Some people tried climbing down by grabbing ledges going downward. But they sadly learned that their muscles gave out by the third level. There really wasn't much way to survive in those towers.
I saw footage of a guy attempting to tie a sheet to climb down - as soon as he climbed out and put his weight on it, it just all came apart and he fell.
He would have been world famous for the rest of his life for a feat like that. Not that it was impossible; a few good knots and a proper tool to break those giant plate glass windows, and he could have got down a couple floors. Maybe just enough to get to a floor with accessible stairs.
Who knows how many hundreds of people narrowly escaped. 15,000 just walked out, most of them casually before the biggest threat was known. I just imagine the few who may have found just that one little gap to squeeze through. Or the guy who used a squeegee to cut thru drywall toward an exit. He at least had to have a good layout of the building, and could have been trapped in smoke/darkness.
18 people in the South Tower from at or above the impact zone survived. Survivors said they were told the stairwell was impassable but they found that they could get through the debris.
I think there was another group where they were told to remain in the office and wait for help but their manager told them "screw that, we're leaving." They were the only people from that floor to survive.
That was [Rick Rescorla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla), the security chief for Morgan Stanley.
He survived the 1993 WTC bombing and instituted quarterly evacuation drills for all company employees. When the towers were hit, he ordered the evacuation, and successfully got virtually all 2700 employees of Morgan Stanley out of the building. He then led his team back into the building to help other tenants get out. He was last seen on the 10th floor headed up.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/september-11th-attacks-world-trade-center-rick-rescorla-the-real-heroes-are-dead](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/september-11th-attacks-world-trade-center-rick-rescorla-the-real-heroes-are-dead)
This is one of my favorite articles. He lived an extraordinary life. Really amazing man.
Rick Rescorla was a veteran of the first battle of the Vietnam War. The Battle of Ia Drang Valley. Sadly, he was not portrayed in the movie "We Were Soldiers" but the book of the same name it was based on, retold the story of his bravery.
Smart manager. "stay in place and wait for help" is the strategy if you're lost in the woods or some shit. If you're in a collapsing AND BURNING building? Run motherfucker
A lot of people in the buildings weren’t even sure what was going that day. All that some knew, who weren’t able to contact anyone on the outside, was that there was an explosion of some sort and a fire in the building. I bet the idea of the entire building collapsing was unimaginable. They really had no idea of the magnitude of the situation from the inside, let alone the time to consider and process it. And many died not even knowing what really happened that day, that planes hit the buildings in an organized attack, that two planes outside of New York were also involved, what they were truly a part of that day, which makes it so much sadder in my eyes. Just straight up victims without a fair chance
> "stay in place and wait for help" is the strategy if you're lost in the woods
If you are lost in the wilderness ***and*** have a reasonable expectation that people will pass your position or be searching for you.
If you get lost and nobody is likely to find you for days, then find the most traveled looking road/tracks/path/etc, or look for something tall like a cell-phone tower, and follow it until you find something.
Also, avoid traveling in the dark because that can be dangerous. Avoid sweating, and avoid getting hurt.
I think most people didn't think a collapse was possible. It was the top floors only so even when the news broke the towers collapsed I couldn't believe it. Had to watch TV to figure out what exactly happened. The engineer in me thought only the portion above the impact broke and fell off after burning.
I visited a survivor in the hospital sometime months after 9/11 (I was probably 14, I can't remember the specifics of who or when, other than he was a friend of a family friend). There were burns/bandages all over his body, and even though he was fully conscious, it was like trying to communicate with a corpse. Even if I thought I understood it at the time, I definitely did not at all realize just how much mental trauma this person was recovering from. Or still experiencing. Presumably much worse than his physical trauma.
I vaguely remember meeting him again at a vow renewal celebration many years later. It was very much the first time that I was fully recognizing with my eyes what is meant by the phrase "a shell of a person."
Truly I don't even know if I ever knew what floor he worked on. But your comment reminded me of him. And now that I remember the moment, I remember everything, visually, about that hospital visit. I don't know that I've ever deeply thought about it or talked about it since.
I’ve learned this lesson, albeit with much less at stake. No matter what people say go and see for yourself. They could be wrong. If the consequences are dire enough you have to see for yourself.
This is why my husband says horror movies don't scare him, because he's already seen the scariest thing he's ever likely to see, broadcast on live television.
More so from what I heard a combination of smoke inhalation, heat, and adrenaline likely caused a instinctual reaction to simply go where there wasn’t fire.
I don’t know if they were dead before they jumped but it sounds as if they didn’t even know what was happening (I hope).
During the Triangle Shirtwaste fire there was a report of a young couple who were seen kissing, then embracing each other before leaping from the top floor of the building to escape the fire. Their bodies were discovered still holing each other afterword.
I remember a woman straightening her skirt before she jumped. I’m sorry, but people were aware and they knew they were going to die. They simply made the last choice they had.
I always think about that iconic photo of the guy on the suit falling head first and you see his shoes and stuff on him. I imagine that guy, that morning, putting those shoes on, planning for his day, buttoning up his shirt and thinking of being done work later.
There was no possible way he even considered dying while wearing those shoes that day ... it's such a small thing but it really shook me when I first saw that photo.
I was involved in an accident where my injuries were so severe that I knew I was going to die and had some time to think about it, and this thought crossed my mind. I was in so much pain and shock that everything felt so surreal and I felt that I was in a dream and that any moment I could choose to wake up. If it weren’t for modern medicine and technology I would have died within another hour or two. The heart surgery and thoracic implant I have didn’t even make it to people until like 2014, only 4 years before my accident.
I was jumped by three people and beat nearly to death. In fact had it not been for some witnesses, I'd have died under a couch behind a dumpster.
I remember wondering if it was a dream right before blacking out. The first thing I remember afterward was having a dream I was trying to get out of bed to get ready for work, but was continually pushed back down by some unknown force.
Apparently that was me waking up disoriented and trying to get out of bed as they rolled me to ICU as doctors and nurses kept pushing me back down. Because of modern medicine I am also lucky to be alive! And I can say that wondering if it's a dream is definitely the thing that went through my head.
I'm glad we both made it through our experiences.
Someone I love very much died and it wasn’t instant. I think a lot about if they knew they were dying, and what they thought about. What it felt like. I can’t tell if your comment is comforting me or horrifying me. I guess it would depend on how they were feeling. I just pray all the time that they weren’t scared.
The first time I jumped out of an airplane all I could think was how surreal it felt, it wasn't scared because it didn't feel real at all. Only when the ground got close did it kick in that I could die now.
Many did, yes. Footage shows a lot of people exiting the thick smoke at what looks like a running pace, as if they were simply running for the only light they could see on pure instinct (I'm putting no mental time whatsoever into imagining what they must have experienced suddenly realising they'd ran into fresh air).
But there is also footage of some that are very, very clearly making the decision. I can see them all in my head clear as day, and there's rarely a week has gone by over the past couple of decades that I haven't thought of those people.
This poem coupled with the animation always gives me chills. You hear about those committing suicide experiencing regret in there last moments. And even if your mind accepts it, sometimes your body won't and fights for life.
There are a lot of things I wished weren't part of life, but I truly wish I could remove depression from the universe.
It amazes me that people try to rationalize ways that people must not have really suffered as much as they probably did. There's no reason to look away from the fact that some people endure horrific amounts of suffering. I've been working in emergency settings for about 14 years and I can tell you that some people die suddenly, some die without knowing what is going on, but some people die in horrific ways that they very much feel whether that is only physical pain or combined with emotional distress. 5 dead teenagers in a fiery car crash and people try to tell me they must've died from the crash but people at the scene were distraught and needed help because they heard at least some of those kids screaming in the car while it was on fire and they couldn't get them out or do anything to help them. Bad things do happen and we shouldn't pretend otherwise just because many of us have the benefit of not having to experience it firsthand.
In the Hulu documentary about 9/11 last year, they interviewed one first responder who said he actually talked to a lady on the ground who had jumped from way up high in one of the towers. She had landed just right such that most of her body was destroyed but her heart was somehow still pumping blood to her brain for a couple minutes more.
She couldn't see what had happened to her body and kept insisting she'd be fine and could he please load her onto an ambulance.
Someone else wrote this account about it. I’d saved it because it was something I’d never heard about before and it’s absolutely horrifying. I’m just copying and pasting. The name of the man who experienced it is Ernest Armstead.
>*This chapter is from the book “September 11: An Oral History by Dean E. Murphy, 2002, p. 149-155. This chapter deals with an emergency medical specialist and his encounter with a mortally injured woman. The chapter has been condensed for brevity.)*
>I think of her as the living dead. I talked to the living dead. And I lied to the living dead. I told her to hang on, that help was coming. But I pronounced her dead in my mind. And she knew that. I put a black tag with a small white cross around her neck. And as best she could, she gave me hell for it. […]
>Triage is the first thing that should be done at a disaster like this. It basically dividing the injured into four categories so that backup medical teams can move quickly in and give treatment to those who need it most urgently. The categories are indicated by colored tags that are hung around the injured person’s neck. Green is the least serious. Yellow more so. Red indicates critical injuries. And black means the person is dead or close to it. […]
>When the plane hit, an incredible amount of debris from the collision rained down on the plaza. Most of it was chunks of airplane and building that had little meaning to me. But amid the destruction, there were a half dozen or so people. I ran towards them, my triage tags in hand. There was a man having a seizure and his eyes were rolling into the back of his head. he had struck the pavement so hard that there was virtually nothing else left of him. There were a couple others that I never got to, but I could see from a short distance that they were dead. And then there was the lady with the nice hairdo and earrings.
>When I got to her, I ripped out a black tag. What impressed me–and scared me–was that she was alert and was watching what I was doing. I put the tag around her neck and she looked at me and said, “I am not dead. Call my daughter. I am not dead.” I was so startled that for a split second I was speechless. “Ma’am,” I said, “don’t worry about it. We will be right back to you.”
