In short
A BBC World Service “The Documentary” episode marking 25 years since 9/11, told through firsthand accounts from people who were at the World Trade Center during the attacks and the immediate rescue/aftermath.
Guests (backgrounds)
Kirsty Walk reunites: Fire Department Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeiffer (first on scene, commanded evacuation/rescue); NYPD officer Judy Castro (helped evacuate); St. John’s Hospital paramedic Jimmy Dobson (responded from Queens); Coast Guard Rear Admiral Michael Day (then a lieutenant; coordinated evacuation of hundreds of thousands off Manhattan); Richard Eichen (worked on the 90th floor of the North Tower); Joe Pilla (husband Jim Gartenberg worked on the 86th floor); A.M. Holmes (novelist who witnessed from her Lower Manhattan apartment); plus accounts involving Jim Gartenberg and his wife Jill Gartenberg (Jim called WABC-TV from the 86th floor).
Key claims
The first plane hit at 8:46am; the second followed 17 minutes later; rescuers faced darkness, debris, and collapsing structures; evacuation by boat moved injured/walking wounded to New Jersey; families later endured prolonged uncertainty and ongoing trauma.
Notable examples
Jim Gartenberg’s WABC-TV call from the 86th floor; 911 dispatches receiving reports of trapped people; the “flotilla” of ~200 vessels; Lucy’s survival after Richard Eichen helped her; rescue operations continuing for 18 days; ongoing illness and post-9/11 deaths mentioned.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOSetting the Scene at the Memorial
0:51 to 1:47
Explore the atmosphere and reflections at the 9/11 memorial site.
“Imagine buying a toy for your kid, but it doesn't come with batteries.”
The Timeline of the Attacks
1:47 to 2:58
Understand the events of September 11, 2001, and the sequence of attacks.
“Kirsty Walk reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history.”
Eyewitness Accounts of Chaos
2:58 to 4:32
Hear firsthand accounts from those who experienced the attacks up close.
“but that was believed to be either the White House or the U.S.”
Personal Stories of Loss and Heroism
4:32 to 6:04
Listen to personal narratives of tragedy and bravery during the attacks.
“There There is one report, as of yet unconfirmed, that a plane has hit the World Trade Center.”
First Responders' Perspectives
6:04 to 7:12
Gain insights from first responders who faced unimaginable challenges.
“from the window of her apartment in Lower Manhattan.”
Survivor Accounts and Uncertainty
7:12 to 8:22
Delve into the uncertainty faced by survivors and their loved ones.
“I knew we had 20 ,000 people that were in the greatest moment of need.”
Further Eyewitness Experiences
8:22 to 11:22
Learn more about the experiences of various witnesses during the attacks.
“And in his industry, they say, when you give notice, they say, OK, goodbye and good luck and don't come back to the office, etc.”
Reflections on the Impact of 9/11
11:22 to 14:00
Reflect on how the events of that day changed lives and perceptions.
“Luckily for us, the stairwell on our side was the one that had remained intact.”
Witnessing the Attacks
14:00 to 15:11
Listeners will hear a first-hand account of witnessing the 9/11 attacks unfold.
“And so I went to the window and have a direct view downtown of the World Trade Center.”
Emergency Calls and Chaos
15:11 to 17:38
The chaos of emergency calls and the struggle for survival inside the towers.
“We heard a big bang, and then we saw smoke coming out, and everybody started running out, and we saw the plane on the other side of the building, and there was smoke everywhere, and people were jumping out the windows.”
Show all 25 chapters
Desperate Attempts for Calm
17:38 to 19:12
Conversations about the efforts to maintain calm amidst utter chaos.
“And, you know, just to hear him be calm, it's, you know, it gave me a moment of wow, like, what an extraordinary person he is trying to like, work through this.”
The Impact on NYC and the Nation
19:12 to 21:15
Reflecting on the broader impact of the attacks on New York City and the nation.
“You would hear the thuds as they fell, and you were helpless because we couldn't save them, and I could only imagine how they felt.”
President Bush's Response
21:15 to 22:36
Details of President Bush's response and actions taken after the attacks.
“Bush made his first public statement from the library of the Emma E.”
Evacuations and Heroism
22:36 to 26:10
Accounts of evacuations and acts of heroism during the crisis.
“All 44 passengers and crew were killed, but there were no fatalities on the ground.”
The Collapse of the Towers
28:34 to 30:08
Detailed accounts of the immediate aftermath of the tower collapses.
“The second building that was hit by the plane has just completely collapsed.”
Evacuation Efforts
30:08 to 31:33
Discussing the evacuation order and initial rescue efforts post-collapse.
“They should remain at work or in school.”
Personal Accounts from First Responders
31:33 to 36:28
First responders share their harrowing experiences during the crisis.
“of what it was like trying to operate in that area, Joseph first, then Judy?”
Survivor Stories and Reflections
36:28 to 42:00
Survivors reflect on their experiences and the impact of the attacks.
“Was any of that going through your head?”
Personal Accounts of 9/11
42:00 to 44:39
Hear the personal experiences of those affected by the 9/11 attacks.
“And then I said, well, where's the student?”
The Search and Recovery Efforts
44:40 to 47:11
Discover the challenges faced during the recovery operations post-9/11.
“If anybody sees him or knows anything, his name is Andrew Stern.”
Mental and Physical Health Aftermath
47:12 to 49:51
Learn about the long-term health effects on first responders and survivors.
“You, Jimmy, had gone through so much that day, but you went straight back out the next day.”
Personal Healing and New Beginnings
49:52 to 52:09
Explore how survivors and family members cope and rebuild their lives.
“The fire department, we lost 343 that day.”
Continuing Legacies and Connections
52:10 to 56:03
Understand the ongoing connections and memories shared by those affected.
“So I went Tuesday to Friday without sleep.”
