The 9/11 Jumpers haunt me more than anything this time of year

Here is a thread where we have been discussing 9/11.

Why did you watch op. Go watch a fake thriller movie. I won't watch because I don't want to be traumatized.

Shouldn't you be watching cartoons? Show some respect on this day that so many people lost their lives.

I had a meeting in Jersey City a few years ago and two of my coworkers wanted to go to the 9/11 memorial. I didn't want to go but I went. We walked through for a while and all became increasingly distressed, and then we walked into a room with high walls and looped video of people jumping from buildings projected onto them. It was a horror show, so morbid and explotative. We all agreed immediately that the whole setup felt like some kind of perverse terrorism porn and we left immediately. The memorial did not have the reflective and reverential effect everyone expected.

If you really cared, you would maintain these victims’ dignity by not watching. I judge anyone that seeks out videos like this.

MARY!

In your 20s? No wonder. Gen Z.

You guys don’t know boundaries or respect. That’s why we can’t stand you.

Oh please. It was a part of the day. No different than watching the towers fall every year.

I was born in 2001. Is there a problem with that Mr. Millennial shit stain? R7

I am not being disrespectful by watching what happened.

Fuck Israel and zionists.

OP, do fuck off.

A recent story

R11 is that recent? Every year The Falling Man is covered.

My god what a masochist, I hate this time of the year, this year especially, who wants to relive this? Just stop it.

How long of a fall would that be?

Around 1300-1500 feet moving at 150mPH

R13 you don’t find the footage fascinating all these years later?

It still haunts me as well 🥲

I saw some jumpers in an Edna Cintron video yesterday and it has kind of bothered me. I didn't realize there were any jumpers or I wouldn't have watched. That said, I completely understand it, it's just instinct to get away from fire any way you can.

It will always haunt us!!! 😢😢😢😭😭😭😫😫😫

OP, how does it feel to be not even 30, and yet already a MARY!

R19 I’m 21.

R20 I was 22 when it happened. What is your impression of how people behave on this date? How do you understand it?

I watched all through the day of course, and in the moment, I couldn't quite believe that what I was seeing were people jumping rather than go through the ordeal of dying in a fire. Even the networks I watched seemed incapable of understanding that [bold]this was really happening[/bold] in real time. It took a few minutes/hours (who knows?) for them to decide to move away from broadcasting such atrocities.

To be perfectly frank, there is a level of fascination (sorry, that word seems disrespectful but I can't think of a better one right now) in the choices that those poor souls were forced to make. I cannot watch anything like this but I'd be lying if claimed that I hadn't internalized this dilemma myself. When does the unbearable become the unthinkable?

Falling to your death is a lot faster and less painful than burning to death.

I was 25. It’s never left me.

R21 with today’s youth or people older?

I find that people who were adults/young adults at the time view it in a far more serious way than those of us who were young/kids then who either didn’t understand it or too young to see the seriousness of it all. I feel a lot of people who are around my age understand now how serious it was but we don’t have those same memories that trigger those same feelings you felt on that day. I was 1 in 2001. I was a baby. So I don’t have those feelings of fear or anger or confusion that come back to me every year when footage is shown. Some people have forms of PTSD. I don’t have to deal with that part of it.

But we see the severity of it and it’s scary to us too, just more so the idea of it all. Like “wow that is terrible I couldn’t imagine what it felt like that day” vs you all who experienced it.

I’m sure those in DC and PA and NYC have it the worst. Especially NYC, terrorists favorite playground.

I also feel people who think an attack will never happen again are foolish.

[quote]Even the networks I watched seemed incapable of understanding that this was really happening in real time.

Yes, that night on CBS Evening News they had some pretty clear, up-close footage of a jumper that made me turn away instinctively, and I couldn't believe they showed it. I've never seen that footage again, probably for good reason.

Imagine the lives of those poor jumpers.

Compare that to the Blatino person complaining on-line that his exact skin tone wasn’t perfectLy represented among the cast of “In the Heights.”

Eat a dick, whiney woke representation bitches.

R26 my mother was watching the Spanish news that night, Telemundo or Univision, not sure which, and they showed up close shots of not only the jumpers, but the dead bodies on the ground after jumping. I was sickened.

R27 what about gays who bitch when there isn’t gay representation? Do you hold the same sentiment?

OP here, I also wanna say I find most people around my age moving to NYC don’t even care about the severity of it all, they use it to profit themselves via social media and attention. They tell stories about 9/11 as if they were in the WTC themselves, meanwhile they were like 4 years old in Kansas at the time.

I’ve seen it firsthand. It’s embarrassing to me.

Turning away from the jumpers also seems irreverent and disrespectful. I am on the west coast so I was spared real time images of jumpers on 9/11. However, the terrified, crying faces of those on the ground witnessing it is essential to the horror of 9/11. That human beings were forced to choose how they would end their own lives as a result of senseless violence. Deprived of any opportunity for heroism. We waged war for decades to avenge the jumpers and everyone else who died on that awful day.

There was an article a few years ago saying how the jumpers are the one thing everyone wants to forget about that day

The first thing I thought of when I heard that people were jumping was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. There too many of the girls on the upper floors and roof chose rather then be consumed by flames and die by fire to jump and be killed, if they were lucky, by hitting the pavement. It was said that there was a well dressed mysterious young man who helped lead the girls to the window sills and edge of the roof to jump. The TV movie made this quite ethereal, and in a weird way acceptable and even preferable. My greatest fear in life was being burned by fire, I know without a doubt I would be a jumper in the same situation. I have nothing but the highest respect for those people choosing to take control of their fate in that way. It’s heart breaking and sad, but I think about times being at amusement parks and riding plunge rides or rollercoasters and the feeling of that rush of adrenaline and weightlessness, panic and fear and freedom and flight. You close your eyes, step out, and fall.

I always wonder if any people who were conscience and not handicapped or buried under something didn’t jump and did choose to burn to death.

Granted the heavy smoke would probably cause them to pass out first.

This always reminds me of footage from the Hindenburg I saw as a child on TV.

There was a shot of a jumper and it followed him down quite a distance.

There was something so feral about it.

He was climbing the sky trying to get back up into the blimp, though he was hundreds and hundreds of feet from it.

Just instinctual I guess, but it struck me that he was not only terrified, but regretful of his decision to jump.

Climbing up, all the way down.

So very sad.