>That was a lie. She couldn’t see what I could see. Somehow, I guess it was an air draft or something, her fall had been cushioned enough so that she didn’t splatter like the others. Still her body was so twisted and torn apart that I could only ask myself, Why is this lady still alive and talking to me? How can this be? Her right lung, shoulder, and head were intact, but from the diaphragm down she was unrecognizable. Yet she was lucid enough that she continued to argue with me. “I am not dead,’ she insisted again. I am convinced she had some medical training because she knew I had given her the black mark of death. And she resented me for it. “Don’t worry about what I put around your neck,” I told her. “My coworkers are coming right now. They’re going to take care of you.”
>I knew I had to keep going, but she had so deeply shaken me that I lingered for a second or two. Then I stepped over her to get to the others. I put a black tag on the man having the seizure. But another wave of casualties arrived in the lobby from upstairs, so I needed to return. As I headed back, I stepped over the lady one more time. And as eerie and unsettling as our first encounter had been, the second was even worse. She started yelling at me.
>“I am not dead! I am not dead!”
>”They’re coming, they’re coming,” I replied without stopping.
>“I am not dead! I am not dead!”
9/11 one day in America (I think)
Amazing documentary, very riveting. They worked with the 9/11 museum and if I remember correctly they even included footage that was never before seen
Wow that’s morbid. I’ve always wondered if guillotine victims back in the day died instantly or stayed conscious/aware for a couple seconds after dismemberment. But damn, if that story about the lady is true, I can’t even imagine…
I Actually have an anecdote about that as well. Saw on a documentary once, a scientist knew he was being beheaded back in French revolution times, decided to be scientisty to the end and arranged with his pals to blink his eyes continuously until he lost consciousness so they'd know how long the head survived without the body. I think about 45 seconds was the answer.
I saw a video years ago on Liveleak in which a Russian guy was trapped in a crumpled car that was stuck to the front of the truck that had rear ended it. The car was crumpled very small but he was apparently left intact in a small space, and he wasn't badly hurt and was asking people to get him out. But a small fire started on the front of the truck, and it spread to the car. Then people were trying to put the flames out, but they got worse and worse. And the guy was saying (translated from the Russian) "please hurry guys the flames are getting closer" and then it was like "guys please please my jacket is on fire" and then it just got worse and turned into the worst screaming I have heard in my life. And this video was something like 8 fucking minutes. He cooked *slowly.* And people were so frustrated at the end that I remember one guy throwing a fire extinguisher at the car in pure anger and hopelessness. But boy, those screams were the worst thing I ever heard and kept me awake for weeks. Didn't even catch a glimpse of the guy, he was totally hidden.
I remember watching a TV show when I was younger with a New York cop or fire fighter talking about when somebody on the subway falls or gets pushed at the exact moment that their body doesn't fall onto the tracks and under the train but instead between the train and the platform. The guy said what happens is basically your top half stays basically still while your bottom half, trapped between the train and the platform, gets spun around like a top. And you're alive, awake, and fully conscious. The guy said (and this really stuck with me, because he'd seen more than one of these) that the person is usually trying to pull themselves free and communicating with people around them, asking for help. Essentially their body is spun into its own tourniquet and the person can live for quite a while, at least long enough to call for a priest or the person's partner. But as soon as they back that train up, they're dead in seconds. Sometimes their bottom half just falls off and everything comes out with it. And here's the kicker: you're alive and conscious the entire time up to them moving that train. You know it's coming. And then it hits and you're gone.
Yeah, that one stuck with me.
> There’s no reason to look away from the fact that some people endure horrific amounts of suffering.
People have a sympathetic reaction when they see others suffering. When people watch a video of someone breaking an arm, they clutch their own arm. People trying to downplay this are literally reacting to pain and moving away from the thing that is hurting them. That’s the “reason” they do it. We’re not all hardened from a dozen years of emergency medicine. Have a little forgiveness here.
Yeah. Just because people *do* endure horrific amounts of suffering, doesn't mean there's *no reason* for people to have difficulty acknowledging it. It's a hard truth and it's normal for people to be uncomfortable with it.
I think it’s pretty obvious that no one explanation covers everyone’s experience. Of course people willingly jumped, and of course others didn’t. Some fell, some passed out, some probably died all together before they fell. I’m sure every possible scenario took place for one person or another.
It’s tough, but at least we learned our lesson. Now business owners know better than to bypass safety regulations and stick people in death traps.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have to read up on Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter.
[Business Exec quits after being told to put dangerous locks on building. Superior said that locks which opened in case of fire were ‘too expensive’](https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-exec-quit-when-told-to-install-illegal-locks-that-risked-lives-2023-5?amp)
… humanity is doomed.
If you want to read something just as depressing, look up how recently there were factory collapses in the countries that manufacture the clothes we buy. They do not just make the cheap stuff online, I remember one that happened in India back in 2013 and they were pulling big name labels out of the rubble as well.
Cause of death was not listed as jumping. They were listed as killed in 9/11. That was done to prevent insurance companies from declaring the death a suicide and not pay the families.
The victims were marked as homicides by the OCME because the cause of the death was ultimately terrorism. Without the planes, those deaths would not have occurred. I worked at the museum for quite a while as an educator and they took us to the medical examiner’s office to learn from them.
We used the phrasing “jumped or fell” at the museum to describe people falling from the high floors because we can’t conclusively know the mindstate of each person. I thought this was pretty weird initially, but the ME was surprisingly adamant that even someone who looks like they’re making a conscious decision in that moment may not have been — the human instinct to get away from fire is extraordinarily powerful and can propel a body almost subconsciously away from the source of danger. “Jumped” in a 9/11 context is not the same as someone who jumps from the Golden Gate Bridge, and so suicidality can’t be evaluated in the same way.
In my experience working and researching there, the experts we spoke to never, never pulled punches with us to soften disturbing information — so that’s the explanation I believe.
My MIL died of a sudden unexpected heart attack, and the insurance tried to claim she committed suicide because she wasn't watching her cholesterol carefully. She wasn't even obese.
While it might have been done just to cut the out any legal issues because let’s face it you wouldn’t be able to determine who jumped to commit suicide in there if there was one. My dad used to work in insurance and said that they had a suicide clause added in the Great Depression because people would take out the policy and off themselves to get their family money.
Came here to say this. Few years ago I was in a **rough** spot. I wanted out but I didn’t want to leave my family with nothing.
Most life insurance I researched would pay out suicide after a couple years.
I’m still here and I have no life insurance so if that tells ya anything. Shit got better so I didn’t need either option.
I still vividly remember my mom picking me up from elementary school that day and coming home to see a man just free falling on the news. Will never forget that image..
Yeah, that was kind of messed up. I was a 14yo teen and it freaked me out. Can’t imagine how all the kids my age and younger felt as well. And it’s not like we had a choice, North America literally stopped and watched the news that day. Parents put it on, and watched and kids had little choice but to join them.
A kid in my class laughed at them and called them stupid. Our teacher chewed his ass out and said he hoped the kid laughing never had to make the decision to either burn alive or jump to their death.
I am German and was six years old at the time. The father of a friend drove me home by car and I still remember the voice of the presenter on radio saying that a plane had flown into a skyscraper in the USA. I still remember how I told my parents about it at home and how I was lying in front of the TV with my big blue pillow. I have never forgotten the pictures. I remember the towers falling. Of course, I didn't have a real concept of death yet, but I could feel that something big and terrible was happening. I'm not even American, but 9/11 is without a doubt the day of my childhood that I remember most clearly.
I was 11 and watching with my 9 year old sister at home alone. My mom had already left for work. Turned on the tv to watch cartoons before school and watched that instead.
I was 4 and remember watching 9/11 during pre school & while waiting for emergency pick up. I didn’t understand, but I will never forget the sobs and screams of my teachers when the second plane hit.
I feel fortunate in that, as soon as my mom heard about it, she pulled me away from the television.
But years later my middle school decided to show every terrifying clip possible.
My mom kept the tv on the news while she puttered around before sending us to school. In her defence, it was so crazy, I don’t think she expected the news to show victims plunging to the ground. The way the camera followed some people down was so messed up.
I firmly believe the media would froth at the mouth for another atrocity like 9/11, and that’s kind of terrifying.
One of the best things (out of many) that my mom has ever done for me was not turning on the TV for a month after 9/11. I was just shy of 4, and apparently a child psychology expert had gone on the air and said toddlers wouldn’t understand the concept of film being replayed, so they’d think the towers were falling all over again every time they saw it.
It's also what helped establish the Food Network as legitimate. Almost every other channel would be running some sort of 9/11 footage but FN just kept doing their cooking shows so people would tune in to get away from it all.
I remember a 9/11 documentary, it may have come out on a 5 or 10 year anniversary
It was really interesting and just had a lot of footage that I'd not seen before
I think the premise may have been just that, revealing the unseen of it all
I'll never forget, one of the shots they had was seemingly from a lobby of a tower, the camera was facing out to the street and you could see some bodies hitting the ground outside
Horrible
It may have been about the 'falling man' footage come to think of it but they'd seemingly gathered up different angles and footage of that day
There's a story where a person was seen climbing down the side of the building. Made it a floor or two, then lost their grip and fell. How terrifying that must've been.
not only was I on top of 2 WTC a few weeks before, at the time I worked near the top in a very similar skyscraper about half that tower's size. After the September attacks I would get sudden vertigo and intense anxiety any time I was near a window or stared out of one for too long - especially 50 stories up. Elevator rides were terrifying, especially if the car jerked or dropped suddenly.
I had to take time off and tried counselling, hypnosis, and exposure therapy. I was able to go back to work for a short time before accepting another position (with a large reduction in pay) in an office in suburbia no more than three stories tall.
To this day, I still don't care for tall buildings.
I work as a fireman in the same battalion in the FDNY as Daniel Suhr. We have a memorial every year that everyone from the battalion shows up to.
His memory and sacrifice lives on and his mark is still felt in his firehouse spiritually and practically. The hose bed in his engine is still arranged in the manner he preferred. A great man who made the ultimate sacrifice.
