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CNN Sunday Morning
New York Family Hit Twice by Tragedy
Aired December 16, 2001 - 07:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Those who survived the World Trade Center attack are coping with physical and emotional trauma that most of us would find hard to fathom.
CNN's Maria Hinojosa introduces us to a man who hit twice -- was hit twice by catastrophe, two months apart.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Three long months, but Rafael Hernandez (ph) still can't get September 11 out of his mind.
(on camera): You haven't washed this shirt since September 11?
RAFAEL HERNANDEZ, WORLD TRADE CENTER SURVIVOR: I don't wash the shirt. I just put it over there.
HINOJOSA: He tore ligaments in both knees escaping the disaster.
HERNANDEZ: Oh my God, you don't know, you got no idea. This is nothing that you describe when you got the pain.
HINOJOSA: Rafael always hated planes, has been on one only three times. Now the images have been burned into his memory.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I see that plane go into the building, like the building in the plane and at the same time, that explosion, I say that's it.
HINOJOSA: His eldest daughter worried about him, but she counted on his wife Carla (ph) to help him through this.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was traumatized and she was the one there every time he woke up at 2:00 in the morning, and so she assured me that he was going to be fine.
HINOJOSA: He was starting to be fine -- so much so that he ignored his nightmares about planes crashing, and for his wife's birthday, put her and their baby girl on a plane November 12. It turned out to be Flight 587 to the Dominican Republic.
HERNANDEZ: When I see that 587 to the Dominican Republic, only I read it, and I call on my cell again. I say I'm dreaming. I don't know what it is. Then I see 587 and I look again and I raise the volume. The crash -- when I hear the crash, then is when I crash myself. What am I going to do? I just have to walk back and forth -- back and forth. I white with no blood.
HINOJOSA: His 10-year old daughter, who had cried on September 11 thinking she had lost her father, went into shock hearing that instead she had lost her mother and baby sister.
HERNANDEZ: She say, you better go back to the airport and pick mommy and Juani (ph). Papa, you better bring them back home to me. She was like a woman.
HINOJOSA: Now, she pictures them as angels up above.
(on camera): What do you think your mom and Juani are doing in heaven now?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Looking at us.
HINOJOSA: Looking at us? And smiling? And is that why you like to smile so much, because you want to make sure your mom knows that you're happy? Yes?
(voice-over): How else can one bear the weight of two tragedies?
HERNANDEZ: I give her the gift of death, not the gift of life. When I give her that ticket for her, for her birthday, it's like giving her die -- you going to die on this. I mean, I feel even guilty that there was death. But how do I know that the plane going to crash?
HINOJOSA: Or know that the tiny altar outside the house would be for her, and not him? And inside, two little birds for the two spirits gone. And on video, memories of the littlest one Juani, the family clown.
HERNANDEZ: If you feel this, that was the way my daughter feel. There I got to sleep with my -- with this thing, to feel her, because she wasn't there. She got to be in there all the time. I love her. I kiss her in the back (ph). I really love the little kid.
HINOJOSA: Mommy (ph), as they called her, was Laura's (ph) best friend and confidante.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Every time my mom had problems, she'd talk to me and she'd feel all better.
HINOJOSA (on camera): She'd feel all better?
(off camera): She wrote her daughter children's books that Laura and dad now struggle to finish.
HERNANDEZ: We are feeling kind of sad today.
HINOJOSA: Now they travel to Carla's grave to pray for her, and to try to understand. Her mother tells them not to be afraid of the enormity of their loss. They are, after all, not alone in this tragedy. The pain these days is universal and oh, so large.
Maria Hinojosa, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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