Reflections on 9/11 and Ordinary Heroes
56:03 to 58:08
Explore the stories of survival and the impact of ordinary acts of kindness during 9/11.
“and one of the sisters died in the towers.”
The Vibrant New York Post-9/11
58:08 to 59:14
Discuss the transformation of New York City and its enduring spirit after the attacks.
“There were ordinary heroes helping each other out, doing ordinary acts of kindness.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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1:37The Documentary, home of the best documentaries from the BBC World Service. For this edition of The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Kirsty Walk reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history. In this episode, marking 25 years since 9-11, they reflect on the attacks of the 11th of September 2001 and the events that changed the world. I'm at the National September 11th Memorial in Lower Manhattan. There are hundreds of people here today, some, like me, looking down into the two vast square pools that mark the footprints of the World Trade Centre's Twin Towers.
2:19Some stand and simply stare into the tumbling water. Others have brought single white roses to put into names inscribed in the granite. Around the edges of these two pools are the names of nearly 3 ,000 people who were killed here on the same day 25 years ago. For three decades, the Twin Towers dominated New York's skyline. 110 stories high, visible across the city and beyond. On the morning of September 11th, hijackers seized control of four commercial airliners, turning them into weapons aimed at civilian and government targets. Three hit their mark. The fourth never reached its intended target, but that was believed to be either the White House or the U.S.
3:04Capitol building. The attacks shattered the sense of American invulnerability and change this city forever.
3:18At 8.46am, 20 ,000 people had already begun their working day in the Twin Towers. The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, flew into the North Tower. The impact tore through floors 93 to 99. all 92 people on board were killed instantly. Oh, my God. Fire Department Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeiffer was just 12 blocks away. He gave the first report over the radio to the Manhattan Dispatch. We have a number of floors on fire. It looked like the plane was aiming towards the building. Other fire chiefs confirmed the severity of the situation. is on fire. Send every available amulet, everything you've got to World Trade Center now.
4:15ABC's Good Morning America with host Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson was nearing the end of its broadcast. We just got a report in that there's been some sort of explosion at the World Trade Center in New York City. You're seeing the live pictures here. Obviously a major fire there. There There is one report, as of yet unconfirmed, that a plane has hit the World Trade Center. And you can see that there is smoke there coming out of at least two sides of the building. It became clear that it was a deliberate attack when 17 minutes later, a second hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 175, plowed into the South Tower.
4:57That looks like a second plane. You could see the plane come in just from the right-hand side of the screen. So this looks like it is some sort of a concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center that is underway in downtown New York. Well, I'm in a studio just a few blocks away from the memorial site. And with me are Richard Eichen, Rich Eichen, who worked at Pass Consulting Group on the 90th floor of the North Tower. Joe Pilla, whose husband, Jim Gartenberg, worked in commercial real estate a few floors below on the 86th floor. Three first responders who went to the World Trade Center that morning, Joseph Pfeiffer, who we heard in that archive, the first fire department chief to take command, former New York Police Department officer Judy Castro, who helped evacuate the buildings, St.
5:47John's Hospital paramedic Jimmy Dobson, who spent the day helping the wounded from the site, Rear Admiral Michael Day, then a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard, coordinated the evacuation of half a million people off the island of Manhattan on September 11th. and the novelist A.M. Holmes, who witnessed the events of the day from the window of her apartment in Lower Manhattan. Thank you so much, all of you, for joining us. Joseph, first, battalion chief responsible for the tip of Manhattan. You'd already done 20 years. You could have retired already that day. What was the first thing that you knew about this attack?
6:23We were out in the street at a normal routine emergency of an odour of gas. and then at 8.46 we heard a loud noise of a plane coming overhead and we see this plane racing past us at a very fast speed and at low altitude, so low that I could see on the fuselage the word American. It disappeared behind some tall buildings and then when it reappeared I saw the plane aim and crash into the north tower of the World Trade Center. And then I had to get on the radio and tell the dispatcher literally what I saw. And as you heard in the tape, I told them that we had a number of floors on fire, and this appeared to be a direct attack.
7:11And when I walked into the trade center, I knew we had 20 ,000 people that were in the greatest moment of need. And your own brother, Kevin, was a fireman. Yes. My brother was a lieutenant in Engine 33. And he came in like other firefighters. He came in quietly. And firefighters aren't quiet people, no matter what. And he came up to me not saying a word. And we looked at each other, wondering if we were going to be both okay. And then I ordered him, as I ordered many other lieutenants, captains and chiefs. I said, go up, evacuate the building, and then regroup on the upper floors to rescue those that were trapped.
8:03And I saw him take his unit and start to walk the stairs of the World Trade Center. Jo, your husband wasn't really due to be there that day because he had a new job. But tell me about him and why he wanted to be there. Well, he didn't have a new job yet. He was starting the next day. So Friday before, he had given notice. And in his industry, they say, when you give notice, they say, OK, goodbye and good luck and don't come back to the office, etc. But he was such a nice guy. They said, you know what, give yourself a couple of days to pack up and get yourself together. He was moving to a new office in Midtown, a new company in Midtown.
8:43And so that Tuesday morning, he got there early to pack up his stuff. I got to my office, and he had left a voicemail on my machine. And he basically said, there's a fire on my floor. I don't know if I'm going to be okay, and I love you. And I spoke to him. And he basically said he was trapped, and he didn't know what was happening. And then as time went on, I got to speak to other people and we kind of pieced things together. And I left my office on the Upper East Side to go be with his mother, who was also on the Upper East Side. And I walked out of my office and I looked downtown and I saw smoke coming from the World Trade Center.
9:23And I said, he's not going to be OK. And I'm screaming in the street, like screaming in the street. And people looking at me like, what's happening with this woman? Nobody knew. Nobody understood until it really came out to the news what was happening. And what floor was he on? He was on the 86th floor of the North Tower. Rich, you two were in the first week of a new job on the 90th floor of the North Tower when the attack happened. And the impact of that first plane was just a few floors above you. Can you just describe what was happening? I was in a hallway, not actually in my office, which faced north.