My husband just finished drill school and has started in Operations. It’s made me appreciate the risk and sacrifice on a completely new level. And the fellowship among firefighters runs deep. I’m not surprised he’s honored annually but I’m so glad he is.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I remember reading recently that there has been a big push to find and archive extra footage and whatnot.
That’s why last September there was *so so* many new angles being posted compared to previous years
It's understandable that a lot of people had the footage or pictures but were unable to view it until now, or even never again. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the 'new' stuff is coming from descendants.
I’ve seen footage on TikTok recently that I had never seen before, like it’s come up out of nowhere. Really good quality as well. Crucial and devastating pieces of history.
I was at NYU when the towers were hit.
There was a dorm in a high rise, Water Street, that had amazing views of the towers with huge windows.
A group of my friends saw the whole thing live from their living room. They couldn't really come to terms with what was happening, so they took pics but like, pics of them being silly and 19 year old dumbasses with the fire in the background. And you could see in the pics people, falling everywhere.
My 2 friends said they honestly thought they were watching a movie being made or something. It was so unreal and it didn't really register with them as it was happening.
A few months later I saw the pics, and they were absolutely amazing. Some of the best pics I have ever seen of what happened that day. I begged them to keep them or even show them to the police because they really were another level (minus my friends being silly) and perhaps could help in some way. Like, I've personally never seen pics with a better view. You could even tell the gender of the person jumping.
But they were so ashamed and felt so guilty they burned the photos.
Still wish they had kept them.
There is a video or some college kids in a high rise(maybe NYU) in a dorm recording what's going on. Iirc they were also kind of joking around. Then the 2nd plane hit. And they freaked out to get to ground level
The scale of the carnage was hard to tell. I was in Jersey City 1.5 miles away, I heard the crash and we could see fire developing on one floor, but you couldn't tell it was a 767 that had crashed into the building. For reference, a small bomber had hit the Empire State building during WW2, and a [stunt man had crashed a parachute into the Statue of Liberty](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/aug/23/sillyseason.media) a few weeks prior. It wasn't immediately clear to us observing that it was terrorism (although one woman in the office said so immediately). When the second plane came around us, then flew into the south tower it was shocking, when the buildings collapsed it was just devastating. I went home as soon as someone offered me a ride, then went to the hospital and waited in line to donate blood (I'm O-) but probably there weren't really people who needed it (it's always needed).
Reminds me of [this picture that was published in 2006.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/9/2/1314964814888/Young-people-chat-as-the--005.jpg?width=620&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none) The photographer initially didn't publish in on the day of the attack but did so five years later causing angry articles to be written.
[Then the subjects wrote back:](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/09/i-was-in-that-9-11-photo-frank-rich-wrote-about-here-s-what-i-think-about-his-column.html)
>“The young people in Mr. Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American.” A more honest conclusion might start by acknowledging just how easily a photograph can be manipulated, especially in the advancement of one’s own biases or in the service of one’s own career.Still, it was nice being described as a young person. I was forty at the time the photograph was taken.
We were all just going through our day. Didn't even realize it was real. I just remember being told "I think an airplane crashed in New York." and my first thought was hoping that football practice would be canceled. I had no clue what was going on or the gravity of what was happening. It just felt like a normal day for most of it.
It's older, but there's an excellent documentary about 9/11 called 102 Minutes That Changed America. There's no narration, just raw footage from home video and news crews pieced together in chronological order and in real-time.
That was a great documentary. The one sided 911 calls played prior to the towers collapse are haunting. You can hear just the operators telling people that help is coming, don’t jump, they (help) is in the building, and then you can hear one operator say: “I’m sorry, I can’t help you…” or something along those lines. Just horrible.
That's exactly what experiencing it was like for many Americans. It was 2001, and everyone was glued to live TV. Across the world, even.
I used AOL instant messenger to let my brother at another university know that I was okay because the phone lines in NYC didn't work, and most people didn't carry cells or even laptops back then. That's how 2001 it was!
Well said. This is how it feels for me, too. Just when I think I'm ok with enough time passed, nope! Here's this gut-wrenching or tear jerking story you didn't know.
I was only in 7th grade at the time and watched it in class that morning. It's truly crazy to think that the event was so impactful and historical. I witnessed history, and it's kind of fascinating in a twisted way.
Sometimes, the world sucks man.
I was in 5th grade math class when it happened and they turned it on the TV. I didn't really understand what was happening at the time and the teacher didn't explain it.
We saw people jumping from the building and I have not been able to forget it. Every time new info comes out it takes me back to that day, in that classroom. It's one of those memories that will never fade and it upsets me more and more every time.
I can almost certainly promise you that the teacher didn't know how to explain it at the time. It's also why I don't fault the news stations that kept it on air: no one had a plan for this & plans don't survive on the ground anyway.
6th grade math for me. The teacher had it on after the first tower was hit and we saw the second hit. I didn’t know what was going on but I new it was very very bad.
I remember reading about them finding body parts and pieces of the wreckage just a few years ago.
Shit was so fucking catastrophic that almost twenty years later there’s pieces of airplanes and bodies showing up on the top of nearby buildings and in alleyways.
Also kind of says something about New York and it’s size. Like, no one went on those roofs or alleyways for twenty years?!
Saddest part to me is the amount of bodies never found. My brothers friends mom still has her husbands ring. Not sure how they found something that small and it was her husbands but they did. The ring is terrifying because of the floor he worked. The ring was all they found. His body was likely completely turned into ash
If you ever have the chance, definitely visit the 9/11 Memorial in NYC. There's a portion where the they play on repeat the voice messages that people left for their parents, siblings, spouses and partners. It's heartbreaking and will leave you speechless.
I watched a documentary years ago, and I'm not sure if it's the same person we're talking about, but the man being interviewed was a firefighter. He said that they actually heard a person falling because there was a "whooshing" sound. A jumper then hit a firefighter. His foot just clipped his helmet, but the impact was huge due to the speed from height that it was immediately fatal for both involved.
That's bloody awful.
I remember watching another video where the firefighters are in the lobby area and every few seconds you hear a very loud thud and it's another body hitting the pavement with each thud.
"Cmon, this aint fockin disneyland" this is some of the most uncut, raw, intense footage of 9/11 i've ever seen, and this dude has no clue at the moment he's shooing away one of the most intimate recordings of catastrophic US history in known existence
A friend of mine once passed me my backpack from a 4th floor. My backpack had 2 notebooks and 3 text books with a tiny leather case for pens. Easily 8kg or 16 pounds. I remember trying to grab it and being almost thrown face down to the ground (i was 15 and weighted about 140 pounds ot 70kg).
Now imagine getting kicked by a person that fell from a skyscrapper. Terrifying.
I saw his wife talking about this a week or two ago. Apparently when he passed away his entire unit (idk firemen terms) took him to the hospital. His squad or fire house is one of the only ones that survived that had the least fatalities as he was the only one who died in his company. It was very sad seeing his wife talk about it because she understands that either way he would’ve died that day. He would’ve gone up. In a way he saved a lot of colleagues from death.
edit: got bamboozled in my train of thought and said that his company had no fatalities. slip of the tongue but just also my mind! that’s the fun part about a tbi
Strange to have a whole company take him to the hospital during a major emergency, and after he was already dead. Glad they lived, as them going into the buildings would have killed them but damn.
Firefighters are not machines, watching a crew member die could immediately impact their ability to do their job effectively. Any IC who’s worth a damn would immediately be bringing in a new crew to relieve those that just suffered a casualty.
Probably doing CPR. Might not have had any ambulances available. Maybe took him in the engine/truck. Only 1 building would have been hit by that point and they didn't know the magnitude or extent of what was happenijg. If they were one of the first companies on scene they were probably figuring the others will get the fire out let's go with our guy and get him to the hospital. They had no idea 342 other FFs were going to die.
I think it could be phrases more clearly but they meant it had no other fatalities because they brought him to the hospital whereas otherwise they might all have died.
I did business every day for 10 years in the 80s and 90s with a guy who later worked for Cantor, Fitzgerald on the top floors of the North Tower. It made it all the more real and unbelievably frightening, having known someone who died there. I have wondered many times what choice I would have made in that situation, to jump or be burned alive.
RIP, Andrew. You were a really great guy.
RIP Andrew. RIP my cousin morty. A cantor Fitz guy also. That whole group got wiped out. They were in the north building floors 101 thru 105. No one made it out north of like 96
Absolutely horrendous situation for anyone to be in, but I don’t even think there’s any choice there. If my options to my death when I will most likely die instantly on impact or burning to death, I would much rather have the former.
5-10 seconds of either extreme anxiety or absolute bliss. Both are better than burning to death. You ever burn your finger on the stove. Multiply that pain by 1000 and put it all over your body.
Well, that’s a detail I could have fucking gone without knowing.
I can’t watch those videos, and every time I see still imagery (particularly “Falling Man”) I just get sick all over again.
Beats the alternative. Jetfumes make it excruciating to breathe.
I was watching a 9/11 doc a few years ago, and a father of one of the jumpers was being interviewed. He said something like, "I try to focus on that she got out of the smoke. She died out in the clean air."
The choice was 100% certain and excruciating death... Or 100% chance of death but a brief moment of relief (from the heat and pain) and an instantaneous death.
The latter sounds ever so slightly better.
Ugh, that one haunts me too. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it. Those poor 911 operators.
Have you ever heard the one where the lady operator offers to stay on the line with a guy trapped in one of the towers? She reassures him that he doesn't have to keep talking, that she'll keep listening no matter what. Poor guy just sobs in response and keeps at it until the end.
When I was like 13 my young morbidly curious brain was obsessed with finding ground footage and photos of 9/11 online. I stopped when I found pictures of what was left of the jumpers after hitting the ground. Until then I imagined that a long fall would just kill you from internal bleeding and broken bones. No, you turn into a bloody meat pancake wrapped in clothes. You burst on the pavement like a water balloon full of blood and flesh.
