By Kathianne Boniello and Dustin Brown
People caught in Manhattan during the destruction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers streamed back into Queens hours later Tuesday by walking across the Queensboro Bridge.
All East River crossings connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn were completely closed to vehicle traffic immediately after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in a suspected terrorist attack between 8:48 a.m. and 9:16 a.m.
Authorities sealed off Manhattan, but the Queensboro Bridge was soon open to stalwart pedestrians leaving Manhattan in a mass exodus that flowed over the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg crossings.
Most subway service between Queens and Manhattan was restored by late Tuesday afternoon after being suspended citywide in the immediate hours following the explosion. Long Island Rail Road trains resumed service in both directions late in the day.
In Queens Plaza hundreds milled outside at the foot of the bridge, while large crowds walked slowly eastward along Queens Boulevard after pouring by the hundreds off the Queensboro Bridge.
“I remember looking around and thinking, why aren’t these people panicked?” said Patrick Mahoney, 24, a Long Island City resident who walked across the Queensboro Bridge to return home. “I guess the normal reaction was to walk away and wait.”
The Queens Midtown Tunnel and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel were closed in both directions all day, while the rest of the East River crossings into Queens were eventually reopened by late morning and early afternoon Tuesday to outbound traffic leaving Manhattan.
The Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges were shut down in the aftermath of the World Trade Center assault but reopened in both directions between Queens and the Bronx by late afternoon. Vehicles were eventually allowed to cross the Triborough Bridge into Queens and later the Bronx.
A potential attack on the George Washington Bridge was averted when police arrested two men driving a vehicle “that might have had explosives in it” late Tuesday night in the New Jersey Meadowlands, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said.
The trek across the Queensboro Bridge offered many leaving Manhattan their first glimpse of the skyline in the wake of the World Trade Center’s collapse.
“It’s just not there anymore,” said Dannis Le, 23, a Manhattan resident who crossed the bridge late Tuesday afternoon to stay overnight with friends in Astoria. “It’s so scary. It looks like an asteroid hit Lower Manhattan.”
An official familiar with the activities at the Whitestone Bridge Tuesday said the city Office of Emergency Management ordered all bridges in and around Manhattan closed at about 11:15 a.m. Tuesday.
About midday, the Whitestone was open and free-of-charge in the Queens-bound direction, but the northbound lanes remained closed until nearly 4 p.m., the official said.
At one point during the day the governor’s office refused a request to temporarily open the northbound lanes of the Whitestone, the official said, in an effort to alleviate traffic on the Whitestone Expressway.
Pedestrians were trying to get to Queens via the Whitestone, the official said, when someone apparently dropped a book bag on the bridge at about 12:30 p.m.
“There was a bomb scare” after that, the official said, during which the bridge was closed for nearly an hour and a half.
At the foot of the Triborough Bridge in Astoria, dozens of Bronx- and Manhattan-bound travelers waited on the edge of Hoyt Avenue in the late morning and early afternoon, delayed by the bridge’s closure to all traffic leaving Queens.
“I just want to go home,” said Eleanor Prince, 28, a resident of Miami who was sitting on a plane at LaGuardia when the World Trade Center crash forced the airport to close.
She and a group of passengers had been dropped off at the corner of Hoyt and 31st Street by the M60 bus, which ordinarily travels into Manhattan from LaGuardia Airport.
Police officers directed traffic away from the bridge and tried to maintain calm among the bystanders, most of whom were anxious to return home.
“There’s nothing you can do,” said one officer. “I really don’t know what to tell them.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
