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00:00You
00:30When we get there it's it's it's chaos
00:52It's complete chaos there's there's no order to to anything there's
00:58conflicting direction the debris is what had hampered our communications our
01:06radios what little effectiveness they had was was hindered by all of the smoke
01:10and all the contaminants in the air I didn't recall how I got there for
01:17probably a month I didn't know how I got to that site didn't know who I was with
01:22just was too much to to fit
01:29it was so quiet eerily quiet an occasional a car horn would go off but there was there was no human life
01:37down there there was nobody alive it was so dark too and I knew it was ten o'clock in the
01:44morning but there was no human life down there there was nobody alive it was so dark too and I
01:50knew it was ten o'clock or eleven o'clock in the morning surreal doesn't doesn't begin to describe
01:57what it looked like or what it felt like to be there your mind has nothing to compare it to
02:05you couldn't step anywhere you couldn't walk guys crawling on their hands and knees digging dirt
02:12begin to describe what it looked like or what it felt like to be there your mind has nothing to
02:18compare it to you couldn't step anywhere you couldn't walk guys crawling on their hands and
02:27knees digging dirt digging the rubble listening and trying to figure out was there any survivors
02:34where to start to i mean the amount of rubble was so enormous
02:42a lot of the time we spent searching was underground
02:49and it was dark and often there was water we'd be walking through water ankle deep and we didn't
02:55know if there were electrical outlets or if that building was stable or we never really knew
03:02exactly what the conditions were at the time when i got there i didn't know how many guys from the
03:09house that i lived at were missing and it was important really at that time to use the term
03:15missing because the rescue efforts were just getting underway and people were very hopeful and
03:20and hoping that somebody some guys would be found
03:27i was out on the pile and we heard one of the dogs barking it was in another area
03:33so immediately everybody on the pile just went silent it would just go from this raucous noisy
03:40place to absolute dead silence anytime they'd hear a dog barking because that was an indication that there
03:45was a life that there might be a survivor
03:52people started passing up cutters and uh gurney and medic showed up and water was sent up and
04:00uh everybody started digging really furiously at that point
04:07they were shouting if you can hear me not twice and they heard a knock
04:16and so people started digging just absolutely furiously again
04:21then at that point the sirens went off and in the beginning anytime the siren went off it meant that
04:27you had to evacuate the site didn't matter where you were what you were doing you had to evacuate the
04:31site and so all of us had to scramble off the pile and then you would just run like crazy for two
04:38blocks to get away from the site because at that point they still thought that there were buildings
04:42coming down and just leaving at that point was so difficult because you we felt so close to a survivor
04:50we had to evacuate we had to stay away from the site for about 15 20 minutes and then we all scrambled
05:00back up which would take it took about a half hour to get back up to where we were
05:07the next time they used a loudspeaker and they called down into the void they said if you can hear me
05:13knock twice and they heard a scratching noise and began moving some pretty big beams from that area
05:22and then after that they didn't hear anything
05:32you know just that that hope that existed people just lived on hope of finding somebody alive
05:42so
05:57tuesday morning was a beautiful beautiful day my husband went to work very early because he had a
06:02an assignment that needed to be done so he left about five in the morning
06:07and it was my son's second full day of kindergarten and i dropped him off and i was having that
06:14mother uh anxiety about giving your child away to the world
06:19i was scheduled to teach a photojournalism class at nyu
06:24i wasn't scheduled to work at the daily news till five o'clock in the evening
06:28it was primary day in new york so i don't remember who i had to cover that evening
06:33uh but wasn't scheduled to work as a photographer until five i headed into an appointment that i had
06:42in tower one on the 71st floor because at 805 i took a picture of of that south tower which was
06:51it was just silhouetted all by itself i didn't recall ever seeing it alone in a photograph and that sort of
06:56struck me i made a few phone calls while i was up on 71 at 8 15 and went into the meeting
07:0516 minutes later the world changed
07:10pretty dramatic picture we're looking at right now fire in one of the world trade center towers
07:15as i was heading down the west side highway i was at about 14th street and i noticed fire department
07:28rescue company one as they were heading southbound in the northbound lane of traffic i jumped the center
07:33divider crossed over hooked onto their rear bumper and started following them down
07:39you see the smoke and the flames billowing out of the building in the back of the rescue truck
07:52firefighters are pulling on air packs they're pulling tools from compartments they're getting
07:56ready to do battle with the smoke and flames getting ready to rescue people and two of the firefighters
08:02lean out the back door which was open and waved to me these are people that i've covered for more