9:57We actually put our desks up against the windows there because we like to look down at the Empire State Building. and so I'm there behind some fire doors luckily for me and suddenly I hear this bang and then shortly after that I heard bump bump bump bump bump and I found out later on that was the airplane actually tearing through the building. And you also then were aware of people in trouble right around you. The door to the ladies room slammed open against the hinges and out came, it looked like a flamethrower, this large plume of flame. And on the other side of this corridor, the wall seemed to bubble with flame and like it was alive.
10:43And coming from the corridor on my left side from Bank of China, this poor man came over with his arms splayed out, his skin hanging. He had been completely burned to being unrecognizable. And he begged for help and then fell and died between my legs. My survival trigger came on, which is I had a five-month-old baby at the time. And it's like, all right, I got to survive for this baby. I need to get out of here. And I saw that in the corner, there was a set of glass doors that were intact and the lights were on. And that's where the other four people were, and we were the five that got off that floor.
11:22Luckily for us, the stairwell on our side was the one that had remained intact. Judy, you knew at that stage the World Trade Center well. You'd worked around there. You were in NYPD. You'd been there many, many times before. Explain where you were when the planes hit. I was a block away from the World Trade Center, and I see the plane and I'm looking at this plane and I'm saying to my partner, that plane looks really low. And as I said low, it hit the building. So we drove up, stepped out the car and we started to evacuate. Were you aware of the second plane hitting the South Tower? Yes, I was standing in front of the South Tower.
12:11I happened to look up because I heard a noise. I looked up and the plane hit the building. Jimmy, you and your paramedic partner, Melvin, you were already responding to an emergency that morning. Yes. And then the plane hit. The second plane hit. We came out of a hospital in Queens that's closest to the 59th Street Bridge to go into Manhattan. And so they told us, stage there and find out if we're going in. So we drove to the entrance and waited. And then the lieutenant told us, we're going in. As we're going in, my partner, Marvin, his phone rings. It's his girlfriend. She said, another plane hit the other building.
12:58So Marvin looks at me and says, terrorism. And is it where you lost your partner, Marvin, for a while? Yes. When we first went down to Church Street, which is very narrow, we started telling people, get away from the scene. This is terrorism. And a lot of people were just going in stores and getting cameras and taking pictures of this. So, and we're trying to get them out of the way. So then we go down, Versi, and we get to church. And he gets out on one side and I get out on the other. Someone tells him this person's having a heart attack on Broadway. And we usually don't split up. So then I don't see him.
13:33A.M., you were in your apartment early that morning. What could you see? What were you doing? Well, I had started a new fellowship at the New York Public Library the day before. And as a writer and novelist, I'm mostly home working. And so I was late. And the phone rang, and it was my partner at the time who was a pediatrician at St. Vincent's Hospital. and she said to me, go to the window, look out, a small plane hit the World Trade Center. And so I went to the window and have a direct view downtown of the World Trade Center. And I'm looking and I see the first building with, you know, basically a large dent in it.
14:15And then as I was talking to her, I saw the second plane coming. And I said, there's another plane coming and it's heading straight for it. And then I said, it hit. And I remember saying, we're under attack. And then I said, you need to come home. And she said, we're on lockdown. For me, watching reality and the landscape that I think of as the terra firma that allows me to be a fiction writer, all of a sudden become unstable, shifted a lot of things so that I then became a witness and felt the need to continue to bear witness. And I actually picked up my camera and I just started shooting pictures and then, you know, shooting, shooting, shooting and watched the buildings fall down.
14:56And then I went outside and started seeing people coming up the West Side Highway. I live right by the highway and, you know, covered in ash and trying to help people and offering people water and all the kinds of things that everyone did that day. Well, we're going to hear now some more recordings from September the 11th, including a call which Jill, your husband, made to a TV station as he was trapped in the building, and you have given us permission to use it today. We heard a big bang, and then we saw smoke coming out, and everybody started running out, and we saw the plane on the other side of the building, and there was smoke everywhere, and people were jumping out the windows.
15:36It's horrific. I can't believe this is happening. In the minutes after the attacks, thousands of calls flooded into the city's 911 system. 130 of them came from inside the towers. Dispatchers instructed emergency services on where to find trapped office workers. We had a report of 50 people trapped on the 104th floor in the northwest corner. The floor is burning out from underneath them. They're coming through the building, sir. I got almost every flyman in the city coming to help you. Just stay where you are until the flyman come and get you. Determined that rescuers would know where to find him, Jim Gartenberg called WABC-TV from the 86th floor of the North Tower and spoke to anchor Steve Bartelstein.
16:25Jim Gartenberg joins us. He was on the 86th floor of, I'm not sure which tower. Was it the east, north or south, Jim? It's the World Trade Center 1, and it's not was. I am here, and I'm stuck right now. Now, are you above, Jim, or below? I have no idea. I have no idea where the plane hit. It's my understanding that it's a plane. The first thing that I want to make clear is that I'm stuck on the 86th floor. A fire door has trapped us. Debris has fallen around us. And part of the core of the building has blown out. How many people are with you, Jim? I'm with one other person, and I'm told that people are aware of this.
17:00I'm on the 86th floor on the east side of the building facing the East River. And what time did you get? the air. I want to tell anybody that has a family member that may be in the building that the situation is under control at the moment and the danger has not increased. So please, all family members, take it easy. Jill, you were, as you said, at your mother-in-law's by then. Your husband's interview just sounds like a man who was calm, trying to be calm. He was the only one of everyone who was optimistic. And he said, things are under control at the moment. If anyone has a family member in the building, everything's okay.
