To an extent, we are all survivors. One study asserted that 17 percent of the entire United States population outside New York reported symptoms like nightmares, sleeplessness, and anxiety in the days after September 11. Still, the more intense the exposure, the greater its effect. So for every non–New Yorker who suffered, almost three New Yorkers reported symptoms. And the closer that New Yorker was to the Trade Center, the more he felt it. You could measure the difference in blocks. People below Canal Street reported symptoms at almost three times the rate of those below 110th Street. If this is true, then the most intense experience of survival was had by sixteen who experienced almost incomprehensible luck that day. These people—a bookkeeper, an office temp, an engineer, a Port Authority cop, and twelve firemen—survived despite having the World Trade Center collapse on top of them.
For them, surviving has proved to be a complicated task. As one survivor’s wife explains, “Everyone else feels like 9/11 was a long time ago. I still feel like we are stuck on September 12, not really able to move beyond it.” And, as she inevitably reminds herself, they are the lucky ones.
Tag: 9/11
The Season
Kid, the thing that none of the documentaries will show you was how that morning, after the first reports, nobody knew anything.
CNN had reported about a fire on the National Mall, which turned out to be people seeing smoke from the Pentagon and not understanding what they were seeing. There were rumors of a car bomb at the State Department building, a bomb at the U.S. Capitol building, and one at the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. “The USA Today building in Rosslyn was supposedly enveloped in smoke,” per one report. You name the Washington landmark, chances were somebody had heard it had been hit.
It felt like the whole world had spun off its axis.
View from the inside
Mr. Walczak is quick to clarify something at this point in conversations about the missing film. He does not believe the pictures will reveal some hidden explanation for the events of that day. He is not a conspiracy theorist.
He is something different — a Sept. 11 completist. The two can look very similar from a distance, people foraging for things that will supposedly show what really happened on that day. But Mr. Walczak has a track record of actually finding them.
On an episode of a 2021 podcast he created, “Missing on 9/11,” he rattled off a list of photos that he has verified were taken on various floors of the towers: “One picture from the 48th, three from the 35th, one from the 51st, five from the 74th, two from the 61st.”
And in his sprawling, labyrinthine quest for those photographs, he would come to know a community of sleuths intent on finding and preserving unseen footage from that singular day. They huddle in Reddit threads, inspecting images and triangulating the exact positions of the photographers.
“People just assume everything’s been published,” Mr. Walczak said. “Not only is that not true, there’s a lot of fascinating footage that hasn’t been published.”
It is like they are working together on a puzzle that, 25 years later, still seems not quite complete. And new pieces keep emerging.
He’s Seen Images of 9/11 From Just About Every Angle. Except This One. – The New York Times
Why there will be a new moment of silence at this year’s Ground Zero ceremony
“As the years pass and the human toll grows, we reckon with the cost of September 11th whenever another New Yorker is stolen from us too soon,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said this week. “Now, close to 25 years later, more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than were killed on the day itself.”
New York City released more than 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed records Tuesday, showing city officials at the time misled the public about air quality around Ground Zero. The release not only underscores how dangerous the conditions were, but it is also an important moment for responders and survivors who have long fought for help and recognition.
The World Trade Center Health Program, established in 2011 after years of advocacy for compensation for survivors, provides medical monitoring for first responders and survivors, and free treatment for 9/11-related conditions. More than 57,000 responders and survivors enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program have been diagnosed with cancer.
As of March 2024, nearly 7,000 people enrolled in the program have died.
Why there will be a new moment of silence at this year’s Ground Zero ceremony | CNN
9/11
I remember working in downtown DC, right off McPherson Square, three blocks from the White House, when a friend sent me a message on AIM that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
I assumed it was a small plane like the Cessna that hit the White House 7 years earlier almost to the day (9/12/94).
Then, after a few minutes, they said a second plane had hit the South Tower.
I ran downstairs and let others know and one of the lawyers turned on the TV to CNN and there it was.
Like the rest of the world we were transfixed, glued, some folks listening to radio or watching another channel in another office, reports of planes everywhere.
And then a noise we’d later find out was Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon 3 miles away.
Phones stop working. There’s no getting calls in or out of DC. I’m back on AIM messaging friends to call my family and my girlfriend and make sure they’re OK.
Is my brother at the Pentagon OK?
Responses from friends: Family’s been trying to call me worried if I’m OK.
*Side note – 9/11 is when the internet really came of age. It was a lifeline for areas where phones just stopped working. Landlines and cellular were useless, jammed, busy.
The internet was key, real time information, and the aftermath was blogging, citizen journalism, etc.
Curiosity about what was happening at the White House sent me outside with one of the secretaries.
Looking back it was a terrible idea, heading toward what could very well have been the target of Flight 93 which would ultimately be brought down in Pennsylvania.
The streets were chaos. Traffic was locked. Sidewalks were packed. We got within a block of the White House before police started yelling at people to get back, they were blocking off up to two blocks from around the building.
And then a moment that was ultimately nothing but is etched.
A boom.
A mass of people panic and cry out and want to run but where do you go?
That moment of chaos and momentary mass hysteria left a mark.
It was a sonic boom from the passing F-15s scrambled to pass over DC. But at the time, it was another plane crash, a car bomb at the State Department, a helicopter crashed on The Mall, it was an attack and there was nothing anyone could do.
We went back to the office to find the South Tower had collapsed.
We watched as dust and debris and smoke settled on New York City.
Pops in the distance. Canisters from a worksite where the Pentagon had been hit going off, but at the time no one knows that.
We watch.
10:28.
The North Tower collapses.
News is a mess. Reports start coming in that despite all flights being ordered grounded there are a handful of planes unaccounted for.
That one or more planes are headed straight for DC.
We move. The whole office grabs and goes, one of the partners offers his place for those who can’t go anywhere else and many of us end up there, a house only a few miles away, but away from the center of DC, away from any targets.
Lunch is Church’s Chicken while we all just watch, glued to the news, worried, wondering what happened, who did this, is it over?
It’s nearly 3pm before I can finally get a phone call to go through to family and friends and make sure everyone is OK. I’m OK. And that I’m coming home.
A long, quiet ride on a nearly empty Metro because everyone else who needed to got out earlier. I’m met at Springfield by my girlfriend.
And we hug and stay like that for a while.
After would be strings of chaotic reminders.
Passing the still smoldering Pentagon on the commuter bus just days later.
The anthrax scare just months later and mail handled every day coming from the Brentwood facility at the heart of it.
Suspicious packages in the park almost every other week.
Unease at any car awkwardly abandoned or left idling in odd locations.
Noting where the nearest bomb shelter was.
Having multiple routes planned out to get out of DC depending on what and where something happened.
But also a coming together. That this wasn’t going to stop us. That we would still go about our lives and not live in fear because that’s what they wanted.
We were all in this together. We were all Americans.
Hard to think that was 19 years ago.
That for so many it’s not even a memory because they were so young or not even alive at the time.
And how truly defining it has been for a generation now.
My experience isn’t unique. Or all that special, really. I’m not nearly as impacted as so many others, people who had friends and family that died that day, were themselves just at or supposed to be at or near as it happened.
But everyone who remembers that day has a story and an experience and that shapes us. There was a before and there has been an after.
Never Forget
And be safe. Be kind. Know that while there is evil in the world there is so much more good. Know that a few don’t define the many.
And know that there are so many who can be their very best when things seem at their worst.