08:07than 20 years as a photographer in new york all 11 firefighters on rescue one were in their own hearse
08:15they were going to their own funeral they just didn't know it yet all 11 of the firefighters on
08:21rescue one died that morning at the world trade center i was in an interior conference room it was
08:32pretty small it was only um six of us and the person leading the meeting in in in the room and i had my
08:39back to the door but i was closest to the door and when the the the plane hit rocked the building
08:48completely it rocked six feet in each direction and sort of shuttered
08:52when i got there at 8 53 there were people standing watching for the city that is so noisy it was eerily
09:09quiet as if somebody had hit the mute button
09:11we checked a couple of stairwells the first two were filled with smoke and the third one was clear
09:22and we joined a line of people who were already in the stairs i remembered i had a camera took the
09:28camera out and started every once in a while taking a photograph
09:32walking down was like trying to walk out of yankee stadium and there was people entering the stairwell
09:43from below and you just had to stop and wait people were being helped down from above who had horrible
09:53burns all over their body and the stairs were fairly narrow i mean you could only walk down two by two and
09:59you have to press into a single file while people were carried down
10:05it was like a snowstorm of debris already this was only after one tower had been hit
10:11but there was fire raining down there was papers raining down there were chunks of debris falling
10:15into the street and there were body parts already on west street and it wasn't until boy i guess about
10:24thirty minutes in the stairs that i started seeing firemen coming up
10:31this photo i took of one farm and
10:36i caught his face he looked like this innocent carrying this unbelievable load coming upstairs
10:45not i was convinced nobody got out of there
11:01i heard a subsonic plane coming in
11:06i was saying to my wife thank god the military is up there our boys are protecting us
11:10and at the same time simultaneously on tv i'm watching a spec going into the world trade center
11:24i said oh my god i can't believe it another plane
11:27i didn't realize that i had a picture of the plane approaching because when i
11:35realized what was happening i stopped taking pictures and i actually dropped the camera
11:40i have a photograph of somebody's ankles on the roof
11:46i have to say when i saw that plane it seemed to me like it was the beginning
11:50it felt like there was more going to happen
12:12you're watching the day the towers fell on the history channel
12:20i was looking at the south tower at the minute the plane hit at the second the plane hit but i
12:46never saw the aircraft
13:02the noise is not describable it sounded like a natural gas main letting go the noise seemed to
13:08come from everywhere and then the south tower just exploded
13:16one of the people on the stairs with us had a pager that had news retrieval on it so we were able to
13:35know from that report that both towers were hit and the pentagon was hit so we were aware that it was a terrorist attack
13:41there was a man who had climbed out of a window and he had wedged himself in the facade of the towers
13:53and for 45 minutes i watched him through high-powered binoculars
13:58and to this day i mean this man's face is emblazoned in my mind
14:03i'll never forget him i know exactly how he looks
14:06unfortunately when the first tower went down he was in the other tower and it was just that was the end of
14:16a little further down there was it wasn't just perspiration to slip on there was there was actually
14:22water running down the stairs with us pipes i guess burst and sprinkler systems that were activated
14:28people were discarding the shoes people were almost skipping down the stairs at that point
14:34it was more of a rush from that point forward than the slow walk that had preceded it
14:40there was bodies everywhere they were all on fire broken it was just the most horrific thing you've
14:46ever seen in your life i completely lost my sense of safety and i started to feel very vulnerable
14:54people people people people might ask why would you stay and watch people die there
15:00my thinking was when you know these people have no choice
15:06by facing their death you can't really leave there
15:12to us it was like you have to be almost there to let them know it's okay we'll we'll be here for you
15:19well i work with dance i'm used to seeing bodies moving and i'm pretty good at i think reading body
15:31language so i wasn't just seeing figure after figure come out of a building i was seeing individual people
15:40coming out of that building and some were just falling lost and and some were were so defiant
15:47they had figured it out and there were some people that obviously came to the conclusion
15:53that if their life was going to end then they were going to end it the way they chose
16:16there was a sheet of water pouring over the escalator you also had all that glass and the women who had
16:29discarded their shoes now had to walk through that emergency workers were fairly well positioned to keep
16:35a line of sight so that people moved in the direction that they had planned us to lead we went back into
16:41actually an overhang looking over the lobby and i was able to see firemen staging themselves and they
16:47looked relatively calm which was amazing and that but then when i looked left all those windows were
16:54shattered and there was so much debris you know that had already fallen it was a shock to me i mean
17:00you were insulated from really what had happened to some degree by being in the stairs
