But he never seriously considered that the Sears Tower–the sleek, black, 110-story monument to American ingenuity–could someday be the target of terrorists.
Until this week.
“I had to think twice,” Joe said Wednesday morning, as he walked toward the building for the first time since the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center. “I was a little hesitant, a little cautious. But it’s better to deal with your fears.”
And so, like thousands of other Chicagoans who live and work in the city’s high-rises, Joe returned, but with a new mind-set: Skyscrapers, those rock-solid structures of metal and glass, are not invincible after all.
The terrifying images of New York’s twin towers collapsing, seen over and over again on television and in newspapers, left some here feeling a bit more vulnerable.
“I never imagined a building could topple like that,” said Dave Muresan as he took a smoke break outside the Sears Tower Wednesday morning. “But they can.”
Some workers returning to the high-rise, just 24 hours after being evacuated for security reasons, said they had attended a seminar when they first started their jobs, telling them what to do in case of fire, power outage–or a bombing. This week, many of those anxieties came rushing back.
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“I think the central message is it’s natural to be apprehensive,” said Joseph Himle, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Michigan. “The second message is, it’s important to confront those apprehensions as quickly as possible.”
Some simply couldn’t do that Wednesday, leaving prominent high-rise office buildings half full.
Others returned with a renewed sense of resolve, determined not to let terrorist attacks hundreds of miles away change their routines here.
“One of the best things to do is to come to work today,” said Nick Tucker, who works in the Aon Building. “I think it’s important to send a message that we’re not going to lie down and play dead.”
Confidence not entirely gone
Hal Oates, who lives on the 80th floor of the John Hancock Center, said nothing will change his enthusiasm for living in a high-profile downtown high-rise.
“If it happens, it happens,” said Oates, who has lived in the Hancock, 875 N. Michigan Ave., for 26 years. “You can’t have someone with machine guns guarding [you] from airplanes.”
Diane Sherman, who lives nearby in Water Tower Place, said the events over the past few days were disquieting.
“Anybody who wants to find a way to destroy something will always find a way,” she said. Still, she remained in her high-rise home.
Mark Reinecke, chief of the Division of Psychology at Northwestern University, said the saturation coverage of Tuesday’s attacks increases the likelihood of bad memories and can even intrude into dreams.
But most anxieties, he said, will fade in the coming days and for most people, life will quickly go back to normal.
Emil Coccaro, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago, said the best remedy is for people to “just act like human beings and be compassionate.”
“I think the average person will realign themselves to where they were before,” he said. “People are pretty resilient.”
There were obstacles.
Throughout Chicago, televisions carried continuing coverage of the attacks, co-workers spoke incessantly about the tragedy, and fresh reminders were everywhere.
Police officers patrolled near historic buildings, idling tow trucks sat ready to whisk away illegally parked cars, and plastic orange barrels along curbsides encouraged motorists to keep moving.
Workers call in sick
Outside 311 S. Wacker, Dan Lukas sat in a grassy area, waiting to have a new identification card made. In the wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks, his building had beefed up security. Still, he felt insecure.
“It’s not our choice to come to work today,” Lukas said. “I’m very nervous. I don’t want to get on an elevator.”
Across the street, at the Sears Tower, officials said about half of the 10,000 people who work there stayed home Wednesday–some because they worked for financial companies and had little to do with the stock market closed, others because they were simply too anxious.
Those who did show up were handed a letter from the tower’s management, saying it was “confident that the building has been, is, and will continue to be a safe place to work.”
At Tressler, Soderstrom, Maloney & Priess, a law firm on the 22nd floor, recruitment coordinator Sharon Towles spent the morning fielding calls from employees, using a marker to note the names of people who had called in sick.
“All the people in green aren’t coming in,” she said, holding up a company directory that was beginning to glow with marker ink. By 9:30 a.m., 27 of the firm’s 153 employees had called to say they wouldn’t be coming in. Towles considered joining them.
“Frankly,” she said, “I don’t want to be here today.”
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