[quote]Oh please. It was a part of the day. No different than watching the towers fall every year.

Exactly.

Besides, it was the older generation that made luxuriating in the total misery of 9/11 a national past time. Rather than criticize others' morbid fascination with the events of that day, perhaps you should own your own god damn part in generating that morbid fascination to begin with.

Robert Longo did a set of magnificent larger then life drawings called Men in the Cites in the 1980s of men and women dressed in business attire turning and twisting as if falling through the air in contorted positions that seemed eerily to be a prophecy of the 9/11 jumpers.

R36 A national past time ? Morbid fascination ? How old are you ? Do you have ANY idea of the impact of such an event on the sense of safety and security we had always felt ? It disappeared that day,never to return. For those of us old enough to remember it was almost like the AIDS epidemic in the sense of "before and after" . Young people reference the time pre covid pandemic as "before times" well honey,this is like us older folks 4-5-6th "before times" . I dont watch the jumpers because it breaks my heart,like I dont watch anything about Sandy Hook for the same reason.But it doesnt mean I dont think those pictures dont deserve to be seen,that those poor souls last moments dont deserve to recognized and mourned. Im so glad Im on the downslope at 60,I just about cant take any more "before times" .

Robert Longo then went on to direct the music video of Bizarre Love Triangle for New Order and used the falling man imagery more overtly with well dressed men and woman falling against an impossible blue sky. Of course it fit perfectly with the lyric “Every time I see you falling, I get get down on my knees and pray.” There’s a lot of stock footage used in the video including fireworks/explosions and the rush of the city, but some of the other original footage is on the pedestrian foot bridge from the WTC to the World Financial Center with another well dressed man in a hat and tench coat. That bridge was one of the few relics to survive on the WTC site and is still used today.

[quote]A national past time ? Morbid fascination ?

Uh, how else would you describe it?

Do we not do this every year?

Do you think it's the 20-and-under set who is driving this? It's the people who were of age on that day who are completely incapable of maintaining any sort of respectful distance from it all.

R39, Bizarre Love Triangle came out in 1986. What the hell are you talking about?

They never show the landings. Stick or bounce?

R41 Prophecy.

[quote]Turning away from the jumpers also seems irreverent and disrespectful.

If that's directed at me at r26, r31, that's a pretty tasteless accusation, saying that I'm disrespecting the dead because I instinctively turned away from the sight of a man dying, being shown on the news maybe 8 hours after it happened.

Oh, I see now, R43. Sorry!

E. B. White’s essay “Here is New York” also contained a prophecy of what was to come.

[quote] Granted the heavy smoke would probably cause them to pass out first.

Sorry to be so morbid but taking in a single breath of 300 degree air would have caused them to pass out before smoke inhalation.

I remember watching it on TV with my mom (3 or 4 ), and then for a while, I couldn't even look at a skyscraper without wincing in fear. Like I thought it was a normal thing for people to be filmed preparing to jump off of a building. I didn't understand why they existed in the first place, so I thought it was just a thing that you sometimes had to do if you went inside of one. Like some sort of human sacrifice ritual, but instead of an aztec temple, it was an skyscraper. I didn't even know that a plane flew into the building, I just knew that, for some reason, people were being encouraged to jump off.

Another prophecy was the art of Michael Richards who included imagery of airplanes and falling in his artworks. He had a studio in one of the World Trade Centers on the 92nd floor and died that day and had the body of his work destroyed.

Some of those people actually fell out accidentally too. Can you imagine feeling your way around because you can't see and then falling?

[quote] If that's directed at me at [R26], [R31], that's a pretty tasteless accusation, saying that I'm disrespecting the dead because I instinctively turned away from the sight of a man dying, being shown on the news maybe 8 hours after it happened.

It was not directed at you, I hadn't even noted your post. It is a general comment on how the jumpers are excluded from coverage of that day. Without a doubt, it was the most horrific memory for anyone who witnessed it real time.

I don't blame any of them at all, if I had that acrid smoke and heat chasing me I think I would rather fall

CNN had a documentary on the other night filmed on 9/11 as it happened between French brothers. They were following NYFD guys around and they were in the lobby setting up a command post when you heard horrible loud bangs and one guy looked around at everyone and said "jumpers" and you realized those noises were bodies. The other thing filmed but not shown is people on fire exiting the towers.

"By two French brothers" not between.

It's fascinating to me so many of you on this thread are using this occasion to be extra nasty to other people here.

Be forgiving.

R53 I’ve seen that doc. It was first broadcast on CBS around 2012 or so.

The NatGeo special also shows footage of the firefighters standing around and you hear the bodies landing above them. Can you imagine? I wouldn’t be able to sleep. And then there was a 21 year old EMT who still to this day has nightmares about that, now 41, and even was suicidal for a while after 9/11. The stuff he saw won’t leave his mind, but there was one woman whose back was scraped by a piece of the second plane that came flying down and her whole back was ripped off. The skin was ripped off. He made sure she got to a hospital that day. He found out she survived and 2 months later he went to visit her and she remembered him and he thinks of her whenever he needs to remind himself of how lucky he is.

R55 better than Gen Z using it as a way to get social media attention and likes.

I’ve always wanted to see the footage of the people running out of the building on fire. I don’t think its ever been shown. And not because I like that stuff, it terrifies me, but there is a curiosity there about it.

We’ve seen everything else, including jumpers dead bodies on the ground, but never the people on fire. It almost feels like a myth.

[quote] [R53] I’ve seen that doc. It was first broadcast on CBS around 2012 or so.

I saw it on the first anniversary back in 2002.

I wanna say that everyone speaks about the towers, the pentagons, etc. but hardly those people on Flight 93 who made sure to crash that plane to avoid even more people dying.

R59 oh well maybe it was first broadcast on National TV in 2011 or 2012. I remember CBS promoting it as such and I watched it and couldn’t sleep after.

Didn’t help that at the time they would put those blue lights in place of the Twin Towers and you could see it straight from my bedroom window at night. It always gave me an eerie vibe.

Me and my family were just by the new Tower last week today, driving through the city to get to Central Park for a wedding.

From what I’ve gathered, the people who ran from the buildings on fire were people in the elevators and the lobby. The flaming jet fuel seeking the path of least resistance flushed down the elevator banks drenching, scorching and catching on fire the people on the elevators and in the vicinity. In the Nat Geo series the NJ businessman going to the Marriott helps a woman who must have been enough on the edge of it to survive though severely burned. They are some of the last ones out of the Marriott and she somehow was even able to run when the cloud of debris chased after them. He’s then the guy who discovers that his sister and niece were on one of the airplanes that hit the towers, that totally knocked the wind out of me.

