Transplanted Hawai'i residents recall ordeal
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hawai'i residents, shaken by Tuesday's terroristic catastrophes, still feel the need to talk about their experiences and anxieties long after the horror in New York and Washington set the nation reeling.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Few were more shaken than Honolulu banking executive Walter Dods, who for several hours sat helplessly, dialing his son Peter's cell phone number to no avail.
Patrons at the Hawai'i State Library watch television coverage of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington.
Finally, there was a break in the phone gridlock, and he got through. Peter answered, on the run.
An investment banking analyst, Peter Dods, 24, told his father that he had been headed into his office, across the street from the World Trade Center, when a wall of fleeing people forced him into reverse.
Minutes later, an explosion. He found himself running, stepping over bodies and body parts.
"He was up to 14th Street, trying to get to FDR Drive," a thoroughfare that runs along the waterfront in lower Manhattan, by the time his father reached him, the elder Dods said. And in the shock and confusion of the moment, Peter Dods wasn't sure just what he would have to do to stay alive. "He said, 'I was a damned good swimmer growing up in Hawai'i, so I can jump in the water if I have to.' "
Walter Dods can laugh about his son's Hawai'i reference. But on Tuesday, Dods' "heart dropped" when he glimpsed his son's building in televised coverage of the crash. "I was just beside myself for two or three hours," he said.
Former Honolulu resident Jennifer Tom experienced her own fears. A financial analyst who has been working in New York City for just a year, Tom had been ordered to evacuate her office, blocks from the doomed trade center.
"You could hear the scream of crying and yelling and disbelief," said Tom, a 1996 Punahou graduate. "And then I turned around and I think I saw the south tower collapsing."
Tom began walking the 40 blocks to her apartment near Times Square, then boarded a bus. She reached an area near Grand Central Station and the Met Life building. People were running from buildings and buses, saying there had been a bomb threat nearby. Tom got off the bus and walked the rest of the way home.
As she passed heavily guarded landmarks that included Rockefeller Center, "I realized that there really was no safe place in New York City," she said. "It really was scary."
Staff writer Robbie Dingemann contributed to this report.
Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.