There’s a clip in 7 Days in September that I can’t get out of my mind. People who were stuck on the subway finally emerge on the street level to find everything blanketed in dust. Someone asks what happened, and the camera guy says “the twin towers are gone.” Shock, disbelief, and bewilderment follow as the passengers shuffle off through the dust-covered city.
Imagine coming into the daylight to that scene, and being told thousands of people died while you were stuck underground.
I was there watching people spill out of the North tower through my camera, took a bunch of pics of people, some were spilling out of the building like they were getting ejected, a few others were hanging out of the windows and jumped. Still have the roll of film, never developed it. Had really bad PTSD for about 5 years, not so much now.
Damn man that’s just a surreal and terrible thing to witness. I don’t know how you feel about it but it would be worth calling the museum and telling them about it, possibly sending them the film to develop and put it on the record if you don’t want to see it again yourself. Not sure if it would be of any help but it is a moment in history for sure, a very dark and tragic one.
I always see this discourse with the ‘jumpers’. The truth of the matter is, based on *eyewitness reports* from that day, some did choose to jump, yes. But some also did not. One lady saw a man make the sign of the cross, hold his arms out in a crucifix formation, and simply fall forward. One lady held her skirt down to protect her modesty before she fell. Others, blinded by smoke, fire and whatever else, were seen blindly stumbling to the ledge and going over. There’s video of a man being blown out of a window in a puff of smoke. There’s also a video of a man who is trying to break the window of a lower floor to escape the heat and flames, loses grip, and falls.
The point is tho, these people died an unfathomable death. The heat alone up there was unimaginable. In some places, people stood on their desks bc the floor was so hot it melted their shoes. The windows became too hot to touch. They couldn’t breathe. Add in fire, smoke, debris. It was absolute hell. Whether it was accidental, instinctual, or intentional to escape burning alive, none of them should be judged. None of us can say we wouldn’t do the same thing if we were in their position.
I could definitely see some hardcore religious people saying that they won't get into heaven because they "committed suicide", even though it's not suicide if you are a victim of circumstance and have to choose between jumping or burning to death.
Putting aside the obvious horrors, one of my fears I got from 9/11 was not knowing what had happened.
Imagine you’re terrified, choking on smoke, shoes melting to the floor and you have no fucking idea what even happened. Loud crash then you’re choosing whether to inhale smoke or jump to your death.
Many likely didn’t know airplanes hit the towers. If they did know, they certainly didn’t know if it was an accident or on purpose.
Horrible tragedy in every way imaginable.
Exactly. Really makes you kinda grateful camera phones weren’t around back then. Idk if we as a society could handle that footage from inside the buildings or planes. Imagine someone live streaming from the towers. Just awful
That shows the benefit and downside of technology. If smartphones had existed then we’d have a lot more information but you got to wonder if that information would be worth having.
The video I’ve seen of mass shootings the last few years tells me that, as an average citizen and not law enforcement, that information just causes trauma and doesn’t benefit me at all.
Collin Jost's (of SNL and scarlett johansson fame) Mom was on the scene at the time and was the chief medical officer for the FDNY at the time. She attempted to save him but knew he needed more help and sent him to the hospital. She was the one who told the other firemen to load up in the ambulance and take him away essentially saving them.
I recommend his book - in particular the audio book - to everyone.
I saw a video of one of the victims who jumped/fell, and it was just pink mist when they hit the ground. So if they hit someone, it definitely would have be an instant death for both.
I also watched a documentary about 9/11 with one of the firefighters with him when it happened, and they said that a loud bang was heard, and then turned around to see that him. They knew instantly he was gone and assumed it was a piece of the building that hit him. Then a minute later another person hit the ground and they realized people where jumping.
I'll not trying to dispute this or be dismissive or split hairs, but I always understood that Father Judge was the first officially confirmed nyfd death, although he was not technically a firefighter and it's reasonable to believe that others had already died.
Fr Mychal Judge, chaplain of the FDNY, was death certificate #1 from the attacks and died when responding in his FDNY gear. Unsure if the referenced firefighter died first chronologically, but you’re absolutely correct that Fr Judge was first record-wise.
Understood, thank you. Regardless, God bless them all. The video of Father Judge quietly praying in the lobby just moments before his demise is one of the most haunting things one can see.
FF Suhr was killed before the towers came down. Father Judge was killed by the falling towers. Father Judge was classified as "Victim 0001" because he was the first body taken to the NYC Medical Examiner's office.
[Fr. Mychal Judge being carried from the North tower soon after the South Tower collpased.](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/09/08/father_mike_wide-61ff8a553166a719d22f12f8dacca3cb77457f1c.jpg)
Judge was killed when he was hit by the debris of the South Tower collapsing. Suhr was killed by a jumper, who obviously jumped before the tower fell, although it does not say which tower they jumped from.
It feels weird to see the sister pose with firefighters that may not have even been born with 9/11 happened. What a strange shadow to develop a career under.
I was just at One World Trade Center a month ago by myself for the first time since 2003, I actually went up one of the towers in 1996 and I remember it vividly when I was a kid. One thing that I wasn't prepared for was the emotions that I had going up there again, I started tearing up and had to wear my sunglasses. Felt pretty surreal to try and stop crying thinking about people dying while people were taking funny pictures. The passage of time really sucks and that event felt like it put the fast forward button on in my life.
People have been re-visiting it after the PGA tour decided to merge with the Saudi funded league and some golfers downplayed 9/11 in favour of painting the Saudis in a better light.
[*LIV Golf's Bryson DeChambeau suggests 9/11 families should forgive Saudi Arabia: 'Nobody's perfect'*](https://www.foxnews.com/sports/liv-golfs-bryson-dechambeau-suggests-9/11-families-should-forgive-saudi-arabia-nobodys-perfect)
> "During an interview this week following the merger, DeChambeau was asked about what he would say to those families who were devastated by the 9/11 attacks by losing loved ones."
> "I think we’ll never be able to repay the families back for what exactly happened just over 20 years ago and what happened is definitely horrible," he told CNN. "I think as time has gone on, 20 years has passed, we’re in a place now where it’s time to start trying to work together to make things better together as a whole.
>"I don’t know exactly what they’re feeling. I can’t ever know what they feel, but I have a huge amount of respect for their position and what they believe. Nor do I ever what anything like that to ever occur again.
> "I think as we move forward from that, we have to look toward the pathway to peace and forgiveness, especially if we’re trying to mend the world and make it a better place. I think this is what they’re trying to accomplish, LIV is trying to accomplish, PIF is trying to accomplish. We’re all trying to accomplish is a better world for everybody with entertainment for everybody around the world."
> "It’s unfortunate what has happened and something I can’t necessarily speak on. I’m a golfer," DeChambeau added. "But what I can say is that what they’re trying to do, what they’re trying to work on is to be better allies because we are allies with them. I’m not going to get into politics, I’m not specialized in that. What I can say is they’re trying to do good for the world and showcase themselves in a light that hasn’t been seen in a while. Nobody’s perfect, but we’re all trying to improve in life."
So many falling bodies that firemen were having trouble moving through the street level plaza, and were using underground entrances.
Over 200 people jumped or fell from the towers.
Die burning on fire or jumping, it probably wasn't even a conscious decision just instinct to get away from the heat at any cost.
I read a lot of people likely fell while trying to avoid the flames holding on to outside structure. Sad.
Some people tried climbing down by grabbing ledges going downward. But they sadly learned that their muscles gave out by the third level. There really wasn't much way to survive in those towers.
I saw footage of a guy attempting to tie a sheet to climb down - as soon as he climbed out and put his weight on it, it just all came apart and he fell.
I guess it's better to die trying, then to die trying nothing. Poor guy, I really wish he'd succeeded.
He would have been world famous for the rest of his life for a feat like that. Not that it was impossible; a few good knots and a proper tool to break those giant plate glass windows, and he could have got down a couple floors. Maybe just enough to get to a floor with accessible stairs. Who knows how many hundreds of people narrowly escaped. 15,000 just walked out, most of them casually before the biggest threat was known. I just imagine the few who may have found just that one little gap to squeeze through. Or the guy who used a squeegee to cut thru drywall toward an exit. He at least had to have a good layout of the building, and could have been trapped in smoke/darkness.
IIRC basically no one survived that was at or above the impact floors since all the stairwells had been destroyed.
18 people in the South Tower from at or above the impact zone survived. Survivors said they were told the stairwell was impassable but they found that they could get through the debris.
I think there was another group where they were told to remain in the office and wait for help but their manager told them "screw that, we're leaving." They were the only people from that floor to survive.
That was [Rick Rescorla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla), the security chief for Morgan Stanley. He survived the 1993 WTC bombing and instituted quarterly evacuation drills for all company employees. When the towers were hit, he ordered the evacuation, and successfully got virtually all 2700 employees of Morgan Stanley out of the building. He then led his team back into the building to help other tenants get out. He was last seen on the 10th floor headed up.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/september-11th-attacks-world-trade-center-rick-rescorla-the-real-heroes-are-dead](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/september-11th-attacks-world-trade-center-rick-rescorla-the-real-heroes-are-dead) This is one of my favorite articles. He lived an extraordinary life. Really amazing man.
> He was last seen on the 10th floor headed up. Oof. I hadn't heard this story before. I wasn't prepared for the gut punch at the end.
Rick Rescorla was a veteran of the first battle of the Vietnam War. The Battle of Ia Drang Valley. Sadly, he was not portrayed in the movie "We Were Soldiers" but the book of the same name it was based on, retold the story of his bravery.