Why didn't they just, like, walk down?

I've never seen pics of the jumpers on the ground. I can't imagine there is much left

I recall that one of the first pieces of literature about 9/11 that came out weeks after was a short story about a man and a woman who work in the towers, but are mortal office enemies and are completely nasty to each other. Then in they end they clasp hands and jump out the window together united. I think it was in the New Yorker magazine, but I’ve never been able to find it or a reference to it. Does anybody know it and have a link?

Years ago I saw close-up footage of lots of people hanging out of windows waving pieces of cloth. I don't know how the windows got broken, but in their delirium they seemed to believe a helicopter could hover nearby and throw them a rope or something. That's the image that haunts me.

OP, I'm upset that you decided to post this. It feels disturbingly wrong.

R66 there was a helicopter that got close but they realized there is no way to get those people from the windows as the helicopter can’t get closer to the building so it just flew away.

If those people could get to the roof they would have been saved but the stairwells are on fire or broken off.

R64 Tons of pics and footage existed online but now most of it is wiped off.

The day of 9/11 some news channels were showing it.

R68 At least someone learned something from the Towering Inferno.

This is an excellent doc series which sets out the lead up to 9/11. It's the best 9/11 related documentary IMO. One can come to understand how the terrorists came together and planned 9/11 and other attacks leading to 9/11.

USA intelligence told Condi Rice something big was going to happen but she told him there were other pressing matters on the agenda. Get back to me later.

Great doc

Some of the jumpers were actually ON FIRE when jumping.

Here's a picture of one of them jumper's body.

When I was down there, the people around me were exclaiming, seeing a jumper and then another. I looked where they were pointing but I just couldn’t see them.

Honestly, I think my brain was refusing to see and register it.

For some reason, walking through the wreckage on my way uptown (before the collapses), I picked up someone’s airline ticket. I held on to it for a few years as some kind of macabre souvenir.

And some graphic pictures in the article (in Spanish)

Watching live I saw a man come to a window waving something, then he decided to try and climb down and tried grabbing some structural thing trim type thing, lose his grip and fall. I remember literally gasping aloud and turning away. It was so surreal.

Another picture.

The purple purple prose of grief porn and disaster trolling, and boilerplate somber remembrances of shocking personal experiences.

"Show the doctor where on your soul that 9/11 touched you."

R65 that's morbidly heartwarming if it's true to what you remember. I hope you find the info. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of details, that came out immediately afterwards, are now difficult to find. Odd when it wasn't something that happened that long ago. Though I'm guessing if it happened today, the images/ details would be almost too plentiful. I'm glad there weren't smart phones, with their high quality cameras, in the hands of every witness on the street that day. It'd be a nightmare to see.

I can't really blame younger people for not fully understanding why it's still a thing to bring up every year. In another few decades, it'll be another note in history like the titanic, hindenburg, pearl harbor, etc.

Though I'm disappointed that the immediate consequences and changes after that day aren't brought up more. It really did change society overnight. That's when all travel went from care free to a pain in the ass. Going to events suddenly meant being screened for terrorist bombs and they decided you couldn't reenter a venue if you went outside. There were fears for years that another random attack was bound to occur, especially on the anniversary. I was almost out of HS and many peers went to the wars that stemmed from that day. Our government passed legislation that chipped away at our freedoms (the "patriot act"), without people thinking to stop it because of the fear. Politics became even more venomous. It's so difficult to explain everything that changed from that one fateful day.

#76. There a video of some middle aged, slightly overweight, man trying to climb down and basically losing his grip and falling down. It's pretty sad and shocking. There are also pictures of some of the jumpers with clothes in their hands, they obviously tried to make parachutes out of tablecloths or curtains.

Forgot to ask, has there been any changes to building codes due to 9/11? Especially in regards to emergency evacuations? Though it would take something crazy to set up, that's always been one big downside to high buildings. How the hell can you get out in an emergency if floors are burning and there's a ton of people trying to get out?

I would swear there was a guy very close to the roof, maybe one or two floors down, who was outside the building and reaching for a ladder dropped by a helicopter, but they couldn't get close enough because of wind or possibly updrafts. I cannot find footage of this at all but I distinctly remember it being filmed by the news, just in case he was rescued.

An old WSJ article makes no mention of it, so maybe I'm remembering something else.

Photos online are disappearing all over the place. Many docs even censor the planes hitting the buildings.

So ridiculous. Let people see history unfolding. Stop the delicate snowflake arm of censorship.

Did they disable comments? So many 9/11 videos have to because of all the whack job conspiracy fuckwits. Those people are the same ass pimples who believe in Qanon shit.

A man in his final miliseconds before hitting the roof of another building.

Here's the picture of one of the jumpers with a piece of cloth in his hands. He tried to make a parachute.

Video with close-ups.

Also, shows the fall of the man with the piece of cloth in his hand.

No, that was the towel/scarf he used to signal distress from his office window.

Here’s a shockingly clear transfer of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire TV movie. The part about the beautiful young man helping girls to jump comes at about 1:21. That disaster completely changed fire codes in NYC and impacted them around the world. They were responsible for fire escapes being added to buildings. I thought the WTC would have the same impact, but 20 years later look at all the tall slender skyscrapers in Manhattan.

Hard to imagine any of the super tall needle towers could withstand a jumbo jet crash. I realize the steel would slice the plane like a boiled egg but still that is a brutal shock.

Yes. He was using that to signal for help. Not a parachute.

I remember so many images of dead bodies on the ground online. Footage of the jumpers falling. One video of a mans head popping off when he hit the roof of another building. None of that exists now. They’ve censored this tragedy.

I've seen some things a woman ain't supposed to see.

A lot of footage has been cleaned off the internet. Always wonder why.

Some docs don’t show the planes hitting now.

The French brothers were HoTT back then.

Also, while most of the witnesses where pretty shocked and solemn about the jumpers, a lot of black women were distraught. They are as a whole more emphatic.

empathetic

Get help race-obsessed troll.

Why is race being brought up here? Everyone was distraught seeing that.

Horrible to imagine what they were thinking on the way down.