17:05being thrust out into this you know this daylight and then asked to go back into the lobby and then
17:13seeing how you know damaged it was was pretty you know i think some people had a little trouble with that
17:19from from the lobby we actually went through the mall were then directed to go up and out another escalator
17:26out towards saint paul's church after i dashed away from the building saw this pool of blood and i sort of got stuck
17:44people was yelling don't look up of course the first thing you do is you look up
17:49you look up you look up you look up you look up you look up you look up you look up you look up
17:53we went out into the street and it was filled it was filled with so many people i can't even
18:02imagine how many people there were and they were all looking up at the towers and there were adults with
18:11children standing next to them and they had their hands over the children's eyes covering their eyes and i was
18:16thinking get those children out of there and they were just frozen
18:26it was a very strange feeling to see this large mass of people thrown into a tailspin
18:37we're not used to seeing this happening in our lives on a daily basis where you know in other parts
18:43of the world it is a daily event the trust is broken and that's very un-american
18:57i saw the doors to trinity church open
19:01and i'm not an over religious person but i do believe in god and i had seen a lot of people hurt
19:08and i thought well you know maybe i should just go inside and and uh there's never a time to say
19:13a prayer this is it it was less than 20 people in the church and as soon as i knelt down we felt as much
19:20as just as heard um the south tower collapse
19:33it was like the noise of a freight train hurtling down the tracks but more intense more concentrated
19:50it literally moved in slow motion it was like an out-of-body experience like i was watching me
19:57watching the building come down and it was not believable
20:05everyone started running i mean i i hear like someone's like run so we start running
20:12i remember thinking oh god i'm going to die right now because people going to run over me
20:17and i look back and it's a huge tremendous cloud it was like going towards me
20:32and there was like no place to hide so i hid it behind the parked car
20:37so i was just sitting up there and this wind and and then suddenly it's just dark
20:43it was as if someone dropped the drape over the whole church people were diving under pews objects
20:52were hitting the roof of the church
20:58instinctively i brought the camera up to my eye was about to push the shutter when a voice in the
21:03back of my head said run just run and i've never run never run from an assignment never run from a job
21:10never ran from taking a picture ever in my life but on september 11th i ran
21:21when the debris started coming down i was right in the shadow of the south tower i was
21:26less than 100 yards away i'd probably say less than 200 feet away
21:32everybody saw the video over and over again of that cloud chasing people down the street but that cloud
21:40right underneath was like a tornado it was like being hit by a wave at the beach but the wave was
21:48intense it was hot it was noisy it was like getting hit in the back by gravel blocks like somebody had
21:55picked up handfuls of rocks and was just throwing them at you and the noise kept coming and coming
22:02and one second i was running and the next second i was flying
22:05i was just um i had no control over my feet no choice as to what direction i was going
22:11i i was in the air and it seemed like i was being followed by by this by this tornado
22:17you're watching the day the towers fell on the history channel
22:40you
22:51and
22:52you
23:24We all gathered in the corner of the church to try and figure out, well, okay, now what
23:33do we do? We were in this big clean pocket of air. To find out whether it was time to
23:38go, I went out a side door of the church with a couple other people. The air had become a
23:43solid mass. You couldn't see a few inches in front of you. It was as if a nuclear winter
23:50had entered my life.
23:54I was standing and I see people walking out of this fog and they were like zombies. I
24:07didn't see people running. They were all shocked.
24:09I was face down under a pile of debris. I was unable to breathe. My mouth, my nose, my
24:19ears, my eyes were clogged with this stuff. I really thought I was going to die by myself,
24:25scared and alone face down in the gutter in New York City. So I reached for the cell phone.
24:31I don't know who I was going to call. If I was going to call 911 or if I was, I really
24:38think I was going to call home and just tell everybody that I love them. And I really thought
24:42it was going to be the last thing that I ever had a chance to do.
24:45I was yelling help, help me please. And then I, I don't know how long it was. I have no idea
24:57how long it was. But I heard voices that I'll never forget. And they said, don't worry brother,
25:03we'll get you out. Firefighters call each other brother. And I knew it was a bunch of New York City
25:09firefighters. And I, I knew I'd be okay. They dug me out of the tomb. And they went off in search
25:18of other people who were injured. A few minutes later, another firefighter named Phil McArdle
25:25and his partner, Jeff Potowski came. And I really consider them my guardian angels. They were smart
25:34enough to observe that if there was another collapse that I'd be dead. So they picked me
25:39up and they carried me to what they thought was a safe location, which was a delicatessen
25:45back in Battery Park City.