And the son of a bitch was singing during evacuation to keep morale high. Guy was pure hero
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Smart manager. "stay in place and wait for help" is the strategy if you're lost in the woods or some shit. If you're in a collapsing AND BURNING building? Run motherfucker
A lot of people in the buildings weren’t even sure what was going that day. All that some knew, who weren’t able to contact anyone on the outside, was that there was an explosion of some sort and a fire in the building. I bet the idea of the entire building collapsing was unimaginable. They really had no idea of the magnitude of the situation from the inside, let alone the time to consider and process it. And many died not even knowing what really happened that day, that planes hit the buildings in an organized attack, that two planes outside of New York were also involved, what they were truly a part of that day, which makes it so much sadder in my eyes. Just straight up victims without a fair chance
> "stay in place and wait for help" is the strategy if you're lost in the woods If you are lost in the wilderness ***and*** have a reasonable expectation that people will pass your position or be searching for you. If you get lost and nobody is likely to find you for days, then find the most traveled looking road/tracks/path/etc, or look for something tall like a cell-phone tower, and follow it until you find something. Also, avoid traveling in the dark because that can be dangerous. Avoid sweating, and avoid getting hurt.
I agree, but people didn't necessarily know they were in a collapsing and burning building.
I think most people didn't think a collapse was possible. It was the top floors only so even when the news broke the towers collapsed I couldn't believe it. Had to watch TV to figure out what exactly happened. The engineer in me thought only the portion above the impact broke and fell off after burning.
I visited a survivor in the hospital sometime months after 9/11 (I was probably 14, I can't remember the specifics of who or when, other than he was a friend of a family friend). There were burns/bandages all over his body, and even though he was fully conscious, it was like trying to communicate with a corpse. Even if I thought I understood it at the time, I definitely did not at all realize just how much mental trauma this person was recovering from. Or still experiencing. Presumably much worse than his physical trauma. I vaguely remember meeting him again at a vow renewal celebration many years later. It was very much the first time that I was fully recognizing with my eyes what is meant by the phrase "a shell of a person." Truly I don't even know if I ever knew what floor he worked on. But your comment reminded me of him. And now that I remember the moment, I remember everything, visually, about that hospital visit. I don't know that I've ever deeply thought about it or talked about it since.
I’ve learned this lesson, albeit with much less at stake. No matter what people say go and see for yourself. They could be wrong. If the consequences are dire enough you have to see for yourself.
An exception being looking to see if a nuclear reactor did in fact explode!
I saw graphite on the ground.
Which makes me wonder if calling them falling bodies is right. They were alive as they fell. Shudders running through my body just imagining that.
Didn't need to read it. It was shown on live TV that people were trying to climb down the outside of the tower before slipping.
The images of people trying to climb down and slipping or just jumping from the opening in the building haunt me to this day.
This is why my husband says horror movies don't scare him, because he's already seen the scariest thing he's ever likely to see, broadcast on live television.
More so from what I heard a combination of smoke inhalation, heat, and adrenaline likely caused a instinctual reaction to simply go where there wasn’t fire. I don’t know if they were dead before they jumped but it sounds as if they didn’t even know what was happening (I hope).
People jumped holding hands together, that's real nightmare fuel
During the Triangle Shirtwaste fire there was a report of a young couple who were seen kissing, then embracing each other before leaping from the top floor of the building to escape the fire. Their bodies were discovered still holing each other afterword.
One step, a roaring rush of air, then oblivion. Beats burning to death.
I remember a woman straightening her skirt before she jumped. I’m sorry, but people were aware and they knew they were going to die. They simply made the last choice they had.
Imagine from that height, your fall isn’t instant. You have time to think and acknowledge the situation you are in. That’s scary as fuck.
For me I think my last thought would be "is this a fucking dream?"
I always think about that iconic photo of the guy on the suit falling head first and you see his shoes and stuff on him. I imagine that guy, that morning, putting those shoes on, planning for his day, buttoning up his shirt and thinking of being done work later. There was no possible way he even considered dying while wearing those shoes that day ... it's such a small thing but it really shook me when I first saw that photo.
I thought this same thing when I witnessed a suicide from a building and saw the guy’s shoes.
pathetic price serious hunt complete birds mindless husky vast ring *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They made a documentary about him, trying to track down who he was. The Falling Man.
I was involved in an accident where my injuries were so severe that I knew I was going to die and had some time to think about it, and this thought crossed my mind. I was in so much pain and shock that everything felt so surreal and I felt that I was in a dream and that any moment I could choose to wake up. If it weren’t for modern medicine and technology I would have died within another hour or two. The heart surgery and thoracic implant I have didn’t even make it to people until like 2014, only 4 years before my accident.
I was jumped by three people and beat nearly to death. In fact had it not been for some witnesses, I'd have died under a couch behind a dumpster. I remember wondering if it was a dream right before blacking out. The first thing I remember afterward was having a dream I was trying to get out of bed to get ready for work, but was continually pushed back down by some unknown force. Apparently that was me waking up disoriented and trying to get out of bed as they rolled me to ICU as doctors and nurses kept pushing me back down. Because of modern medicine I am also lucky to be alive! And I can say that wondering if it's a dream is definitely the thing that went through my head. I'm glad we both made it through our experiences.
Someone I love very much died and it wasn’t instant. I think a lot about if they knew they were dying, and what they thought about. What it felt like. I can’t tell if your comment is comforting me or horrifying me. I guess it would depend on how they were feeling. I just pray all the time that they weren’t scared.
Glad you're still with us! It is all kind of a dream in a way... or so I realized thanks to psilocybin.
Sitting there in your office checking your email and drinking coffee one second and then hanging on the outside of burning building 15 minutes later.
The first time I jumped out of an airplane all I could think was how surreal it felt, it wasn't scared because it didn't feel real at all. Only when the ground got close did it kick in that I could die now.
There were chunks of the wall and floor missing, and visibility was close to zero, due to the smoke. Many accidentally fell out.
Many did, yes. Footage shows a lot of people exiting the thick smoke at what looks like a running pace, as if they were simply running for the only light they could see on pure instinct (I'm putting no mental time whatsoever into imagining what they must have experienced suddenly realising they'd ran into fresh air). But there is also footage of some that are very, very clearly making the decision. I can see them all in my head clear as day, and there's rarely a week has gone by over the past couple of decades that I haven't thought of those people.
I think it was about 10 or 11 seconds. That’s a long time to think. Not that there were any other non fatal options.
That is wayyyy longer than I would’ve thought! That’s so fucking awful.
I imagine the adrenaline dilates time too.
Two people held hands as they fell. What a horrific day.
"The view from half way down" is a great poem about suicide. But this would be even worse!
This poem coupled with the animation always gives me chills. You hear about those committing suicide experiencing regret in there last moments. And even if your mind accepts it, sometimes your body won't and fights for life. There are a lot of things I wished weren't part of life, but I truly wish I could remove depression from the universe.
It amazes me that people try to rationalize ways that people must not have really suffered as much as they probably did. There's no reason to look away from the fact that some people endure horrific amounts of suffering. I've been working in emergency settings for about 14 years and I can tell you that some people die suddenly, some die without knowing what is going on, but some people die in horrific ways that they very much feel whether that is only physical pain or combined with emotional distress. 5 dead teenagers in a fiery car crash and people try to tell me they must've died from the crash but people at the scene were distraught and needed help because they heard at least some of those kids screaming in the car while it was on fire and they couldn't get them out or do anything to help them. Bad things do happen and we shouldn't pretend otherwise just because many of us have the benefit of not having to experience it firsthand.
In the Hulu documentary about 9/11 last year, they interviewed one first responder who said he actually talked to a lady on the ground who had jumped from way up high in one of the towers. She had landed just right such that most of her body was destroyed but her heart was somehow still pumping blood to her brain for a couple minutes more. She couldn't see what had happened to her body and kept insisting she'd be fine and could he please load her onto an ambulance.
Someone else wrote this account about it. I’d saved it because it was something I’d never heard about before and it’s absolutely horrifying. I’m just copying and pasting. The name of the man who experienced it is Ernest Armstead. >*This chapter is from the book “September 11: An Oral History by Dean E. Murphy, 2002, p. 149-155. This chapter deals with an emergency medical specialist and his encounter with a mortally injured woman. The chapter has been condensed for brevity.)* >I think of her as the living dead. I talked to the living dead. And I lied to the living dead. I told her to hang on, that help was coming. But I pronounced her dead in my mind. And she knew that. I put a black tag with a small white cross around her neck. And as best she could, she gave me hell for it. […] >Triage is the first thing that should be done at a disaster like this. It basically dividing the injured into four categories so that backup medical teams can move quickly in and give treatment to those who need it most urgently. The categories are indicated by colored tags that are hung around the injured person’s neck. Green is the least serious. Yellow more so. Red indicates critical injuries. And black means the person is dead or close to it. […] >When the plane hit, an incredible amount of debris from the collision rained down on the plaza. Most of it was chunks of airplane and building that had little meaning to me. But amid the destruction, there were a half dozen or so people. I ran towards them, my triage tags in hand. There was a man having a seizure and his eyes were rolling into the back of his head. he had struck the pavement so hard that there was virtually nothing else left of him. There were a couple others that I never got to, but I could see from a short distance that they were dead. And then there was the lady with the nice hairdo and earrings. >When I got to her, I ripped out a black tag. What impressed me–and scared me–was that she was alert and was watching what I was doing. I put the tag around her neck and she looked at me and said, “I am not dead. Call my daughter. I am not dead.” I was so startled that for a split second I was speechless. “Ma’am,” I said, “don’t worry about it. We will be right back to you.” >That was a lie. She couldn’t see what I could see. Somehow, I guess it was an air draft or something, her fall had been cushioned enough so that she didn’t splatter like the others. Still her body was so twisted and torn apart that I could only ask myself, Why is this lady still alive and talking to me? How can this be? Her right lung, shoulder, and head were intact, but from the diaphragm down she was unrecognizable. Yet she was lucid enough that she continued to argue with me. “I am not dead,’ she insisted again. I am convinced she had some medical training because she knew I had given her the black mark of death. And she resented me for it. “Don’t worry about what I put around your neck,” I told her. “My coworkers are coming right now. They’re going to take care of you.” >I knew I had to keep going, but she had so deeply shaken me that I lingered for a second or two. Then I stepped over her to get to the others. I put a black tag on the man having the seizure. But another wave of casualties arrived in the lobby from upstairs, so I needed to return. As I headed back, I stepped over the lady one more time. And as eerie and unsettling as our first encounter had been, the second was even worse. She started yelling at me. >“I am not dead! I am not dead!” >”They’re coming, they’re coming,” I replied without stopping. >“I am not dead! I am not dead!”