R7, people say the same things about millennials. Judging people because of when they were born is the dumbest thing ever

Weird to read young peoples perspective. It always shocked me how much this event affected people far away in place - and time. The drama of it really grabbed people. Even then, as a cynical young(er) gay man who watched from my Village window, I kept thinking “what about the thousands of innocent men who died for years of AIDS?” Seemed like there was such a boundless empathy and sympathy with these victims and families over every other type of cruel, inhumane, senseless victims of violence or disaster. Maybe it was the fact that we were just coming out of the darkest days of AIDS and people finally stopped dying - this seemed like just another disaster to hit NYC. But this time, everyone cared.

Countries that lost citizens on 9/11.

In hindsight, they should have built wall ladders on the cladding every five or so vertical lines.

I hate it when anyone uses the deaths of strangers to grandstand to other people about ‘respect’.

Has anyone made a "Let's be" in relation to Jumpers?

R101 AIDS was terrible but it was a disease. 9/11 was a Terrorist attack. They aren’t the same.

Another video.

At 6;52 starts the part the footage 76# was referring to. The man that tried to climb down only to immediately lose grip and fall down.

Also starting at 5:36 there is footage of around 10 people falling one after the other.

[quote]I would swear there was a guy very close to the roof, maybe one or two floors down, who was outside the building and reaching for a ladder dropped by a helicopter, but they couldn't get close enough because of wind or possibly updrafts.

It never happened.

People were rescued from the roof during the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, I believe. But not on 9/11.

The police helicopter pilots also knew there would be no roof rescues that day. Between the smoke and the instability of the building it was impossible. Not that anyone made it to the roof anyway.

It does haunt some of them still.

I’m haunted by the fact that United 93 only had 37 passengers.

Give me an upgrade on that fucking Boeing 757!

Isn’t it great that a plane with 37 people stopped the terrorists and crashed?

I was working next door to the MGM when it caught fire. I was walking into work from the parking lot and saw people jump. It haunted me for a long time.

Those poor people. I can't imagine their terror and fear.

GHOULS!

I made the mistake of watching part of R107's video out of morbid curiosity. Stuff like this is why I thought it was ridiculous when some people wrung their hands about how "inhumane" the execution of Osama bin Laden was. Come on. He got off lightly. Look how much suffering he gleefully caused and never showed a jot of remorse over.

R115 what about the civilian casualties of the wars in Iraq + Afghanistan? Illegal wars carried out in the names of these people. Is ‘hand wringing’ over those ridiculous?

Look, we just have a bunch of terrorists American weapons. We are gonna pay for that in the long run. Watch.

[quote]A lot of footage has been cleaned off the internet. Always wonder why.

r93 IRC the media as a whole scaled back the footage being shown, starting a few days after the attacks because of concern for children seeing it over and over.

It was such a weird time to see all of TV and radio, every channel, preempted with breaking news for days, like the world was about to truly end.

THE CHILDREN !

Flights at that time often flew nearly empty. It’s only been the last 5 years or so when airlines cut flights and packed us all in.

[quote]It was such a weird time to see all of TV and radio, every channel, preempted with breaking news for days, like the world was about to truly end.

Life as we knew it in America did really stop for a period of days to weeks.

The passengers from diverted flights from Europe passed 5 in Canada.

^^ 5 days

R56- It was first show on CBS in March 2002 not 2012.

R112, I’m sorry you witnessed that - it had to have been horrific.

Many of those jumpers from tower 2 had started to evacuate before being told to return to their desks.

'I heard people being told, "The building is secure. The safest place is inside; stay calm and do not leave". That's what they were saying. They were telling people to go back up to their offices and their desks, like the building was not in danger.'

I remember seeing an interview with a woman on a high floor of the 2nd tower, whom most of her office perished. They had acted obediently when told to stay. Yet something instinctive told the woman to run.

Here is the full documentary on youtube filmed by those French brothers which was first shown on tv in March 2002. I watched it back then. It's one of the best documentaries about that day.

I don't think there were any jumpers in the 2nd tower. They were all in the 1st tower.

R128 because the second tower fell fast

I'm actually less haunted by the jumpers--I think because I read early on that the jumping was kind of an instinct--to get away from the fire/smoke/insane temperatures, though I also don't look at the footage--and more the recordings of people stuck in the buildings or on the planes. People's last words dealing with this insane horror. I don't think they play those anymore, but everything was played the days after the explosion. I saw enough then for a life time.

I'm in California, but for some time afterwards, I couldn't hear a plane in the sky without thinking of the Twin Towers. The diverted planes were all pretty much heading for the West Coast (the hijackers picked ones that would have full fuel loads) and random connections would come up--someone who knew somebody. There's a bench near Lover's Point in Pacific Grove dedicated to a young woman who died in one of the planes.

But with all that, I find living through the Pandemic far worse and more dispiriting.

^ beautiful post. Poetic.

R131, Thank you. I don't really think of myself as having a 9/11 story. I was asleep when it happened, but it did haunt all of us, I think.

R72 in another version of that photo, it looks like a women holding a white bag, not flames

The most haunting recording I've heard is the man talking to 911 when the first tower collapses. It starts in a conversational tone, then a rumbling, then "OH GOD!"

I saw a woman on 20/20 say she felt obligated to watch the people in the other tower jumping as a way to be a witness to their heroic choice.

[quote]NN had a documentary on the other night filmed on 9/11 as it happened between French brothers.

I believe this is the best documentary of the dozens made about that day. I was surprised when it didn't get a nomination at the Oscars the next year.

It haunted me then, and it still does twenty years later.

Depeche Mode should have jumped. They never had another good song.

So horrible, those people went to work in the morning, not realizing their lives would be cut short in such a horrible and senseless way.

The scenes inside the WTC were probably even worse. Being trapped in a stairwell or elevator, while the whole building was collapsing.

My heart goes out to those people who had to experience such horror in the last minutes and seconds of their lives and also to the grieving families and friends.

I saw on 20/20 that on the day it happened the CIA looked at the passenger lists of the planes and immediately identified a bunch of people on the terror watch list. Wow. People were just asleep at the wheel.

Ugh, here's a shot of the people hanging out the windows. Just devastating.

I was living in Germany at the time and I very well remember, the following day or a few after 9/11, some journo had the president of Egypt or some other high government official on camera on TV, who said that he had warned the US government about an impending attack.

For me, the worst is the 911 call recordings on YouTube.