25:49I could see some people out in the street and I said, oh, okay, you know, we can get through
25:54this. We can get east of here and the air must be clean there. And maybe it's, it's time
26:00we go.
26:03And just before we were ready to leave, the second building fell.
26:09the third place is back on the road. And we're going to have a very 일단
26:43Here we were, in a place to make our escape, and we're trapped again.
27:13Just seconds after Phil and Jeff got me into the delicatessen, the North Tower collapsed,
27:25trapping us again when the front of the deli came down.
27:31There was a chaotic scene inside the deli.
27:35There were grown men who were crying, there were people who were praying.
27:38Some were just screaming with the desire to live.
27:41When you get there, it's chaos.
27:48We didn't have any tools with this when we went.
27:54We just basically had our gear, and maybe there would be an axe, the guys were taking hammers,
27:59or whatever you could grab.
28:01So operations down there were partly scavenging tools off of fire trucks that were destroyed.
28:08We arrived off the World Trade Center site shortly after the second tower had collapsed,
28:22and just about that time the Coast Guard sent out a call asking all available vessels to report
28:27to certain piers in the East River and the sea wall and the battery south of the World Trade Center
28:32because people had been trapped by the collapse.
28:36Between 15,000 and 20,000 people trying to get out of Manhattan and go into New Jersey,
28:41they walked up from the Financial Center and they were all covered in dust.
28:45You could see the faraway look in their eyes, they were not there.
28:52People were coming off the bulkheads and over the bows of tugs that were never meant to carry passengers.
28:58It was amazing what the boating community did that day.
29:02I mean, it was absolutely astounding.
29:09You got down there and almost every tug you can imagine in the harbor had converged on Manhattan.
29:15It was quite traumatic seeing people crying, screaming.
29:24Some didn't want to leave husbands behind.
29:27Literally, it was a Titanic situation.
29:31But think about it. How else did you get off Manhattan?
29:34I mean, all the railroads were shut down. All the tunnels were shut down.
29:37Boats were the only answer. And there were boats of every size.
29:40And nobody hesitated for a second to do what they had to do.
29:45I got down to Exchange Place, literally right across the river from lower Manhattan.
29:52And they had a triage center set up there.
29:54And they were bringing the injured and survivors over by boat.
29:57They had tug boats, commuter boats, ferry boats.
30:00And it was an incredibly dramatic scene.
30:03They had people just coming off the boats by the hundreds.
30:09And this incredible backdrop of New York City in smoke and flames.
30:12With very little trouble at all, I was on a boat heading towards Manhattan.
30:24This was sometime around 1 o'clock, maybe 1.30.
30:27And I can remember being on that boat looking at Manhattan as we were heading towards it,
30:34just in, I mean, incredible smoke.
30:37I mean, just filling up the sky.
30:39And I remember thinking, you know, what am I getting myself into?
30:43You're watching The Day the Towers Fell on the History Channel.
31:00You're watching The Day the Towers Fell on the History Channel.
31:21Even after the towers fell, literally hundreds of firemen went right back in.
31:39And there was potential danger everywhere.
31:42Stuff falling from the sky and windows breaking and the adjacent buildings all around
31:47and glass and metal falling and fires raging.
31:50What we saw was people not going away, but the people running towards the building,
31:57towards the towers, the medical people, the rescue people.
32:01And that was the most humbling, heart-stopping moment of my life
32:07because all I could think was, I don't think I could do that.
32:12There were many firemen, actually, that it was their first day.
32:23There was a class that had recently been let out.
32:26It was, these guys were their first day.
32:29They came back to work the next day.
32:41Water system was completely kaput.
32:43There was nothing left of it.
32:45Pipes were severed.
32:46Any sprinkler heads that had gone off just drained the system from below.
32:50There was nothing left.
32:51There was no water downtown.
33:00And there was no way to fight those fires.
33:03And when we walked in there, all the other buildings surrounding us were still on fire.
33:07And pieces of them the size of trucks were falling off.
33:14And there wasn't any water to fight the fires.
33:16And the fire boats started arriving.
33:20Then the Harvey came.
33:22The fire boat Harvey, a ship sold for scrap for $50,000 by the city of New York.
33:29And the Harvey can pump more water than any New York City fire boat.