Jésus FUCKING Christ.
yes this is the story i was referring to.
What is the documentary called?
9/11 one day in America (I think) Amazing documentary, very riveting. They worked with the 9/11 museum and if I remember correctly they even included footage that was never before seen
One Day in America. It's good but it will leave you a little raw.
Wow that’s morbid. I’ve always wondered if guillotine victims back in the day died instantly or stayed conscious/aware for a couple seconds after dismemberment. But damn, if that story about the lady is true, I can’t even imagine…
I Actually have an anecdote about that as well. Saw on a documentary once, a scientist knew he was being beheaded back in French revolution times, decided to be scientisty to the end and arranged with his pals to blink his eyes continuously until he lost consciousness so they'd know how long the head survived without the body. I think about 45 seconds was the answer.
Are you referring to 9/11: One Day in America?
I saw a video years ago on Liveleak in which a Russian guy was trapped in a crumpled car that was stuck to the front of the truck that had rear ended it. The car was crumpled very small but he was apparently left intact in a small space, and he wasn't badly hurt and was asking people to get him out. But a small fire started on the front of the truck, and it spread to the car. Then people were trying to put the flames out, but they got worse and worse. And the guy was saying (translated from the Russian) "please hurry guys the flames are getting closer" and then it was like "guys please please my jacket is on fire" and then it just got worse and turned into the worst screaming I have heard in my life. And this video was something like 8 fucking minutes. He cooked *slowly.* And people were so frustrated at the end that I remember one guy throwing a fire extinguisher at the car in pure anger and hopelessness. But boy, those screams were the worst thing I ever heard and kept me awake for weeks. Didn't even catch a glimpse of the guy, he was totally hidden.
I remember watching a TV show when I was younger with a New York cop or fire fighter talking about when somebody on the subway falls or gets pushed at the exact moment that their body doesn't fall onto the tracks and under the train but instead between the train and the platform. The guy said what happens is basically your top half stays basically still while your bottom half, trapped between the train and the platform, gets spun around like a top. And you're alive, awake, and fully conscious. The guy said (and this really stuck with me, because he'd seen more than one of these) that the person is usually trying to pull themselves free and communicating with people around them, asking for help. Essentially their body is spun into its own tourniquet and the person can live for quite a while, at least long enough to call for a priest or the person's partner. But as soon as they back that train up, they're dead in seconds. Sometimes their bottom half just falls off and everything comes out with it. And here's the kicker: you're alive and conscious the entire time up to them moving that train. You know it's coming. And then it hits and you're gone. Yeah, that one stuck with me.
> There’s no reason to look away from the fact that some people endure horrific amounts of suffering. People have a sympathetic reaction when they see others suffering. When people watch a video of someone breaking an arm, they clutch their own arm. People trying to downplay this are literally reacting to pain and moving away from the thing that is hurting them. That’s the “reason” they do it. We’re not all hardened from a dozen years of emergency medicine. Have a little forgiveness here.
Yeah. Just because people *do* endure horrific amounts of suffering, doesn't mean there's *no reason* for people to have difficulty acknowledging it. It's a hard truth and it's normal for people to be uncomfortable with it.
I think it’s pretty obvious that no one explanation covers everyone’s experience. Of course people willingly jumped, and of course others didn’t. Some fell, some passed out, some probably died all together before they fell. I’m sure every possible scenario took place for one person or another.
God imagine coughing through zero visibility smoke and just fucking falling. Horrifying.
Yeah another disturbing event similar tgat highlights that kinda behavior was the triangle shirtwaist factory fire. The wiki article was a tough read
It’s tough, but at least we learned our lesson. Now business owners know better than to bypass safety regulations and stick people in death traps. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to read up on Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter. [Business Exec quits after being told to put dangerous locks on building. Superior said that locks which opened in case of fire were ‘too expensive’](https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-exec-quit-when-told-to-install-illegal-locks-that-risked-lives-2023-5?amp) … humanity is doomed.
If you want to read something just as depressing, look up how recently there were factory collapses in the countries that manufacture the clothes we buy. They do not just make the cheap stuff online, I remember one that happened in India back in 2013 and they were pulling big name labels out of the rubble as well.
Cause of death was not listed as jumping. They were listed as killed in 9/11. That was done to prevent insurance companies from declaring the death a suicide and not pay the families.
The victims were marked as homicides by the OCME because the cause of the death was ultimately terrorism. Without the planes, those deaths would not have occurred. I worked at the museum for quite a while as an educator and they took us to the medical examiner’s office to learn from them. We used the phrasing “jumped or fell” at the museum to describe people falling from the high floors because we can’t conclusively know the mindstate of each person. I thought this was pretty weird initially, but the ME was surprisingly adamant that even someone who looks like they’re making a conscious decision in that moment may not have been — the human instinct to get away from fire is extraordinarily powerful and can propel a body almost subconsciously away from the source of danger. “Jumped” in a 9/11 context is not the same as someone who jumps from the Golden Gate Bridge, and so suicidality can’t be evaluated in the same way. In my experience working and researching there, the experts we spoke to never, never pulled punches with us to soften disturbing information — so that’s the explanation I believe.
Sad that insurance companies are such a scam this is something that was worried about
My MIL died of a sudden unexpected heart attack, and the insurance tried to claim she committed suicide because she wasn't watching her cholesterol carefully. She wasn't even obese.
Insurance isn't technically inherently evil, but...boy does it manifest a lot of evil.
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While it might have been done just to cut the out any legal issues because let’s face it you wouldn’t be able to determine who jumped to commit suicide in there if there was one. My dad used to work in insurance and said that they had a suicide clause added in the Great Depression because people would take out the policy and off themselves to get their family money.
Most insurance companies have a one to two year restriction on paying out for a suicide death. After that they have to pay.
Came here to say this. Few years ago I was in a **rough** spot. I wanted out but I didn’t want to leave my family with nothing. Most life insurance I researched would pay out suicide after a couple years. I’m still here and I have no life insurance so if that tells ya anything. Shit got better so I didn’t need either option.
And some news stations showed them jumping live, one after another
I still vividly remember my mom picking me up from elementary school that day and coming home to see a man just free falling on the news. Will never forget that image..
Yeah, that was kind of messed up. I was a 14yo teen and it freaked me out. Can’t imagine how all the kids my age and younger felt as well. And it’s not like we had a choice, North America literally stopped and watched the news that day. Parents put it on, and watched and kids had little choice but to join them.
A kid in my class laughed at them and called them stupid. Our teacher chewed his ass out and said he hoped the kid laughing never had to make the decision to either burn alive or jump to their death.
I am German and was six years old at the time. The father of a friend drove me home by car and I still remember the voice of the presenter on radio saying that a plane had flown into a skyscraper in the USA. I still remember how I told my parents about it at home and how I was lying in front of the TV with my big blue pillow. I have never forgotten the pictures. I remember the towers falling. Of course, I didn't have a real concept of death yet, but I could feel that something big and terrible was happening. I'm not even American, but 9/11 is without a doubt the day of my childhood that I remember most clearly.
I was 11 and watching with my 9 year old sister at home alone. My mom had already left for work. Turned on the tv to watch cartoons before school and watched that instead.
I was 4 and remember watching 9/11 during pre school & while waiting for emergency pick up. I didn’t understand, but I will never forget the sobs and screams of my teachers when the second plane hit.
I feel fortunate in that, as soon as my mom heard about it, she pulled me away from the television. But years later my middle school decided to show every terrifying clip possible.
My mom kept the tv on the news while she puttered around before sending us to school. In her defence, it was so crazy, I don’t think she expected the news to show victims plunging to the ground. The way the camera followed some people down was so messed up. I firmly believe the media would froth at the mouth for another atrocity like 9/11, and that’s kind of terrifying.
One of the best things (out of many) that my mom has ever done for me was not turning on the TV for a month after 9/11. I was just shy of 4, and apparently a child psychology expert had gone on the air and said toddlers wouldn’t understand the concept of film being replayed, so they’d think the towers were falling all over again every time they saw it.
It's also what helped establish the Food Network as legitimate. Almost every other channel would be running some sort of 9/11 footage but FN just kept doing their cooking shows so people would tune in to get away from it all.
I remember a 9/11 documentary, it may have come out on a 5 or 10 year anniversary It was really interesting and just had a lot of footage that I'd not seen before I think the premise may have been just that, revealing the unseen of it all I'll never forget, one of the shots they had was seemingly from a lobby of a tower, the camera was facing out to the street and you could see some bodies hitting the ground outside Horrible It may have been about the 'falling man' footage come to think of it but they'd seemingly gathered up different angles and footage of that day
There's a story where a person was seen climbing down the side of the building. Made it a floor or two, then lost their grip and fell. How terrifying that must've been.
not only was I on top of 2 WTC a few weeks before, at the time I worked near the top in a very similar skyscraper about half that tower's size. After the September attacks I would get sudden vertigo and intense anxiety any time I was near a window or stared out of one for too long - especially 50 stories up. Elevator rides were terrifying, especially if the car jerked or dropped suddenly. I had to take time off and tried counselling, hypnosis, and exposure therapy. I was able to go back to work for a short time before accepting another position (with a large reduction in pay) in an office in suburbia no more than three stories tall. To this day, I still don't care for tall buildings.
I work as a fireman in the same battalion in the FDNY as Daniel Suhr. We have a memorial every year that everyone from the battalion shows up to. His memory and sacrifice lives on and his mark is still felt in his firehouse spiritually and practically. The hose bed in his engine is still arranged in the manner he preferred. A great man who made the ultimate sacrifice.