I saw Bill Clinton get really agitated in an interview where the reporter questioned why he didn't get Osama Bin Laden when he had the chance.

It was so dumb when people were saying that "nobody ever thought they'd use planes to crash into buildings."

It was in Assassins the musical. Samuel Byck I think his name was planned to do that to the White House. I remember Joy Behar saw the revival in 2004 and came in with notes she read showing that it had been thought of by a famous assassin before.

[quote] Seemed like there was such a boundless empathy and sympathy with these victims and families over every other type of cruel, inhumane, senseless victims of violence or disaster.

It might seem like people lose perspective on the many ways people come to terrible ends daily, but this was so dramatic, symbolic, at such a large scale, broadcast live, and something all first worlders could relate to--we've all been in skyscrapers and on airplanes--and in a place that most people in the world know.

I think there's much live footage of atrocities happening in real time (were there videos of Tiananmen Square or the Dhaka garment factory fire?)

How did they get the windows opened? Where they shattered or melted by the heat?

*I don't think there's much live footage ...

On average the fall from the twin towers was 11 seconds (it would vary slightly due to weight of a person and other factors).

People did not loose consciousness during the fall. I can only imagine it would be the longest 11 seconds of your life - just awful beyond belief.

How do you know they didn't lose consciousness? I've always heard you would falling at that speed.

Did many people die in the upper part of the second tower hit? Didn't people leave when the first tower was hit?

(nowadays people would probably leave)

I was in NYC a few years ago when there was an earthquake. Being a Californian it didn't really panic me but the CVS I was in announced it had happened. On the street I ran into two guys who had just fled from their office building asking what was happening. They weren't taking any chances and said as soon as they felt the shaking they left.

[quote] I judge anyone that seeks out videos like this.

WHO

R108, I specifically said he didn't get rescued, that there was a brief attempt but they couldn't get anywhere near him. Did you REALLY think I said someone got rescued off the roof? Really?

It's getting impossible to have a conversation around here, people are constantly either reading too quickly and misunderstanding, not reading all the comments, or purposely misrepresenting what someone said.

That's my recollection too r118, that kids came home after school on 9/11 and were watching the news and they were showing pretty grisly scenes, and parents asked if they could dial that back. Like others already said, that first day, the media were showing everything.

R56 That is an AMAZING documentary and the sound those bodies make is UNNERVING and seemed endless.

R153, I’m sorry that you are feeling like a complete idiot, but there is no need to be defensive. You’re entire recollection is incorrect. There was no rescue and there was no attempt at a rescue. You didn’t see a ladder, you didn’t see any helicopter get close enough to the building to even try to rescue anyone. The helicopters circled the roof but the there was no one up there. The smoke was too thick to do anything beyond that.

You’re wrong.

R156, you're being ridiculous. What I said at r82 was that he was NOT on the roof, did NOT get rescued, and I even linked to an article with no mention of a rescue attempt (when there should have been, had it happened) and said maybe I was remembering wrong.

There is something wrong with you.

I flew back to O'Hare from Frankfurt on the first anniversary of the attacks. Returning from a family reunion. The plane was quite empty that day.

LOL, okay R157.

Meanwhile, for sake of clarity, here is what R157 actually said:

[quote] I would swear there was a guy very close to the roof, maybe one or two floors down, who was outside the building and reaching for a ladder dropped by a helicopter, but they couldn't get close enough because of wind or possibly updrafts. I cannot find footage of this at all BUT I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER IT BEING FILMED BY THE NEWS, just in case he was rescued.

You’re an idiot who can’t even remember what he wrote five minutes ago, so it’s no surprise you have conjured up a whole helicopter rescue attempt off the side of a burning skyscraper out of thin air.

Get some rest.

Do you think the outcome would be the same if people were trapped in a building like this today? It is sad to think that their only option was to jump. What about drones?

R126 that woman who ran after being told to stay put was Marcy Borders, also known as 'The Dust Lady'.

Unfortunately, now deceased.

R116, how can you even compare the two? The murders of innocent Iraqis and Afghans is horrendous. The execution of Bin Laden was, if anything, downright merciful.

That's terrible r161, I didn't know she died. She said she thought her cancer was caused by the dust and debris and I would bet she was right.

The roofs were locked off. There were probably people who made it up the stairs to the roof levels but the doors to the roofs were locked/padlocked.

And the helicopter pilots who went there reported they were totally blinded by the smoke and heat and couldn't have done anything in terms of rescue.

Only a tiny amount of people might have been rescued from the roofs by helicopter but it didn't matter because there was no one on the roofs to be rescued and the helicopter pilots all said the conditions were impossible for rescue.

If you're ever in a high rise fire, get DOWN the STAIRS as quickly as possible. Otherwise you're fucked.

R161 what a sweet lady who went through HELL afterward. Someone should do a documentary about her.

The WSJ article from a few weeks after 9/11 that I linked to at r82 pretty much confirms what you said, r164. They also mention that there had been some helicopter rescues during the 1993 WTC bombing and the rescuers were criticized! Apparently people accused them of pulling a publicity stunt. Infuriating.

The Port Authority said a few weeks after the attack that there was no evidence anyone was able to get to the doors to the roof anyway. I know there was a phone call (mentioned in the WSJ article) made by someone in the building and the wife at home said she could hear people say "Try the roof" but even if they'd gotten there, they couldn't have gotten out the door.

I saw the doc made by the French brothers years ago. And the scene with the loud noises in the lobby and the firefighters realizing where it came from stuck with me. What a horror.

Also wonder about the people who made it out on the building, covered in dust, those photos defined 9/11. How can you survive something like this and go back to normal life? Is that even possible?

To the person who asked if the people from the second building left after the first was hit, almost all stayed because when they tried to leave they were told to not leave. Many who went to leave went back upstairs because they were told to.

Shortly later their tower was hit too.

Many of the people who got covered in dust and inhaled a lot died from cancer. Tons of the firefighters and police have too

Yes, it's well known that many people in the second tower got down and outside to the plaza where they heard loudspeaker announcements to go back upstairs to their offices where they would be safe. And they did.

I'm conflicted about the people in the second building being told to go back in, because I can see them being asked to basically stay out of the way as everyone attended to the first building that was hit by a plane. No one knew it was a terrorist attack at that time. Still, it seems like fire and debris from a building relatively close to your own should mean evacuation, just to be on the safe side.

