCarver Show," the Jackson group cancelled the rest of its appointments. The group was scheduled to fly to Atlanta on Thursday for more meetings with media but scrapped those plans.

With air traffic grounded, Olson said she was looking into catching a ride back to Jackson Hole with a resort employee preparing to drive to Wyoming.

"We'd all rather be in Jackson Hole right now, that's for sure," Olson said glumly.

Moss, lucky to have been tardy that morning, said in a phone interview punctuated by the scream of ambulance sirens that she was on the way out of her apartment when she heard the first news reports.

"As I grabbed my bag to leave, a broadcast came on that said one of the world trade towers was hit or bombed," Moss said. "I sat down and watched."

The action was occurring across the street from her office in the Liberty Plaza Building. "I was running late [Tuesday] morning," Moss said. "I'm so glad."

So was mother Hansen, who said Moss' chronic tardiness used to be a pet peeve.

"That's been one of my complaints about Tracy," Hansen said. "But thank goodness she was running late."

As Moss watched the broadcast on her television one-and-a-half miles from the towers, fellow Jackson Hole High School alumnus Tim Tomkinson Jr., 23, watched in horror from a Greenwich Village apartment.

Tomkinson was on his way to school when he heard about the World Trade Center attack on the Howard Stern radio show.

"At first I thought he was joking," Tomkinson said. He ran to an intersection and saw a gaping hole in one of the 110-story buildings. From there, he rushed to his girlfriend's apartment.

The two had an unobstructed view of the World Trade Center towers only minutes before the buildings collapsed. They used binoculars and observed a tragic and disturbing sight.

"We could see people jumping out, jumping for their lives," Tomkinson said. "They would rather fall to their death than burn to death."

When they saw the first tower collapse, Tomkinson said he and his friend burst into tears.

"We were traumatized, scared and crying," Tomkinson said.

Tomkinson and Moss said the atmosphere in New York was ominous. People walked down the street still sooty and with blank stares, Moss said. At 3 p.m., Moss said she still had not heard from friends who worked in the towers.

Former Jackson resident John Carter watched from his apartment in Stuyvesant Town as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center.

Friends, co-workers could be dead

"I wish I hadn't seen that," he said.

Carter later stood on the roof of his building and witnessed the second tower's collapse.

An attorney, Carter used to work for a firm on the 105th floor of one of the Twin Towers and was at work in 1993 when a terrorist's bomb shook the building. He feared many of his old co-workers died Tuesday morning.

"I don't think any of them made it," he said.

Mike Morey, founder of the market research group Morey Associates, said he was not optimistic about colleagues who worked in the first tower attacked.

"I have a bulk letter I send to all of our associates, and I'm holding some," Morey said. "For one thing, their office isn't there anymore. For another, I don't know if these people are alive."

Morey Associates operates a leg of its business in Manhattan, called City Pass, that offers customers tickets to six New York City attractions ­ including the World Trade Center Observatory ­ for $34.

Morey said his business will try to recoup after the disaster.

"We are trying to address how we can make adjustments to our business," he said.

Alan Hirschfield, who once made New York City his home, said he was still waiting to hear from friends and business associates, some who worked in the towers.

"It's frustrating," Hirschfield said. "We just don't know what happened.

"It's a tragic, tragic day."

- Angus Thuermer contributed to this report.

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