May forgive but will NEVER forget!!!

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Pain never ebbs for family of Betty Ong, flight attendant who made first 9/11 alert

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Chinatown residents suffered in silence in decades since 9/11


On Sept. 11, 2001, May Chen stood outside Confucius Plaza, a 44-story residential tower located on the outskirts of Chinatown.

It was primary day, an important day for Chen, whose husband was running for New York City Council. The streets were buzzing with voters heading to the polls and workers en route to their offices.

But a morning that started full of optimism suddenly became one of the most traumatic in American history.

“We saw this huge fireball hit the World Trade buildings,” Chen, now 73 years old, told NBC News. “And we thought there was a bomb that exploded inside the building. And then there was another big, orange fireball.”

Chen watched as the air filled with thick dust and debris and remembers the smell of burning plastic in the air.

“People were kind of all walking around like zombies,” she said. “It just felt so unbelievable and disorienting.”

Related: NBC's Vicky Nguyen reports on the trauma Chinatown felt after 9/11, and the reasons why the community was largely ignored after the towers fell.

Nearby, Peter Lee, whose family has run the Cantonese restaurant Hop Kee in the heart of Chinatown since 1968, was also in shock.

“I lived in that neighborhood all my life,” Lee said. “I saw the empty ground before they built the towers. I used to play in those empty lots. Then, in your preteen days, you know, you watch it build up and you go to visit it. All of a sudden, it's all gone.”

When the twin towers fell on Sept. 11, the more than 80,000 residents of Chinatown were just 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center. But in the months and years that followed 9/11, few outside the area focused on the physical or mental health of this densely populated neighborhood. Chinatown fell just outside the immediate zone of impact around ground zero. As a result, residents and workers there were entitled to fewer resources, further exacerbating the trauma they felt in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

“There was a sense that Chinatown was ignored after 9/11,” said Daniel Huang, clinical director for behavioral health at Hamilton-Madison House, an Asian-focused outpatient mental health clinic in lower Manhattan.