I highly recommend reading Mitchell Zuckoff's Fall and Rise The Story of 9/11.

It is based on the experiences of people on that day from people in the planes, twin towers, the Pentagon, survivors and rescuers. It covers everything in a very concise easy to read fashion despite covering so many people.

It is very much in the 'can't put it down' category of non-fiction books. In is a harrowing read but really gives a sense of what people were experiencing.

Imagine you are at work one day, 60 floors up, and the building shakes like there's an earthquake. Minutes later you smell smoke, then sprinklers go off, then you find out there's no way down the stairs. The windows don't open. You're breathing toxic fumes, smoke is filling the air and there is no way to get away from it. You are a goldfish in a tiny bowl of water and the water you swim in and breathe has been poisoned. Like that goldfish, you jump.

It's the last moment of your life. In the moment, you're just fleeing from the pain of suffocation.

Zooming out from that moment, how would you feel about people videotaping you bursting through the window and falling to your death? And then once a year, recirculating that video as a prompt for people to talk about how sad they were on the day you fell to your death. And a memorial in your city projects that video of you falling to your death on a loop, once a minute for perpetuity?

I don't understand anyone who watches this shit. It's evil. People watch it with a morbid fascination, just like they listen to graphic podcasts and documentaries about serial killers, who are always presented as enigmatic, charismatic antiheroes while their victims are nothing but meat for the butcher. It says so much about human nature that people are compelled to watch these things.

“Meat for the Butcher” would be a great title of a book

R173 I'm surprised it's not the name of some awful true-crime podcast series.

I remember watching some documentary about the first responders and there was a sequence where they were standing in the lobby of the North T ower and discussing how to get people out, and we kept hearing this thudding noise intermittently, and the firemen said, "Man be careful when you lead them outside because a lot of people are jumping..." And the sound we were hearing was bodies hitting the ground. It was an awful realization. There wee a lot of jumpers. And to ignore or avoid that part is to ignore the true horror of that day. We can't simply look at the Hollywood like spectacle of collapsing buildings, and the clouds of smoke without assembling the entire experience. You watch whatever you want to watch. But if you want to learn about that day, we have to face it, not selectively avoid it. I remember the very first time I saw photos of the Holocaust and the piles of bodies of dead Jews, and it was horrible. But that is what happened and to ignore it in favor of a more sanitized version would have been wrong, just like right now how the Republicans and their Media are trying to sanitize and erase their true, disgusting action of January 6th. Look. We all have to bear witness. History is what happened. We need to know our history.

[quote] I saw Bill Clinton get really agitated in an interview where the reporter questioned why he didn't get Osama Bin Laden when he had the chance.

And rightfully so. When he launched an attack in an attempt to take out bin Laden the press dubbed it a “Wag The Dog” scenario to take heat off the then-scandal of the day: Monica.

Absolutely ridiculous.

[quote] I'm conflicted about the people in the second building being told to go back in, because I can see them being asked to basically stay out of the way as everyone attended to the first building that was hit by a plane.

Not only that, but some people were killed by falling bodies and debris. They didn’t want an entire office building walking out into that danger.

It’s only in hindsight that it was wrong. That was SOP for years: your building is secure, remain where you are.

R175 We all know the buildings went down and that 3,000 people died. We will "NEVER FORGET" thanks to everyone being on the #neverforget bandwagon.

Why do we need to watch people falling to their deaths?

What is the benefit of it? How does it make us better or better informed? Does it teach us more about the day? Does it make us more vigilant or wiser? What's the value of watching people falling from buildings every year?

r172 there are no perpetual memorials in any cities projecting this footage on a loop, stop are making things up. As already said several times in this thread photos and footage of the most horrific scenes from the day are very rarely seen on TV anymore, and they have largely been removed from the internet as technology has advanced to let the owners of the photos claim them and have them removed. And the 9/11 anniversary only gets major news coverage on milestone years now, all the other years it hardly makes a headline. You are totally exaggerating.

Personally I do not care if someone sees my last harrowing moments. One so they can find the person(s) who murdered me, and two so society can ensure that it doesn't happen to someone else.

Its like America trying to forget slavery happened. NO you don't get it brush awful things under a rug. The photos are the only thing to teach young people like OP who may not have even been alive at the time that you cannot let these type of things happened again. And no one is forcing you to view anything.

R179 I am not making that up. The 9/11 memorial was playing a multi-story projection of someone falling from a tower when I visited it years ago. I have no idea if they still do it, but they certainly were doing it when I was there. It drove my coworkers and me straight out the door. We all felt like it was obscene and discussed at length what the point of showing that might be. None of us could think of any reasonable justification, just exploitation.

R180 Having never been to the memorial site in New York (and I have no intention of ever visiting New York again and I don't think I could handle going to the memorial site as I would find it too upsetting) I did have some friends go there just two years ago and they made no mention of a multi-story projection of someone falling from a tower.

Perhaps it has been removed.

R181 I hope it has. I feel like I probably wrote a review expressing my feelings about it. I found it jarring and horrific and exploitative in a way that does not belong in a respectful memorial. Yes, it happened, but there's no educational or historical value in showing someone's death.

R149. Physics was not your best subject in school, was it?

[Quote]As such, all objects free fall at the same rate regardless of their mass. Because the 9.8 N/kg gravitational field at Earth's surface causes a 9.8 m/s/s acceleration of any object placed there, we often call this ratio the acceleration of gravity.

R71, and let's not forget that when someone from the CIA finally got Bush's ear and tried to make him understand the importance of the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike the U.S." briefing, Bush brushed him off with, "Fine, you've covered your ass now."

THAT'S the guy who was rehabilitated a brief 15 years later as "that cute, funny old fella... Aw, he wasn't so bad. Would definitely rather have him than Trump!"

On Monday September 4 my father and I had driven down the West Side Highway to go through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel I looked up as I was driving and couldn't miss the Towers. Who knew eight days later they would be completely destroyed.

The last time I was in the World Trade Center was March 1996. I was taking a photography class and I thought it would be cool to get take some photos while on the observation deck. We decided it was too cold and didn't go to the top. But I was in the lobby of the World Trade Center.

OP the people that that happened to are long gone and at peace. It is the living that suffer thru it. In life one always has choices no matter what the circumstances. These people chose to jump because they felt it was the better option than burning to death. I was trapped in a fire once and completely understand their mindset. I would have jumped too. It would be a more painless way to die. They were at peace with it once they decided to do it. They don't want you to suffer over their decisions. It's okay.