17:35Like, nothing was okay. Nothing was okay for anybody. And it was complete and utter chaos. And, you know, just to hear him be calm, it's, you know, it gave me a moment of wow, like, what an extraordinary person he is trying to like, work through this. And thinking of others. I mean, he was completely selfless when he was speaking live on air to the news. And at this point, you have a young child, but you're also pregnant. Correct. So you're trying to keep calm for your own health as well. Correct. I had a two-and-a-half-year-old, and I was three months pregnant. So I was newly pregnant. People didn't know, so all of a sudden, you know, the days that followed, and by the way, I'm pregnant, you know, with the special gift he left for me.
18:16But right at that point, Joseph, you're in the command post at the lobby of the North Tower, and as you said at the beginning, you were sending firemen, including your brother. And did you ever hear from your brother again? After I sent them up, I didn't. But firefighters were racing up the stairs, and as they were going up, people were coming down, and they told people, don't stop, keep going. And we know that that made a difference of those that survived. But the game plan was to get up there to Jill's husband and rescue him. And they carried hoes, and so they were carrying about 60 pounds of equipment.
18:56but you only could imagine what the conditions were up there, that people made a decision to jump or they were pushed out by the fire or to stay in the building and be burned by the fire. And I can remember being in the lobby and outside the trade center there's a plexiglass that covers the entrance of the lobby and I could hear a thud and then it would repeat again and again every minute and I got so frustrated, I got on the PA system, and I said, hold on, the firefighters are coming to get you. And Judy, you witnessed that too. Yes. You would hear the thuds as they fell, and you were helpless because we couldn't save them, and I could only imagine how they felt.
19:52They had no other choice. And the reason I ask you that is because your job also that day was to try and keep people around you calm. Yes. But a lot of people, they didn't listen. When you're trying to get them to safety and tell them to leave, they didn't want to leave. a lot of stores, you told them leave. And they were just, oh, no, no, we're good. And AM, as you say, you bore witness, but there was nothing that you could do. And I wonder if a lot of people in New York that day felt they couldn't help. I think, I mean, on the one hand, there's absolutely a sense of helplessness. You know, you're seeing something that is an act of war.
20:42It's unfathomable as it's happening. You just think, is this real? Am I in a horror film of some sort? And every person you run into confirms that they're in the same horror film. But it changes people forever. And being there and being also in New York in the days after that, when there was no newspaper downtown, there was no traffic, there was the smell of smoke. At one point, I thought my building was actually on fire. I remember calling 911 because it was that strong one night. Just before half past nine, a clearly shocked President George W. Bush made his first public statement from the library of the Emma E.
21:22Booker Elementary School in Florida. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the vice president, to the governor of New York, to the director of the FBI and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act. Almost as soon as the president had finished speaking, a third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the American Defense Department in Washington.
22:07This is a major development. The Federal Aviation Administration has shut down all air traffic nationwide. This country has been immobilised by these terrorist attacks in terms of air travel today. Also targeting Washington was a fourth plane, United Airlines 93. Realising what was happening, passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers and eventually forced them to crash the plane in an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. All 44 passengers and crew were killed, but there were no fatalities on the ground. A.M., I mean, George W. Bush was quick to call it terrorism against the United States, but when you heard about the Washington plane, what did you think was going on?
22:50As this is beginning to unfold, pretty quickly, what's also happening on the ground in New York is we're all starting to take attendance. Have you heard from this person? Do you know where that person is? Is this person safe? Who's at the hospital? Who's here? Who's there? And so all of those things are sort of unfolding simultaneously. Who's picking the kids up from school? So you have to think about this is a city that was in the middle of its morning. And all of these things are happening at the local schools right there downtown. Some of those parents aren't coming home now. Rich, you found that stairwell that wasn't destroyed.
23:21So can you just describe what it was like coming down and who else was on the stairs? What was actually happening? Well, I went to that office in the corner and I organized a search party to see if there was anybody anywhere on the floor that we could access. And we didn't find anybody. And we're on the 90th floor and we're looking out the window and we see parts of the building falling. Then we realized that our ceiling was starting to smolder. So it was pretty obvious we had to leave. and then we were in the hallway going around pieces of debris until we found that stairwell. And as soon as we entered the stairwell, we were back into the land of light and fresh air.
24:03The steps were extremely slippery and people were falling. But when I first got in there, there was almost nobody on the stairwell because, you know, five people got off us and five people got off 91 and that was it. But as we got down lower and lower, we saw more and more people. and then I actually find my first firefighter somewhere in the 40s who helped me with this woman who had passed out and we took her down a couple of floors and then she came back too with the help of the firefighters there. Michael, for you, you are the chief coast guard at this stage. Tell me how you thought the day might unfold when the planes hit.
24:41So I initially was just sent over to relay information. When Tower 2 collapsed, we had our antennas on there to talk to all of the Coast Guard in the region, but we'd lost our ability to communicate. When the first tower was hit, we'd sent just a small boat over because we thought it was a land event primarily. We arrived on scene at the tip of Manhattan. There were people jumping into the water, swimming to Brooklyn and Governor's Island. Bridges, tunnels were closed, and I think people just didn't know what to do. They wanted out of the situation no matter what. So it's a dangerous waterway, boats zigzagging across.
25:20So it started off rather slowly that New York Waterway, a local operator, was pulling some people off. So at that point, I made a call on the radio that was for all available boats that wanted to help with the evacuation report to Governor's Island. And at that point, it was just broadcast and multiple boats started of all size and shape started responding. You know, the Staten Island Ferry, you know, small pleasure boats, tugs and barges and dinner cruisers. And it's just so many boats were showing up. And sometimes they wouldn't have their crews with them, their Coast Guard crew. And I remember a captain from a dinner cruiser said, hey, I've got these New Jersey state police officers.
