New Iberia resident remembers 7 hour walk home from Manhattan after 9/11 attacks

NEW IBERIA, La. (KLFY) — Last week, we told you the story of a New Iberia resident’s commute to work in New York back in 2001, just blocks away from the Sept. 11 attacks.

Her trip back home that day, from Manhattan to the Bronx, was even more difficult.

Danita Trahan says 25 years later, the images, sights and sounds are still fresh in her mind.

“We really had no direction. We didn’t know what to do,” she said. “All of our communication lines were at the top of both of those towers. Cell phones, cable. Any kind of way to get through to the public was pretty much gone. All we knew, again, was just the kind of things coming out. We did not know about Washington, D.C. We didn’t know about the Pentagon, and we didn’t know about Pennsylvania up to that point. We were literally stuck in the dark.”

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After some time, they were told the subways were closed. Millions of people took to the streets to figure out a way to get home. She had to find her way back on foot.

It took her about 7 hours to finally reach her destination.

“I lived in the Bronx at the time, so I cleared from 14th Street up to about 96th, 100th Street,” Trahan said. “So, you can count how many blocks that would be. And it was again, your kind of just kept going until you found a subway that worked, and it was going in your general direction. I think I still ended up in the Bronx about ten miles from my house, but we were able to get where I needed to go eventually. “

The long walk home gave Danita the chance to reflect.

“You know, when you’re sitting there and you think about what you witnessed and knowing that an hour before you were walking through your Bronx neighborhood going, ‘Oh, what a beautiful day,'” she said. “And for it to, you know, one hour later to to walk into that was just it was tragic. It was heartbreaking.”

The 25 years since the attacks has given her even more time to reflect.

“Now, even the memorial is a huge testament to the rebuilding that that can happen afterwards,” she said. “I think the biggest thing is, you can do all of that, but we’re going to come back and we’re going to figure a way to come back bigger and better.”

Be sure to catch our special commemorating the 9/11 attacks. It streams on KLFY+ on Wednesday, Sept. 9.

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