In the fall of 2001, Alene was the new chief stew on the 163-foot Oceanfast M/Y Mystique. She was at work on the boat at Chelsea Piers in New York City, about 20 blocks from Ground Zero. She witnessed the entire event. Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the attacks in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. Here are Alene’s thoughts from the weeks after the attacks.

We were called out on deck moments after the first plane struck and, of course, were confused and disoriented. When the second plane hit, there was no question that this was no accident. I have never been so afraid in my life. I expected more planes to fall from the sky, and probably bombs, too. 

The U.S. Coast Guard closed the port immediately. We could not move the boat, so we sat at what rapidly became Command Central. The Red Cross, FBI and CIA set up temporary facilities in the area. Chelsea Piers was handy, as the permanent ice rink could serve as a temporary morgue.

Along the sidewalks on Westside Highway came a flood of people heading north. There was a hush to them, hardly anyone spoke, and here and there people were caked in fine beige powder.

By 11 a.m., the authorities had established a security perimeter at Canal Street, a demarcation line between civilization and madness that civilians would not be allowed past. The problem was, the police detailed to this task were just as lost and stunned as the rest of us.

Once past this line, authority had little lo do with rank or uniforms; in the peculiar kind of meritocracy that takes over in a place of chaos, leadership now fell to anyone with the surety or charisma to seize it.

Our crew volunteered as soon as we could. We met two recruits, Ben and Laura, who instructed us that we would be patient administration volunteers. Our job was to accompany the stretchers from the ambulances to the doctors, getting as much patient information as possible to maintain records and so we could inform family of the patient's whereabouts. 

Groups assigned by color -- green and yellow being ambulatory and moderately injured, red and black being seriously injured or deceased -- divided the area. We were told to expect 20,000 casualties that first night.

The number of volunteers increased every minute. There were so many of us that we were asked to wait outside for the ambulances to start arriving. It was a shock to suddenly be out in the beautiful sunshine, with the carnage just a few blocks away. 

By this time -- it must have been 4 p.m. -- ferry service had been set up at the pier and thousands of people waited patiently on line to get on boats going across the Hudson to New Jersey. A man noticed that most of us volunteers had respirator masks around our necks. He cried out something about chemical or biological attacks, but was quickly silenced by the response,"they’re volunteers," after which we were greeted with applause.

It was amazing to see how people treated each other then, with so much kindness and respect and concern, trying to do or say anything to help someone else's suffering. Some peoples' eyes were desperate, or terribly sad and vacant, as if the mind was trying to erase what the eyes had seen. 

At our triage station, we ran out of supplies to give volunteers so our crew went to the boat and gathered all the pens and legal pads we could find to create makeshift admin forms, and masking tape to make armbands to label ourselves as patient administration volunters -- PAD/VOLLY.

My co-worker, Melinda, later commented that she looked over and saw that I was one of the people giving instructions. It was organization for organization's sake, coming up with a plan of action in the absence of either plan or action. 

But if it was absurd, it was also inspiring. It was the very first steps toward rebuilding an ordered society in a corner of Manhattan where it had suddenly vanished, and it was being done with black magic markers and masking tape by the natural leaders among us. Here, authority stemmed from staying calm and focused on each person as instructions were given. But in our collective impotence, we were all hoping for someone to tell us what to do.

We -- all the hundreds of volunteers -- waited and waited for hours for the injured to arrive. But they didn't come. No one was coming out alive from that awful cloud a few blocks away, and we were all just there -- doctors, nurses, volunteers like me -- stacking boxes, erecting eyewash kits, making neat little trays of gauze bandages and syringes. It was only by staying busy that our minds could detach from the enormity of what had happened and let us believe we were doing something to help. 

The sun set over the river and for a while, maybe a half hour, there was a stunning gold tinge to the sky. Up and down the highway stretched a line of emergency vehicles and knots of waiting firemen and medics and police. Just waiting. 

As night fell, it became clear that no one would be coming out of the ruins and flames anymore. We knew that many more had died than first expected. No victims meant no survivors. The next day there were paramedics sitting on the sidewalk crying.

After all these years, what I remember as having been the hardest to see was all of the people going around with photos of their loved ones asking everybody if they had seen them. There was not much hope that anybody else was coming out alive. 

It was in these first few days that I began to conceptualize what had happened. It was awkward to say the least. I felt like an imposter, someone who was there, witnessing the grief of so many.

And yet there was hope and joy in the hundreds of people who lined the sidewalks bearing signs and cheering on those who were going into the site.

At Chelsea Piers, there was something to do 24 hours a day, and living on the premises as we did, we could step off the boat at any time and feel useful simply by unloading cases of water and putting then onto transport boats going to the site. Every day there were lists posted of what was needed on the site -- dry clothing for rescue workers, boots, eye drops, all sorts of things we could send along.

Things seemed a little more normal after a few days. Traffic came back on the streets and the hundreds of taxis that had been parked along the streets began to move again. I had some interesting conversations with taxi drivers in these first few days.

One overwhelming sentiment was, "Why is your suffering any greater than ours? Other peoples of the world have lived through terrorist attacks for years."

It made me think about all that we have and take for granted every day. In the Sept. 24 issue of New Yorker magazine, in an article titled “This is Not a Movie,” Anthony Lane wrote “The shock springs not only from the intolerable loss of life but from a growing realization that America had so much else to lose. For every sad skeptic who mocked or resented the United States for the lack of such tragedies in our history, there were a thousand hopefuls who thought it a compelling reason to come here -- away from the after burn of combat and later on, from the daily management of risk.

"Thousands died on Sept. 11 and they died for real; but thousands died together and therefore something lived. The most important, if distressing, images to emerge from those hours are not of the raging towers; it is the shots of people falling from the ledges, and in particular, of two people jumping in tandem. …

"On Sept. 11 -- in uncounted ways, in final phone calls, in circumstances that Hollywood should no longer try to match -- it was proved true all over again: What will survive of us is love.”

About the Author

Alene Keenan

Stew

Alene Keenan has been a megayacht stew for 19 years. She offers interior crew training and crew placement through Nautic Crew International as well as the workshops, seminars, and onboard training offered through her company, Stewardess Solutions (www.stewardesssolutions.com).