25:58Can I use them as crew? I said, yeah, of course you can. You know, you're not going to arrest me. No, no. And we're not going to, you know, do what you can, you know, safely what you can do. And just get these people out of here. And we're going to talk a bit about that later on. But Rich, you got eventually to the bottom of the tower. Can you describe what happened to you then? Sure. This woman, Lucy, who I helped down, sometimes carrying her, sometimes just supporting her weight. We were down in the lobby and there were some security guards yelling, run, run. Don't look, don't look. So, of course, natural response, I looked to my right through the remaining windows that were open.
26:34I could see the plaza between the two buildings completely covered with debris and bodies. But I was four steps actually onto Church Street when somebody yelled behind me, watch out. And I turned and I looked up and I could see the antenna on the top of One World Trade start to kind of go back and forth like a child's top. It slows down. It gets unstable. And then it just collapsed. and I saw it actually start to pancake. And then I ran, jumped over the hood of a car and was very fortunate in that I wasn't caught in the debris, but I don't think I missed it by very, very much. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service, marking 25 years since 9-11.
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27:21We hear from those who were intimately involved in the events of that day and whose lives were changed forever.
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28:34The second building that was hit by the plane has just completely collapsed. At 9.59 a.m., the ABC reporter, Dan Dollar, spoke to anchor Peter Jennings. The whole side has collapsed. The whole building has collapsed. The whole building has collapsed. The building has collapsed. There is panic on the streets. We're talking about massive casualties here at the moment, and we have...
29:03More than 3 ,000 people were killed in and around the two towers. The collapse of the first tower meant that the air was filled with pulverized concrete and shattered glass. A giant plume of smoke surged through the streets of lower Manhattan. Paper fluttered overhead like confetti. Half an hour later, WNBC's Sue Simmons was on air when the North Tower also collapsed. This is a live picture. This is a live picture. We are seeing the second World Trade Tower Center. World Trade Center Tower number one has just collapsed, ladies and gentlemen. You see it live in our picture. Gosh, this is an unbelievable, it's incredible, incredulous, incredulous.
29:47WNBC's Greg Kelly was on the streets of lower Manhattan. You can see a massive plume of smoke. People are running away from the area. You can see the plume of smoke is coming in our direction. Let's get out of here, Ralph. We're going to leave because the smoke is coming right at us. As another cloud of smoke and ash swept through Lower Manhattan, Mayor Rudy Giuliani ordered the evacuation of the area. Other than Lower Manhattan, where people should evacuate and the police and fire will help you, everybody else should remain calm. They should remain at work or in school. He spoke to local cable TV presenter Sharon Disenharkes.
30:18Now, Jelani, do you have any sense of the order of magnitude of injuries and deaths? I do not, except to say that it's horrendous. I was down there and watched it and saw people jumping out of the World Trade Center. It's a horrible, horrible situation. And the thing to do now is to evacuate lower Manhattan in an orderly way. And Michael, that orderly way was what you managed to create with the flotilla. Yep, so close to 200 vessels responded, and estimates are over half a million people within nine hours were taking off. Was it people just trying to get out of Manhattan, or were you actually taking injured people across?
30:56Yeah, we were taking injured people across. They were coming to the water side. There was a thought that there'd be ten times more injured, so the people we were moving weren't… They were the walking wood. They were the walking wood, a good way of putting it. So we would bring them to New Jersey to leave the hospital space free in Manhattan, because we thought, everyone thought there'd be a lot more catastrophic injuries coming. And I can remember getting radio calls from New Jersey, and it was very frustrating because they said, we have 100 ambulances here waiting, bring the injured here, and 50 here.
31:25And they were telling us all these staging areas where ambulances were. And they said, bring us the injured, bring them. And we're like, there aren't that many injured to bring. Can you just give us a sense, Judy, of the debris, of what it was like trying to operate in that area, Joseph first, then Judy? After the South Tower collapsed, the entire lower tip of Manhattan goes completely dark in heavy smoke. You couldn't see the hand in front of your face. And I gave an order in complete darkness. I said, command to all units in Tower 1, evacuate the building. Which sounds like an obvious thing now to do.
32:05but I think it was the first time in history that a fire chief got an order to evacuate the firefighters while people were still in the building. And as it started to lift the smoke, I remember walking back to the trade center because I was only half a block away where I ran for my life. and when I returned I saw twisted steel and crumbled concrete all over the place. Acres and acres, actually 16 acres were covered and we wondered at that moment was anybody alive and we started to search. But as we searched there was steel, it was ready to collapse onto our rescue teams and there were holes that you could fall in.
33:00So it was a very dangerous situation. I was trapped in the building when the first tower, half of the first tower fell. I was trapped in the building and you could not see anything. It was pitch, pitch black. A lot of debris flying around. We were choking, couldn't breathe. I was just waiting to die. I was crawling because I couldn't stand up, and I'm touching people. Touch them and I shake them, are you okay? If they responded, I knew they were okay. A lot of people responded, a lot of people didn't. I was looking also for the gumbelts that we wear so that I knew if there were any other officers.
33:55My partner at the time, I yelled for him. He responded, but I didn't know where he was. So I kept crawling and went down an escalator, and I found someone with a gun belt who was an officer. So I said, are you okay? And he said, no, I'm not. I can't move. My shoulders are off and I have glass in my back. I can't move. So I said, well, we're going to move today. So I basically shimmied under him, put him on my back. But you're so small. Yeah. You find strength. My adrenaline was going and I started crawling with him on my back on the stairs. When I got to the top of the stairs, I felt some shoes, and it was my partner.
34:57So we both picked him up. We started to move to see if we could find an exit. Jimmy Dobson. When the building came down, the first one, I left Patience, and I ran to a back of my ambulance, and I put seven people in, and then I had to shut the doors on other people. There was no room, but Marvin wasn't there. I thought we were getting buried alive, so I hooked up two oxygen tanks, and I made, like, scuba, a buddy breathe. So we passed that around to each other as the cement kept going on us. So I said to myself, Jimmy, bad way to end a career. And then I'm telling the other people in the next breath, don't worry, they're going to find us.