Skyscrapers should all have those canvas escape sleeves installed on every floor. Those things work and they were around in the days of 9/11. Most if not all of those jumpers would be alive today if they'd had them.

[quote]...and the only two options I have is either burn to death or jump to my death.

I don't know if it helps, OP, but in a building fire, the jumping is not really volitional. People hold on absolutely as long as they can. But at a point, the heat becomes murderously hot and holding on is no longer an option.

They didn't decide. They just couldn't hold on any longer. It's reflexive.

Were all their remains lost when the towers Coame down or did emergency responders take them first?

A little of both, R189.

In life, R189, the answer is always 'a little of both.' Almost nothing is absolute.

The raw, uncensored footage and photographs of 9/11 probably won't be released in any of our lifetimes, maybe not until 9/11 is out of living memory.

[quote]If those people could get to the roof they would have been saved but the stairwells are on fire or broken off.

The helicopters couldn't land on the roof because of all the smoke. This has been talked about many many times.

R191- They are RAW, UNCENSORED footage and photographs on the internet of 9/11 still. But you have to search to find them.

R191, The closest you can see now to raw footage is the 9/11 documentary made by the two French brothers, which CNN aired a few nights ago.

You can hear the sound of the jumpers hitting the roof and the reactions of the first responders in the lobby. Also, the bodies of those who jumped can be seen lying on the roof in pools of blood.

In 2001 my friend was a cameraman for local Fox5 in New York. He was scheduled to film at Gracie Mansion on September 11, at the last minute they sent the crew down to the Trade Center. My friend filmed those people jumping out of buildings. He was traumatized. Twenty years later, he still suffers from PTSD.

R195 what is his name?

Bryant. r196

The various documentaries have played some of the phone calls from people who were trapped in the towers, knowing they were about to die and saying goodbye to their families. It's unbearable to listen to them.

I found that most of the callers sounded mostly calm. It was interesting

I remember reading this article about how jarring it felt being at work after 9/11. The questions of “who would you jump with?”and whether your job was worth your life changed the trajectory of many people’s lives, including my own.

r199 when faced with death you do become calm. I was on a prop plane going to Pittsburgh when one of the propellers stopped running. I didn't know the plane could run on one propeller so I thought we were going down. I was calm and only asked God to please make it quick.

Same here. The cabin on a fight on Air Lanka (Air Wanka) from Colombo to Dubai filled with smoke on take off. The seated flight attendants looked scared. I thought this is it, this is how I'm leaving this life - my ass blown to bits over Sri Lanka.

My colleague and I were calm. Silent

To the poster that is against the video footage being replayed every 9/11, you are not wrong feeling that it’s wrong because what happened that day was wrong and we are being reminded in a very vivid way the desperation that these jumpers felt, while painful to watch we cannot forget the horrors of 9/11.

R203 What good are the reminders of the horrors doing?

What I can imagine rewatching accomplishing:

—Making people fearful, anxious, panicky, depressed.

—Making people feel vulnerable to attack.

—Making people paranoid about terrorism from foreign extremists, which is extremely rare.

—Conflating US patriotism with some ambiguous quasi-spirituality.

What I can't imagine it accomplishing:

—Preventing any future acts of terrorism.

—Making people more vigilant and concerned about domestic terrorism/mass shootings, which occur almost every day.

—Anything else of any benefit to any person.

Help me understand the utility of doing this.

It's history, Rose.

R187. Isn't there a height limit with those escape sleeves? Can't imagine this is a viable option so high up. But, for sure, more time and resources need to spent on this topic. If we can send a man to the moon (or freaking Mars), we certainly can do more to rescue people in such situations.

R29 Probably not. *Eyeroll* . Those of us who’ve watched the destruction of the American entertainment industry over the last couple of decades can see how the cries for “representation” have gone hand in hand with is decline.

I remember listening to one call a middle aged man made to 911. He was way up on a floor above the crash area and his offices were filling with smoke. The lady he was talking to kept telling him to just keep calm and wait for the fire department to get to him . He was having none of it. Then it happened. The building started to collapse while he was on the phone and he started screaming "OH GOD, OH GOD NO...........", and that was it.

Those jumpers are always etched in my memory. There are 2 times in my lifetime that changed my perceptions of "perception" and the absolute mystery of what "life" is. 9/11 and then Trump/Covid. These are sea change events/ periods in history that expose that nothing is really what it seems. If I was 100 years old, I have a feeling that Hitler would be the first in my list of life altering events/situations.

For me, I find being a passenger on Flight 175 or stuck in an elevator being burned by jet fuel as a more horrifying death than jumping. Most of those brothers and sisters who jumped needed to breathe and /or could not withstand the intense heat. Their actions were reflexive like slamming on your brakes if a deer runs in front of your car. I pray their jump was exhilarating and not horrifying. And their deaths were instant, They became a MIST from the accounts I read.

For some reason, Flight 175 has bothered me the most. Those passenger's flight was sheer hell due to the violent flight pattern and rapid descent. They also could see the burning tower approaching. They had just enough time to learn about the first flight, and no one could really fight back. It sounded like a hellish trap to be in.

And truly, to be burned to death in an elevator is a fate I would not wish on anyone. For me- that was the most horrifying.

May these folks Rest In Peace, and I truly hope that they are alive somewhere- in whatever other universes/realties exist. And that they are wonderfully happy and joyous.

R208- That is Kevin Cosgrove.

And Melissa Doy's recording is also horrifying.

To hear someone say "I'm going to die, aren't I?"- its just something you never forget.

r204 you are again in the imaginary world you are making up in your head, as if people are being forced to watch this stuff. One has to SEEK OUT images and video of these people falling to their death on 9/11. News stations stopped broadcasting images and video of this in their live programming many years ago. After this year, there will likely be very little live coverage of even a memorial, as time marches on. If you don't want to view anything 9/11 related, you can change simply the channel or navigate to another website.

[quote] Those of us who’ve watched the destruction of the American entertainment industry over the last couple of decades can see how the cries for “representation” have gone hand in hand with is decline.

It’s only been “destroyed” in the eyes of idiot racists like you. The entertainment industry is thriving and doing better than ever, pandemic-related effects excepted.

If you don’t like seeing all Americans represented in the media then start your own media company, Reinhard. You can call it Stormfront TV. See how far that gets you.