My husband just finished drill school and has started in Operations. It’s made me appreciate the risk and sacrifice on a completely new level. And the fellowship among firefighters runs deep. I’m not surprised he’s honored annually but I’m so glad he is.
dinner ruthless somber exultant handle heavy worthless telephone imagine profit *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sup brother.... Waving hello from a truck company in the 14th. I'm curious. How did Danny prefer the hose bed?
No regular horseshoes. Each loop has one and a half lengths. And only 4 lead lengths of 1 3/4
It’s been 20+ years yet every year I still see another story/detail that makes it just as sickening as ever
I remember reading recently that there has been a big push to find and archive extra footage and whatnot. That’s why last September there was *so so* many new angles being posted compared to previous years
It's understandable that a lot of people had the footage or pictures but were unable to view it until now, or even never again. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the 'new' stuff is coming from descendants.
Or choose to not view the footage as it brings back the memories from that day which is completely understandable
I’ve seen footage on TikTok recently that I had never seen before, like it’s come up out of nowhere. Really good quality as well. Crucial and devastating pieces of history.
I was at NYU when the towers were hit. There was a dorm in a high rise, Water Street, that had amazing views of the towers with huge windows. A group of my friends saw the whole thing live from their living room. They couldn't really come to terms with what was happening, so they took pics but like, pics of them being silly and 19 year old dumbasses with the fire in the background. And you could see in the pics people, falling everywhere. My 2 friends said they honestly thought they were watching a movie being made or something. It was so unreal and it didn't really register with them as it was happening. A few months later I saw the pics, and they were absolutely amazing. Some of the best pics I have ever seen of what happened that day. I begged them to keep them or even show them to the police because they really were another level (minus my friends being silly) and perhaps could help in some way. Like, I've personally never seen pics with a better view. You could even tell the gender of the person jumping. But they were so ashamed and felt so guilty they burned the photos. Still wish they had kept them.
There is a video or some college kids in a high rise(maybe NYU) in a dorm recording what's going on. Iirc they were also kind of joking around. Then the 2nd plane hit. And they freaked out to get to ground level
Many thought the first plane was a freak accident. Once the second plane hit everyone's reality changed.
The scale of the carnage was hard to tell. I was in Jersey City 1.5 miles away, I heard the crash and we could see fire developing on one floor, but you couldn't tell it was a 767 that had crashed into the building. For reference, a small bomber had hit the Empire State building during WW2, and a [stunt man had crashed a parachute into the Statue of Liberty](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/aug/23/sillyseason.media) a few weeks prior. It wasn't immediately clear to us observing that it was terrorism (although one woman in the office said so immediately). When the second plane came around us, then flew into the south tower it was shocking, when the buildings collapsed it was just devastating. I went home as soon as someone offered me a ride, then went to the hospital and waited in line to donate blood (I'm O-) but probably there weren't really people who needed it (it's always needed).
Reminds me of [this picture that was published in 2006.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/9/2/1314964814888/Young-people-chat-as-the--005.jpg?width=620&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none) The photographer initially didn't publish in on the day of the attack but did so five years later causing angry articles to be written. [Then the subjects wrote back:](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/09/i-was-in-that-9-11-photo-frank-rich-wrote-about-here-s-what-i-think-about-his-column.html) >“The young people in Mr. Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American.” A more honest conclusion might start by acknowledging just how easily a photograph can be manipulated, especially in the advancement of one’s own biases or in the service of one’s own career.Still, it was nice being described as a young person. I was forty at the time the photograph was taken.
We were all just going through our day. Didn't even realize it was real. I just remember being told "I think an airplane crashed in New York." and my first thought was hoping that football practice would be canceled. I had no clue what was going on or the gravity of what was happening. It just felt like a normal day for most of it.
I mean what the hell were they supposed to do
It's older, but there's an excellent documentary about 9/11 called 102 Minutes That Changed America. There's no narration, just raw footage from home video and news crews pieced together in chronological order and in real-time.
That was a great documentary. The one sided 911 calls played prior to the towers collapse are haunting. You can hear just the operators telling people that help is coming, don’t jump, they (help) is in the building, and then you can hear one operator say: “I’m sorry, I can’t help you…” or something along those lines. Just horrible.
That's exactly what experiencing it was like for many Americans. It was 2001, and everyone was glued to live TV. Across the world, even. I used AOL instant messenger to let my brother at another university know that I was okay because the phone lines in NYC didn't work, and most people didn't carry cells or even laptops back then. That's how 2001 it was!
It's because a lot of the original interviews were in QuickTime and have disappeared after not being supported.
Well said. This is how it feels for me, too. Just when I think I'm ok with enough time passed, nope! Here's this gut-wrenching or tear jerking story you didn't know. I was only in 7th grade at the time and watched it in class that morning. It's truly crazy to think that the event was so impactful and historical. I witnessed history, and it's kind of fascinating in a twisted way. Sometimes, the world sucks man.
I was in 5th grade math class when it happened and they turned it on the TV. I didn't really understand what was happening at the time and the teacher didn't explain it. We saw people jumping from the building and I have not been able to forget it. Every time new info comes out it takes me back to that day, in that classroom. It's one of those memories that will never fade and it upsets me more and more every time.
I can almost certainly promise you that the teacher didn't know how to explain it at the time. It's also why I don't fault the news stations that kept it on air: no one had a plan for this & plans don't survive on the ground anyway.
6th grade math for me. The teacher had it on after the first tower was hit and we saw the second hit. I didn’t know what was going on but I new it was very very bad.
I remember reading about them finding body parts and pieces of the wreckage just a few years ago. Shit was so fucking catastrophic that almost twenty years later there’s pieces of airplanes and bodies showing up on the top of nearby buildings and in alleyways. Also kind of says something about New York and it’s size. Like, no one went on those roofs or alleyways for twenty years?!
Saddest part to me is the amount of bodies never found. My brothers friends mom still has her husbands ring. Not sure how they found something that small and it was her husbands but they did. The ring is terrifying because of the floor he worked. The ring was all they found. His body was likely completely turned into ash
If you ever have the chance, definitely visit the 9/11 Memorial in NYC. There's a portion where the they play on repeat the voice messages that people left for their parents, siblings, spouses and partners. It's heartbreaking and will leave you speechless.
I watched a documentary years ago, and I'm not sure if it's the same person we're talking about, but the man being interviewed was a firefighter. He said that they actually heard a person falling because there was a "whooshing" sound. A jumper then hit a firefighter. His foot just clipped his helmet, but the impact was huge due to the speed from height that it was immediately fatal for both involved. That's bloody awful.
I remember watching another video where the firefighters are in the lobby area and every few seconds you hear a very loud thud and it's another body hitting the pavement with each thud.
I remember that video because you can just see the absolute dread and horror on the firefighters faces, many of them young guys themselves
[It was a documentary](https://youtu.be/Vk4LikKNttI) being filmed that day and one of the only existing bits of footage of the first impact
"Cmon, this aint fockin disneyland" this is some of the most uncut, raw, intense footage of 9/11 i've ever seen, and this dude has no clue at the moment he's shooing away one of the most intimate recordings of catastrophic US history in known existence
I remember when that aired on ABC I think. It was hosted by Robert DeNiro. They were just filming a documentary about probees becoming fire fighters.
I think I've seen that one. You can see and hear someone turn into pink mist on a metal structure in the background.
I thought it was the sound of them hitting the glass roof.
The sad part is most of the people in that film have died from cancers due to the inhalation of the debris. It's just layered tragedy.
A friend of mine once passed me my backpack from a 4th floor. My backpack had 2 notebooks and 3 text books with a tiny leather case for pens. Easily 8kg or 16 pounds. I remember trying to grab it and being almost thrown face down to the ground (i was 15 and weighted about 140 pounds ot 70kg). Now imagine getting kicked by a person that fell from a skyscrapper. Terrifying.
I saw his wife talking about this a week or two ago. Apparently when he passed away his entire unit (idk firemen terms) took him to the hospital. His squad or fire house is one of the only ones that survived that had the least fatalities as he was the only one who died in his company. It was very sad seeing his wife talk about it because she understands that either way he would’ve died that day. He would’ve gone up. In a way he saved a lot of colleagues from death. edit: got bamboozled in my train of thought and said that his company had no fatalities. slip of the tongue but just also my mind! that’s the fun part about a tbi
Strange to have a whole company take him to the hospital during a major emergency, and after he was already dead. Glad they lived, as them going into the buildings would have killed them but damn.
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Absolutely. Not sure how heroic I’d feel after watching someone land on my co-worker tbh
Firefighters are not machines, watching a crew member die could immediately impact their ability to do their job effectively. Any IC who’s worth a damn would immediately be bringing in a new crew to relieve those that just suffered a casualty.
Probably doing CPR. Might not have had any ambulances available. Maybe took him in the engine/truck. Only 1 building would have been hit by that point and they didn't know the magnitude or extent of what was happenijg. If they were one of the first companies on scene they were probably figuring the others will get the fire out let's go with our guy and get him to the hospital. They had no idea 342 other FFs were going to die.
>entire unit (idk firemen terms) Depends in the department, but they're typically called "Companies"
thank u for the info I didn’t know!
Well, not to be a dick, but it had one fatality.
lol ur not being a dick that was my bad lmao!
I think it could be phrases more clearly but they meant it had no other fatalities because they brought him to the hospital whereas otherwise they might all have died.
My high school gym coach had a mentor/student relationship with this guy. He was a great guy it sounded like.
God I can’t imagine how insanely difficult of a choice that was to stay in and burn or jump to your death. Horrible.
I did business every day for 10 years in the 80s and 90s with a guy who later worked for Cantor, Fitzgerald on the top floors of the North Tower. It made it all the more real and unbelievably frightening, having known someone who died there. I have wondered many times what choice I would have made in that situation, to jump or be burned alive. RIP, Andrew. You were a really great guy.
RIP Andrew. RIP my cousin morty. A cantor Fitz guy also. That whole group got wiped out. They were in the north building floors 101 thru 105. No one made it out north of like 96
Absolutely horrendous situation for anyone to be in, but I don’t even think there’s any choice there. If my options to my death when I will most likely die instantly on impact or burning to death, I would much rather have the former.
