The Unseen Toll of a Terror Attack

[Missy]

I thought this was an interesting piece as we were just discussing in another thread about how as a society many of us have become desensitized to the violence all around us.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-unseen-toll-of-a-terror-attack-1517058000

The Unseen Toll of a Terror Attack
New York’s December Port Authority bombing killed no one, but witnesses’ psychological pain endures


David Wall in the passageway where the bomb detonated on Dec. 11.
By
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Jan. 27, 2018 8:00 a.m. ET
24 COMMENTS


A burning smell earlier this month on a Bronx subway platform sparked terror for David Wall.

The incident, which turned out to be a routine track fire, reminded him of the December morning when a pipe bomb detonated near him close to the Port Authority bus terminal.

On the Bronx subway platform, Mr. Wall froze. He let six trains pass. He called his wife. “I know nothing is going to go wrong,” he told her. “But I just can’t.”

By some measures, New York got off easy from the attack near the Port Authority on Dec. 11. No one was killed. Four people were injured, including Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old Bangladeshi man now accused of carrying out the bombing. Mr. Ullah has pleaded not guilty.

Most New Yorkers went on with their lives, as they have done after earlier terrorist attacks. “This is the most resilient place on Earth, we’ve proven it time and time again,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said that day. “We are going keep being New Yorkers. Let’s get back to work.”

But for those present during an attack, even one that claims no lives, the psychological wounds can endure.

Veronica Chavez was walking through the subway passageway when the bomb went off.

Mr. Wall, 64 years old, now struggles to step onto the subway cars. Hours of anxiety leaves him exhausted by the time he gets home to his family each night in northern New Jersey from his Queens job as project manager for city housing and schools.

“It’s an invisible injury or illness,” forensic psychologist Stacy Cecchet of the National Center for Victims of Crime said from Las Vegas, where she was working with people traumatized from the Oct. 1 mass shooting that killed 58 people and wounded 851. “You can’t see they’re hurting or suffering."

Veronica Chavez, 46, of Queens, was also a few feet away when the pipe bomb was detonated in pedestrian passage near the Port Authority. Now the drop of a dish in the kitchen is enough to send her into shock, she said.

Ms. Chavez has dreams about the bombing and said she only gets about two hours of sleep a night. Her daughter, Michelle Garcia, 25, said she checks in on her mom throughout the night.

The noise at the Manhattan factory where she worked as a seamstress made it difficult to focus, Ms. Chavez said. That and her decision to take off about a week after the attack got her fired earlier this month, she said.

She felt vulnerable commuting between Manhattan and Queens.

“Is somebody else going to come and do something?” Ms. Chavez said through a translator. “What’s the next thing that’s going to come? I’m always thinking about what’s next.”

Mr. Wall thought he could work the day after the attack. Instead, he began shaking and couldn’t stop for about 12 hours, he said. He didn’t go back to work for a week.

His wife, Helen Wall, realized the extent of his pain when her husband suddenly dropped to the floor of their home and broke down in tears. He talked about their two daughters and their son, who died at age 34 of a heart attack in his sleep three years ago.

The scene outside the Port Authority bus terminal on Dec. 11, the day of the attack.
“If it’s me dying, fine. But I can’t get out of my mind that you and the girls could have another death in the family and it would be my fault,” Ms. Wall recalled him saying.

A Jehovah’s Witness, Mr. Wall thought it would be good to attend a service shortly after the attack. When he realized people would probe him about the bombing, he stayed home.

When he attended a service later in December, the big crowd made him dizzy and his vision became blurred. He left. This month, he is feeling better and attends services.

His wife worried. One family friend couldn’t bring himself to return to Manhattan after he survived the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Twenty years after, he committed suicide, she said.

“My fear is down the road, will this affect him?” Ms. Wall said of her husband.

Mr. Wall’s daughter Katelynn Schiano, 30, pushed him to see a therapist. Ms. Schiano said the toughness of New Yorkers may help in the short term, but “I don’t think that helps when you’re alone at night and you have these real feelings you’re dealing with.”

To avoid the pedestrian passageway, Mr. Wall began to drive to the Port Authority and take a different route to work. When Port Authority police called Mr. Wall to see how he was doing, he said he was ready to return to the passageway.

The police sent Officer Stephen Streicher and Sgt. Edward Chapman to escort him just before Christmas.

Officer Streicher, noticing Mr. Wall was struggling as he made his way through the tunnel, tried to distract him by asking about the weather.

Port Authority Police Officer Stephen Streicher, left, and Sgt. Edward Chapman escorted David Wall through the passageway just before Christmas.
“I saw it in his face, his distress,” Officer Streicher said.

Mr. Wall recognized the location of the explosion when he saw a poster on the wall that he had bumped into while he fled. He made himself walk the whole way through the tunnel and board the train.

He was still trembling when he left the two officers at the subway platform, he said, and stepped onto the train to go to work. He shut his eyes the whole ride, he said, so other New Yorkers wouldn’t see his tears.

—Mike Vilensky and Lisa Schwartz contributed to this article.

Write to Zolan Kanno-Youngs

 

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