35:46Basically, I didn't know if the ambulance was going to be running. I left it running, and I start driving down the street. And I get down to the hospital, New York Presbyterian South. They're all taking the people into the emergency room, and they're asking me what happened, what happened, and I tell them the tower's down. And they say to me, are you okay? Sit down. They couldn't believe that I was telling them the truth, that the tower was down. So I was sitting there a while, and then I saw my ambulance. I was still running. I said, let me do what I can do. So I turned around, and I went back to the towers again.
36:23And so you, Jimmy, you keep going. You're just bringing more people out. You're doing all that because that's what your modus vivendi is. Were you even thinking about terrorism? Was any of that going through your head? No, not at the time. What I was doing is I couldn't take care of them medically, but I could bring them to a safe place. So that's what I was doing. The second time I went back, there was two people that were injured badly. I got them in the ambulance, and all I hear is the second building start coming down. So now I just drive as fast as I can along these side streets, and it's very windy down there, and I get back to the hospital.
37:05and the first thing they asked me, what's going on? I said, both towers are down now. Now they're like looking at me and they say to me, well, how many survivors are we going to get? How many injuries? I said, you can't fall a mile out of the sky and expect to live. You're getting none. From your point of view, Rich, you're out of the building and you have no idea that the South Tower has collapsed as well, presumably. You're just getting help. I didn't even know the second tower had collapsed. It must have been like an earthquake, but I was on the stairs at the time and had no idea. When the darkness went to brown and then beige and then it was clear again, I was having trouble focusing my eyes.
37:48I had to dig my mouth out so I could breathe because I was totally covered in the cloud. So I dug myself out so I could breathe a little bit. And then I remembered there was a hospital downtown. And I somehow made my way to it, remembering it was kind of near the Brooklyn Bridge. And when I actually got into the hospital, they took me downstairs to a cafeteria and they laid me out. And a nurse came over with a case of saline solution and poured it over my head to see what was going on. So I didn't know what happened still. Right. All I know is this is just something bizarre, and I had no idea what happened.
38:31And I'm laying there, and they're prepping me for surgery. And I hear on the nurse's station that it was a terrorist attack. And I don't know why, but I made a point of saying, I need to get out of the city. Obviously, I wasn't in my best of mind at the moment. And I put on my pants, my shoes, grabbed the plastic bag with my shirt in it. I'm still wearing a hospital gown. And I walked out of the hospital and then made it onto the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across into Brooklyn to get out of the city. There are some people who were really badly hurt. I saw a construction worker with a piece of rebar in them.
39:11We were all victims. And nobody was asking, are you okay? Are you okay? We're kind of all on our own. And, you know, that was kind of an undercurrent of my entire experience is that myself and Lucy were on our own till we figured out what we're going to do post the actual collapse. And Joseph, you were directing this as much as you could. And obviously all your firefighters were, as it were, autonomously doing the best they could. But you were actually going through the rubble with your hands as well. Yeah, we were searching. And the last person we were able to pull out alive was 26 hours after the collapse.
39:50We continued rescue operations for 18 days. And the reason we chose 18 is because we were told that the longest survivor from an earthquake was 14. And we added some extra days on. But it must have been so distressing for you because you were, as it were, the leader of all this, but at the same time you were facing increasing knowledge of personal tragedy. I mean, when did you know that your brother had died? I was hopeful, and I tried to get him on the radio that day, Battalion 1 to Engine 33, Battalion 1 to Engine 33, and there was no answer. But there was a lot of radio traffic, so I figured, well, he's a smart guy.
40:31He's in some spot. We'll get to him. But by the next day, the night of the next day, I could remember walking up West Street to the firehouse. You could see the plume of smoke in the darkness, and I knew that my brother wasn't alive. And I could remember tears coming down my face as I walked to the firehouse. And then I drove home and had to tell my family. Marvin, you're a partner. You thought you'd lost him. So when did you realize that you hadn't lost him? Well, what happened was I kept going back and forth, and I kept moving people back and forth, a couple of policemen, a couple of people couldn't breathe.
41:22They were coming out of, like, all these different stores. So I said, let me go a couple of blocks south and then go up that way just to see what's going on there. And all of a sudden I see to my right there's someone standing, holding a telephone and just by himself looking. And there's no one else around. Everything's on fire. It looks like hell behind them. And it's Marvin. I get out of the ambulance and he says, Jimmy. I said, Marvin, we run to each other and we hug each other. And then we say, we made it. And then I said, well, where's the student? He says, I don't know. Thank God he was alive too.
42:10He left right in the beginning because he had young children. I can understand that most people tried to leave because they knew it was an unsafe place. The people that went back, like the firemen and all, they're heroes. You, Judy, had children. Yes. And young children. Yes. But you just went beyond your shift, didn't you? You just kept working. Yes. It was my job. I had earlier on in the day when I saw the first plane crash, I called my family and had my brothers go get my children from school. And I knew they were safe. That's all that mattered. And I kept working. For you, Jill, when did you get confirmation?
43:03Not that you, as a were, needed the confirmation because you knew yourself, but when was the confirmation that he had passed away? Never. There was nothing was ever found, nothing, nope. What was the impact on you being able to speak to him during the day? Has that left you with some comfort? Oh, 100%. I mean, I feel lucky, ironically, but the fact that I was able to have some sense of a goodbye, some sense of I love you, And, you know, he did what he could. You know, I know a lot of people who didn't speak to their loved ones. And so I was really happy I was at least able to do that on that day.
