A former Northlander working amid the nightmarish aftermath of New York's World Trade Center devastation lives in anguish.
In an e-mail home to Whangarei, Father Emile Frische, a Roman Catholic priest who works in Manhattan, writes of almost unimaginable tragedy, but also the triumph of the human spirit, in the wake of the terrorist attacks that killed thousands.
The 56-year-old former Whangarei Boys High School pupil rang his mother soon after hijacked planes slammed into New York's World Trade Center towers to say he was safe. But he had watched one of the towers disintegrate.
Almost 7000 people are dead or missing from the attacks on New York and Washington DC, and from his office Fr Emile could see the flames and rubble left after the New York incidents.
The tragedy has taken its toll on Fr Emile. He recounted his experiences in his e-mail to fellow priest Fr Mike Wooller in Whangarei: "When I go home at night, I'm stunned at what I hear from all those who come to talk, to pray, to cry. I sit in my room unable to sleep, having to cry myself to sleep many a night," Fr Emile wrote.
He told of being asked to go to a hotel where the relatives and friends of those who worked for the Cantor Fitzgerald company had gathered. The company, which occupied the 101st to 105th floors of one of the trade center towers, had had 1000 employees.
"Seven hundred and fifty people of this company died on the spot. Can you imagine what I walked in to at the hotel? I have been with them every day since then, for about nine hours a day ... physically present, that is."
Fr Emile said his life had not been the same since the attacks. "I doubt whether anyone's life here has."
- NORTHERN ADVOCATE
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See also:
Full coverage: America responds
Northlander ministers to New Yorkers struck by tragedy
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