33:34And they laid lines back along North Cove and into where the World Trade Center was.
33:44And the Harvey became a hero.
33:46I remember seeing an older man standing on a beam and kind of staring out and looking around him.
34:02And I went up to him and said, how are you doing?
34:07He said, I'm doing okay.
34:09He said, this is where my son was last seen in the southeast corner of tower number two.
34:18And I'm just here looking for him.
34:21And at that point, I realized that everyone around me was looking for somebody that they knew.
34:31They weren't just looking for survivors.
34:35They were looking for their best friend.
34:38They were looking for their father.
34:40They were looking for their son.
34:42They were looking for somebody that they knew.
34:49We went inside and eventually climbed over three stories of rubble
34:54and into that area that everybody saw with the leaning facade that everyone called ground zero.
35:03And we went to work.
35:05Our job was to find people.
35:07We thought we'd find more survivors.
35:10We found a few that first day.
35:12Not as many as we hoped for.
35:16That hope that existed in particular that first week.
35:25You know, people just lived on hope of finding somebody alive.
35:29I mean, it was about easily three or four weeks in before, I guess that hope started to fade.
35:44And I remember, it was about a three-day period when it shifted.
35:49And you really could feel it down at ground zero.
35:53And it just hit me at that point that the hope of finding survivors was really fading.
35:59Morning of the 12th, five survivors were found, but nobody was found alive after that.
36:12Prior to 9-11, I had spent like two and a half weeks shooting the World Trade buildings, from the window washers to the man who ran the freight elevator to the guys that work in the kitchen.
36:30To me, that was a total high. Here I'm sitting on the top of the roof with the head window washer of the World Trade Center.
36:37And he's telling me about his family and how he loved his family and how he loved this country and how great it was that, you know, he came here and he's in charge of all these things.
36:48And, you know, we're talking on his favorite corner of the World Trade building.
36:55All these people I was thinking about as I was walking around, you know, taking pictures going, Jesus, this is beyond what I can feel anymore.
37:04So I started thinking about people that I had photographed and met and it sort of like kept me going into more of a search.
37:12I figured that the longer I stayed and photographed, maybe I would find these people and I could, you know, bring them home and say, hey, your relatives are fine.
37:21You're watching The Day the Towers Fell on the History Channel.
37:50I figured I would walk back to the Ground Zero area, take one last look, shoot the last 40 frames and then get out of there.
37:56And that's when I saw these three firemen attaching a flag to a flagpole about 100 feet away from me.
38:03It was very quick, it was very unceremonial.
38:09First of all, to have taken a picture that's been compared to Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the Iwo Jima flag raising is just a great honor.
38:17I think that's an unbelievable picture.
38:20The fact that my picture has been perceived as a positive picture, as a source of unity, as a source of pride, at an important time considering, you know, what had gone on, I think that's a tremendous thing.
38:34I'm so amazed by the work that so many photographers did that day, so many photojournalists.
38:43Three photographers gave up their lives on September 11th so that others could understand what happened that day.
38:53You know, it's amazing that people have taken the Daily News already from September 12th and wrapped it in plastic bags and put it in their attic in a box or put it in the corner of their closet.
39:19Of course, it's a historical day that they're going to want to show the pictures of to their grandkids and their great grandchildren.
39:26Anybody who covered September 11th took a field trip through hell and they're going to have emotional scars to wrestle with for the rest of their lives.
39:37And I guess, I mean, I won't ever be a photojournalist because I couldn't, you know, I couldn't sit there and just detach and take the pictures.
40:02And...
40:12Yeah.
40:13I've been looking for that.
40:14And so, let's...
40:16I love you now, let's take care of myself.
40:20At six o'clock.
40:24No, let's hold that foot and catch and take the pictures.
40:27what amazed me i guess most about this whole story were how many photographers
40:41and how many people who had cameras and how many people who shot from video footage of this and
40:45shot still pictures of it and were there to photograph those instances that america was
40:50attacked on its own soil i don't know that i can communicate in words all the sad awful horrible
41:04wonderful awe-inspiring breathtaking things that i saw that day and the people around me the wonderful
41:15people around me that i saw that day amount of loss in just such a small period of time is something
41:23that it's hard to get your head around the idea that i was able to go home to my wife's arms and
41:34other people wasn't
41:45you suddenly realize what is important and it's it's just the people
42:03i understood exactly what 9 11 meant not two buildings coming down but the loss of great parents
42:12the loss of great people parents kids need it
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