43:49And one of the things that also started to happen was that people started to make posters and they started to make flyers. And they came to St. Vincent's Hospital and they put posters outside the hospital. First, very rudimentary homemade saying, have you seen this person? please call this person's family and it would be a phone number and a picture and first there were a few and then there were a 10 and there were dozens and then there were hundreds and hundreds of those and then they became more well-made and more permanent and they were laminated and that was also the progression of what when are we going to know when are we going to have some sense of what happened to these people and then it took time for that to become a reality that sometimes there was nothing and there was no information and there was no closure, finality, anything.
44:39And that was very, very hard. If anybody sees him or knows anything, his name is Andrew Stern. His wife and his mother and the rest of us are all waiting to hear Andrew Stern from Canna Fitzgerald. My brother was on that floor. I have a brother also that's missing. Okay. He's Robert Slewax's wife, Susan. They're from Long Island. This is my brother. He's 42. He was on the 103rd or 4th floor. Jean Trost was looking for her brother, Gregory, who was 26. It's like searching for a needle in a haystack at this point. It really is. And I'm just praying that everything is going to be fine. He's a very strong kid and he's a very loving person and they didn't.
45:32So we're just hoping we'll find him. Jesus Christ. You know, we can handle just about everything. This is beyond. In the wake of the attacks, the city came together. Reinforcements poured in to help with the search and rescue effort, including Officer Wayne Diana of the South Plainfield, New Jersey Police Department. We wound up in ground zero at about sometime, I guess, around midnight searching for survivors. Every possible city agency you could think of is down there. Private contractors in there with heavy equipment moving huge pieces of building and steel and police cars and fire trucks that are wrecked down there.
46:09They're in the process of moving those out now with forklifts. It's going to be a long operation. That assessment and sifting must have gone on for a very long time, Joseph. It did. It went on for nine months. and at one point the mayor said we're going to close the site and we told him Mr. Mayor you can't and he was well I'm your boss you're going to listen to what I say but then the family members got together and the family said Mr. Mayor you're going to reverse your decision and look for our loved ones. And we continued operations for months later. And I know many people haven't been identified.
46:56And some particles are kept in the 9-11 museum. So when the technology is there, maybe in the future, they could be identified. But I think it's really important for family members. You, Jimmy, had gone through so much that day, but you went straight back out the next day. Yeah. When I finally got back to the hospital, they had a decon unit. It's like a bath, a shower outside, and they washed us down. And they said, what do you want to do? I said, go home. So I went home, and the next day I came to work. Really shouldn't have happened. It was too soon. I should have had counseling and all that.
47:45But the way it was, no one was paying attention to it. So I went back to work, went in the same ambulance that was basically has all the rubble in it and everything else and worked in that. And I worked for another two and a half years maybe after. And then I couldn't work no more. Mentally, I couldn't. to work no more. I became very sick. I tried to commit suicide twice. There are so many phobias that came out. It was like opening up Pandora's box. I worked 32 years. And to work so long helping people and to see what happened that day, it's almost like, why did I save other people? And I couldn't save these people.
48:39And it's the first time I left people behind. And I just, I was broken. Judith? I continued to work that day. We were both taken to the hospital, myself and my partner. No one at our station house thought we had survived until we showed up at our station house. and we were told to go home. That night, myself and my partner spoke, and we waited a day, and the following day we went back to work. We couldn't stay home while everyone else was searching, so we wanted to also go back. You said to me before that your behavior has changed. You can't go to big spaces, Judy. you cannot be in crowds. No, it gives me anxiety.
49:39I'm very vigilant. We never really imagine when we walk around the streets of New York how many people are carrying both physical and mental trauma from 9-11. So on 9-11, we lost almost 3 ,000 people. But more people have died post-9-11. The fire department, we lost 343 that day. But in October of 2023, we lost more people from post-9-11 diseases. And I think we have to remember that the trauma that we experienced 25 years ago, families are experiencing another type of trauma. Richard Eiken. It's a very complex feeling. You know, when I first survived, my response is, why did I survive? Why me?
50:32and over time it just gave me a feeling to restart my life back then in a way that was better for me and right now I'm you know remarried to an amazing person who understands me and my life has actually turned out to be in its own strange way a lot better. I almost needed the impetus to make that massive a change in my life. What about for you Michael once the flotilla had done its job. How were things for you? We transitioned to bringing supplies into the city. So we had all this capacity, all these boats. And over in New Jersey, there were doctors, nurses, police officers, steel workers looking to come into the city to help.
51:17And people were just donating everything from pizza to work boots or pallets of Levi's. Things were just showing up. Remember, they eventually shifted to the Javits Center because so many supplies that were coming in to the area. So we, I got off the boat on the 11th, about 1130 at night. I remember walking down the street and then seeing the fire apparatus just destroyed and then the pile and lights and looking up and there was all these little fires and like hotels and a couple of other buildings that were just kind of burning, I think as debris had gone through and it was just dark and it was just seared into my memory.
51:56I worked until Friday morning and it wasn't until, I think Thursday that I saw reports and learned what happened. And I can remember just breaking down in tears. I'd been so busy. I didn't really think about it, compartmentalize, do the job. So I went Tuesday to Friday without sleep. And, you know, I got home and I think I slept for, you know, like a day and a half almost. I mean, just exhausted. Yeah. Jimmy, you've talked a little bit about your own ongoing illnesses. Tell me about Marvin and did he suffer illness? Me and Marvin Bethea worked together every Tuesday, 16 hours. Five weeks after the collapse of the towers, I was working with him and he was in a bank getting money for uniforms to go to Wakes and they told him he was sick.
52:54Some person came up and knocked on the side and said, your partner's sick. He took a stroke. He had a stroke. So I felt I was alone again, but I took him, did what I had to do for him, put him in the ambulance. I started an IV and then I brought him into the hospital. Marvin was a tough guy. He came back to work like three months later. And then he tried to do programs for people and try to get them benefits. and he was really go down to Washington, D.C. all the time. And about four years after that, he tells me, Jimmy, I'm just so tired. I can't. And he had asthma constantly. So I said, Marvin, you don't have to do all this stuff.