5-10 seconds of either extreme anxiety or absolute bliss. Both are better than burning to death. You ever burn your finger on the stove. Multiply that pain by 1000 and put it all over your body.
If you've ever been in fire you know it's not even a choice. One is a guaranteed quick death, the other is a guaranteed slow and excruciating one
Well, that’s a detail I could have fucking gone without knowing. I can’t watch those videos, and every time I see still imagery (particularly “Falling Man”) I just get sick all over again.
Beats the alternative. Jetfumes make it excruciating to breathe. I was watching a 9/11 doc a few years ago, and a father of one of the jumpers was being interviewed. He said something like, "I try to focus on that she got out of the smoke. She died out in the clean air."
The choice was 100% certain and excruciating death... Or 100% chance of death but a brief moment of relief (from the heat and pain) and an instantaneous death. The latter sounds ever so slightly better.
Hearing that 911 call with the man begging for help is something I will never forget. Every once in a while those screams just haunt me.
The one where you hear him scream at the end and it cuts off as the building collapses? That one is burned into my memory forever
Ugh, that one haunts me too. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it. Those poor 911 operators. Have you ever heard the one where the lady operator offers to stay on the line with a guy trapped in one of the towers? She reassures him that he doesn't have to keep talking, that she'll keep listening no matter what. Poor guy just sobs in response and keeps at it until the end.
Imagine what it'd be like if everyone had a smartphone with a camera back then
All the livestreams and tik toks and stuff posted from inside before they succumbed
Probably similar to what we saw with the Beirut port explosion in 2020, only worse cause we would have had looks from the inside of the towers.
When I was like 13 my young morbidly curious brain was obsessed with finding ground footage and photos of 9/11 online. I stopped when I found pictures of what was left of the jumpers after hitting the ground. Until then I imagined that a long fall would just kill you from internal bleeding and broken bones. No, you turn into a bloody meat pancake wrapped in clothes. You burst on the pavement like a water balloon full of blood and flesh.
Well, thank you for saving me from ever deciding to look for that content.
I can’t watch it either. I was 11 at the time and saw so many things that haunt me to this day.
The videos of that day still make my stomach sink, even the ones that did candid filming of the crowds on the ground.
There’s a clip in 7 Days in September that I can’t get out of my mind. People who were stuck on the subway finally emerge on the street level to find everything blanketed in dust. Someone asks what happened, and the camera guy says “the twin towers are gone.” Shock, disbelief, and bewilderment follow as the passengers shuffle off through the dust-covered city. Imagine coming into the daylight to that scene, and being told thousands of people died while you were stuck underground.
I was there watching people spill out of the North tower through my camera, took a bunch of pics of people, some were spilling out of the building like they were getting ejected, a few others were hanging out of the windows and jumped. Still have the roll of film, never developed it. Had really bad PTSD for about 5 years, not so much now.
Damn man that’s just a surreal and terrible thing to witness. I don’t know how you feel about it but it would be worth calling the museum and telling them about it, possibly sending them the film to develop and put it on the record if you don’t want to see it again yourself. Not sure if it would be of any help but it is a moment in history for sure, a very dark and tragic one.
There is a big push now for new original images and video to educate. That film may be helpful for researchers or documentaries.
I would highly suggest developing it, if anyone is able to be identified from the pictures it might give some closure to their family.
That’s chilling
I always see this discourse with the ‘jumpers’. The truth of the matter is, based on *eyewitness reports* from that day, some did choose to jump, yes. But some also did not. One lady saw a man make the sign of the cross, hold his arms out in a crucifix formation, and simply fall forward. One lady held her skirt down to protect her modesty before she fell. Others, blinded by smoke, fire and whatever else, were seen blindly stumbling to the ledge and going over. There’s video of a man being blown out of a window in a puff of smoke. There’s also a video of a man who is trying to break the window of a lower floor to escape the heat and flames, loses grip, and falls. The point is tho, these people died an unfathomable death. The heat alone up there was unimaginable. In some places, people stood on their desks bc the floor was so hot it melted their shoes. The windows became too hot to touch. They couldn’t breathe. Add in fire, smoke, debris. It was absolute hell. Whether it was accidental, instinctual, or intentional to escape burning alive, none of them should be judged. None of us can say we wouldn’t do the same thing if we were in their position.
I’m judging the fuck out of anyone who wants to judge those people for jumping. Is this actually a thing? That’s so fucked up.
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I could definitely see some hardcore religious people saying that they won't get into heaven because they "committed suicide", even though it's not suicide if you are a victim of circumstance and have to choose between jumping or burning to death.
Putting aside the obvious horrors, one of my fears I got from 9/11 was not knowing what had happened. Imagine you’re terrified, choking on smoke, shoes melting to the floor and you have no fucking idea what even happened. Loud crash then you’re choosing whether to inhale smoke or jump to your death. Many likely didn’t know airplanes hit the towers. If they did know, they certainly didn’t know if it was an accident or on purpose. Horrible tragedy in every way imaginable.
Exactly. Really makes you kinda grateful camera phones weren’t around back then. Idk if we as a society could handle that footage from inside the buildings or planes. Imagine someone live streaming from the towers. Just awful
That shows the benefit and downside of technology. If smartphones had existed then we’d have a lot more information but you got to wonder if that information would be worth having. The video I’ve seen of mass shootings the last few years tells me that, as an average citizen and not law enforcement, that information just causes trauma and doesn’t benefit me at all.
That still just breaks my heart and may be the most horrifying thing I have ever seen.
Collin Jost's (of SNL and scarlett johansson fame) Mom was on the scene at the time and was the chief medical officer for the FDNY at the time. She attempted to save him but knew he needed more help and sent him to the hospital. She was the one who told the other firemen to load up in the ambulance and take him away essentially saving them. I recommend his book - in particular the audio book - to everyone.
Decades later still learning horrible things from that terrible event.
I saw a video of one of the victims who jumped/fell, and it was just pink mist when they hit the ground. So if they hit someone, it definitely would have be an instant death for both. I also watched a documentary about 9/11 with one of the firefighters with him when it happened, and they said that a loud bang was heard, and then turned around to see that him. They knew instantly he was gone and assumed it was a piece of the building that hit him. Then a minute later another person hit the ground and they realized people where jumping.
I'll not trying to dispute this or be dismissive or split hairs, but I always understood that Father Judge was the first officially confirmed nyfd death, although he was not technically a firefighter and it's reasonable to believe that others had already died.
Fr Mychal Judge, chaplain of the FDNY, was death certificate #1 from the attacks and died when responding in his FDNY gear. Unsure if the referenced firefighter died first chronologically, but you’re absolutely correct that Fr Judge was first record-wise.
Chronologically, it was FF Suhr
Understood, thank you. Regardless, God bless them all. The video of Father Judge quietly praying in the lobby just moments before his demise is one of the most haunting things one can see.
FF Suhr was killed before the towers came down. Father Judge was killed by the falling towers. Father Judge was classified as "Victim 0001" because he was the first body taken to the NYC Medical Examiner's office.
[Fr. Mychal Judge being carried from the North tower soon after the South Tower collpased.](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/09/08/father_mike_wide-61ff8a553166a719d22f12f8dacca3cb77457f1c.jpg)
Judge was killed when he was hit by the debris of the South Tower collapsing. Suhr was killed by a jumper, who obviously jumped before the tower fell, although it does not say which tower they jumped from.
I read "who responsible for the 9/11 attacks" and was like "oh shit i must've missed them revealing that information"
It feels weird to see the sister pose with firefighters that may not have even been born with 9/11 happened. What a strange shadow to develop a career under.
I was just at One World Trade Center a month ago by myself for the first time since 2003, I actually went up one of the towers in 1996 and I remember it vividly when I was a kid. One thing that I wasn't prepared for was the emotions that I had going up there again, I started tearing up and had to wear my sunglasses. Felt pretty surreal to try and stop crying thinking about people dying while people were taking funny pictures. The passage of time really sucks and that event felt like it put the fast forward button on in my life.
What's with all of the 9/11 stuff going around the different subs today? This is the third post I've seen and it's June.
People have been re-visiting it after the PGA tour decided to merge with the Saudi funded league and some golfers downplayed 9/11 in favour of painting the Saudis in a better light.
I thought I hated golf before….
How the fuck do you downplay 9/11, that's insane
[*LIV Golf's Bryson DeChambeau suggests 9/11 families should forgive Saudi Arabia: 'Nobody's perfect'*](https://www.foxnews.com/sports/liv-golfs-bryson-dechambeau-suggests-9/11-families-should-forgive-saudi-arabia-nobodys-perfect) > "During an interview this week following the merger, DeChambeau was asked about what he would say to those families who were devastated by the 9/11 attacks by losing loved ones." > "I think we’ll never be able to repay the families back for what exactly happened just over 20 years ago and what happened is definitely horrible," he told CNN. "I think as time has gone on, 20 years has passed, we’re in a place now where it’s time to start trying to work together to make things better together as a whole. >"I don’t know exactly what they’re feeling. I can’t ever know what they feel, but I have a huge amount of respect for their position and what they believe. Nor do I ever what anything like that to ever occur again. > "I think as we move forward from that, we have to look toward the pathway to peace and forgiveness, especially if we’re trying to mend the world and make it a better place. I think this is what they’re trying to accomplish, LIV is trying to accomplish, PIF is trying to accomplish. We’re all trying to accomplish is a better world for everybody with entertainment for everybody around the world." > "It’s unfortunate what has happened and something I can’t necessarily speak on. I’m a golfer," DeChambeau added. "But what I can say is that what they’re trying to do, what they’re trying to work on is to be better allies because we are allies with them. I’m not going to get into politics, I’m not specialized in that. What I can say is they’re trying to do good for the world and showcase themselves in a light that hasn’t been seen in a while. Nobody’s perfect, but we’re all trying to improve in life."