53:34Stay home. But the next day, he had such a bad asthma attack, he went into respiratory failure and then into cardiac failure. They brought him back. and after that he, the only thing he couldn't do after everything was he couldn't swallow anything. So for the last 10 years of his life, he had a feeding tube and I used to visit him all the time. And then after the 20th anniversary, eight months later, he passed away from it and he's probably one of the best friends I've ever had, like brother. It's 25 years this year, and I'm sure there will be events and moments to remember what has happened, but I imagine no one around this table has anything other than a very clear memory of what happened.
54:29I mean, your life, Jo, changed in a heartbeat that day. And what has happened since?
54:37You know, you keep living your life and just remember and cherish what life was before and who I had in my life before and living, knowing that he would want me to keep living my life. And you have and you have remarried. Yes, I've been lucky twice and thankful twice that I have a partner that's amazing. You two children, though, who are now grown up, do they talk about it? I wonder where it figures in their lives. Yes. My daughter, who was two and a half, she has some memories, mostly from videos and pictures. And the one I was pregnant with, it took her a long time to understand the concept of, what do you mean my father died before I was born?
55:26How does that happen? So it's taken her a long time. But once, you know, over time, she started to process and understand. And now she, you know, obviously fully understands what occurred. what she represents. AM, I mean, meeting and talking to people in the city, they're very much a feeling that this is New York's story to tell. Is that the case? And I wonder what it's going to be like in a way because it's almost a generation now. It is almost a generation, and I still think back to the day of and the days immediately after, and I think about one friend in particular who had twin sisters, and one of the sisters died in the towers.
56:05And I think about lives that were literally cleaved in half and so many wonderful stories of people who have gone forward and made new lives and other lives. But we also have ghosts and we are living with those ghosts all the time. And I'm ever mindful of that. Rich, you talked about the woman you helped called Lucy. What happened to her? After it was over, we were parted when the building started to fall. I went off to the closer to the church, ran over the hood and ran away and she stayed closer behind actually in a store from what I understand it took me a while because I didn't know who she was it took me a while to find her by doing info at any number of companies until they said yes, I just would email I just need to know did she make it out that's all I needed to know I don't want anything and one of them replied back yes, she made it out and she's very thankful and now every Christmas and New Year's and 9-11 we exchange an email which is really short.
57:08Are you okay? Yeah I'm great, how are you? And that's it and so we keep that level of contact to this day and it's very fulfilling. And Joseph we've been talking about the people who died. I suppose it's also very important to remember how all you first responders managed to save people in the vicinity of the Twin Towers. Is there any kind of idea of numbers? Does anyone really know how many you saved? It's somewhere above 17 ,000. Between 17 ,000 and 20 ,000 people were saved that day. But as we reflect back, we, the victims of terrorism and the survivors, do not ignore the pain. Instead, we give it purpose to bring about change, because without purpose, there is no hope.
58:02There weren't superheroes that day that could leap buildings in a single bound. There were ordinary heroes helping each other out, doing ordinary acts of kindness. And I believe in that so much that when the new One World Trade Center opened, the Port Authority asked me to write something on the steel at the very top. And what I wrote on this deal is always remember the heroes who do ordinary things at an extraordinary time so others may live. And I think that message, if it gets out to the current and the future generation, there's hope for the future. A.M., you're still in that building with the window.
58:55When you look out at New York now, is it the same New York? It will never be the same New York, but it is a vibrant New York. And it is a New York where people still from all over the world, from every different background and history come to make themselves new lives and to build new lives. So it is an incredibly rich and vibrant place that also has a lot of possibility and a lot of connectedness. And yes, everyday acts of kindness all the time and some other stuff, but good things. Thank you so much, everybody, to Joseph Pfeiffer, Jimmy Dobson, Joe Pila, Judith Castro, Michael Day, Rich Iken and A.M.
59:39Holmes. Thank you all very much indeed. Thank you very much. Thank you guys so much. Heroes, all of you. Lives Less Ordinary is bringing you a special series of extraordinary love stories. Roshan Sethi was an uptight Canadian doctor who couldn't come out to his Indian family. Karansani was an actor from India who felt he had to keep his sexuality a secret to make it in Hollywood. But they met, fell in love, and things began to change. They decided to make a romantic comedy based on their relationship. Lives Less Ordinary Love Stories from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
From the publisher
On 11 September 2001, suicide attackers hijacked two passenger planes flying over the eastern United States and crashed them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, causing both buildings to collapse. The attack killed 2,753 people. As smoke billowed from the burning towers, firefighters, police officers and paramedics from across New York City raced to the scene, climbing stairwells packed with fleeing civilians in an effort to reach those trapped. When the towers fell, hundreds of first responders were still inside, and in the years since, even more have died from illnesses linked to their time working in the toxic dust of Ground Zero. Twenty-five years on, Kirsty Wark travels to New York to bring together the first responders and survivors who lived through that morning. New York Fire Department Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer was the first commander on the scene, and later became planning chief for the rescue and recovery effort at Ground Zero. Office worker Richard Eichen, who escaped from the 90th floor of the North Tower. Jill Pila, whose husband Jim Gartenberg worked on the 86th floor. Former NYPD officer Judy Castro, who rushed to the North Tower to help evacuate the building. St John's Hospital paramedic Jimmy Dobson, who spent the day bringing the injured to safety from the streets surrounding Ground Zero. Rear Admiral Michael Day, who coordinated the evacuation of an estimated 500,000 people off the island of Manhattan later that day. And the novelist A.M. Homes, a longtime resident of New York, who witnessed the events of the day unfold from her apartment in Lower Manhattan.