LOL.

We are never going back. Get over it.

[Quote]The entertainment industry is thriving and doing better than ever,

If you like shite churned out for Chinese consumption it is.

[quote] And their deaths were instant, They became a MIST from the accounts I read.

Years ago I saw footage of the jumpers hitting the pavement. They exploded like overripe tomatoes. Just a big explosion of red liquid.

Kevin Cosgrove's phone call

r212 you have a very surface and simple-minded view of things.

R206- They have fire escapes on apartment buildings , so why not fire escapes on office building

R217, are you seriously suggesting people could have climbed down the sides of the World Trade Center buildings?

R216, you just blamed the trend toward inclusiveness for the “destruction of American media.” You literally invented a cause for a problem that doesn’t even exist. And I have a simple minded view of things?

Here is a truly surface, simple-minded assessment for you, though. Fifty bucks says you voted for Donald Trump in the last presidential election.

Didn’t you?

Or chuted down 110 stories? That would be the same as jumping.

I watched the Naudet brothers' documentary the other night, and the answer to whether building codes and safety measures have been improved since 9/11 is yes. For one thing, new high-rises have concrete cores. And the fire department has also worked on new procedures for getting to/fighting fires in skyscrapers and saving people.

The world does not revolve around US politics r219. Shoehorning "diversity" in place of artistic vision, historical accuracy or simple storytelling in order to fit an agenda is Stalinist. It has no place in artistic fields.

I can't help thinking how different 9/11 would've been with Smartphones and social media. Everybody on the street would've been aiming their phones at the towers. The people trapped in the towers would've been livestreaming everything. Can you even imagine?

I’ve not read this thread. In fact I’m going to hide it because I don’t want to see it on my list. I was in lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) on 9/11. I knew one of the jumpers. I prefer to keep the events at an abstract distance. Too much imagination about what it would have been like to be in the buildings or on the planes is not healthy for me.

Their option was to burn and choke to death from the toxic fumes or drop to their death. I probably would have jumped too if those were my options.

r223 how do you know he jumped?

The rest is silence.

[quote]Zooming out from that moment, how would you feel about people videotaping you bursting through the window and falling to your death?

The quick answer is "Why would I care. I'm dead." While is sounds flippant, it doesn't make it any less true.

Another answer is that it's part of American history and I was part of it. Here's my story.

And another answer is that it will make people reflect on what I had to do. It takes courage to choose to die that way. Many posters are saying it was instinctive, people couldn't breathe, the heat. etc. I think it makes it seem there was no choice. The fact is many people did not jump, hoping against hope. It took courage to jump.

Super survivor Lauren Manning comments on 9/11 years later. She was in the WTC during both the 1993 and 2001 attacks and survived both times. She was horribly burned when flames shot down the elevator shafts into the lobby of Tower 1 on 9/11 and pushed through years long recovery. She is now 60 years old.

A few years ago, I stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong a couple of days after a big typhoon. The elevators were down, so people had to walk up and down many flights of stairs for several days. Can't imagine having to do this in a burning building after a terrorist attack. The emergency drills at my 13 story office building are already too much. And this is a planned and coordinated event. Yes, the views from my room on the 90th floor at the Ritz were great. But never again.

[quote] Yes, the views from my room on the 90th floor at the Ritz were great.

How did you know I was going to ask you just that question?

^The views are indeed fabulous. As are the cocktails at Ozone.

[quote] I can't help thinking how different 9/11 would've been with Smartphones and social media. Everybody on the street would've been aiming their phones at the towers. The people trapped in the towers would've been livestreaming everything. Can you even imagine?

Yes, I can imagine, and it would be absolutely vile.

[quote] the sound those bodies make is UNNERVING and seemed endless.

To me it seemed familiar. As a child I lived some distance from a rail yard. This seemed like the sound of two freight cars pushed hard together.

Most impressive were the firemen in the WTC lobby assembled in their battalions. You saw the fear in their faces as they heard the bodies crash and the building creak. They plainly understood the situation and still marched unhesitatingly up those stairs.

An asshole reporter from Reuters got the smart idea to telephone Cantor Fitzgerald, located near the top of the World Trade Center,. A person who answered the phone said "We're fucking dying," when asked what was happening, and hung up. There was screaming and yelling in the background. A follow-up call was not answered.

I didn’t read the whole thread yet because a close family member worked in tower one and died that day and I’ve had a lot of 9-11 shit in my face this week, but i intend to return and read every comment later. I dont understand the notion that confronting reality, truly facing actual events and accepting that such things can happen is somehow disrespectful. Why? I really don’t get why so many westerners act like ostriches just because reality makes them uncomfortable. I know my dead family member would want people to think about all of this and what happened afterwards. I wonder how all these don’t look marys would feel if we had similar footage of American air strikes in Iraq and afghanistan. Jews flash: it’s just as horrible even if the buildings aren’t as tall.

Aaand I meant NEWS flash

"It says so much about human nature that people are compelled to watch these things."

We're primates. We observe and learn. That's how we gain experience to survive.

R234 yet again. I have now read through the thread and I’m just so perplexed by the number of posters who think actual events that happened should be censored so that people sitting in their living rooms don’t. . .what? Get upset?? About reality?

Reality is brutal and cruel and violent.most people on earth deal with that fact daily.

If you’re a person who refuses to accept that because you live in some safe money padded bubble then you’re part of the problem.

Oh look, somebody invented something to save your life.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

I have not watched any of the 911 memorial and shows this year and haven't since it happened. I watched the 2 French brothers who followed the firefighters into the tower and was part of the whole ordeal when they first showed it. I haven't watched anything since. I just don't like watching it.

I remember the story of Pasquale Buzzelli, and how there was some hope after the first few hours that a person had 'surfed' the falling towers down and survived. It seemed unbelievable as he came from one of the high floors. Of course, his survival turned out to be the rarest of events.

there used to be a site called Ogrish dot com which was sort of like Live Leak in that it showed all kinds of brutal stuff that was newsworthy. Lots of gang violence, car accidents, etc. There was an extensive 9/11 thread but the site is gone now. But I saw the bodies splattered on the ground (they basically explode, especially the fatty ones) and remember even seeing a photo of a man who still had his pants around his ankles, with the bathroom fixtures crumbled around him. He died on the toilet.

It just crossed my mind to wonder if another reason those poor folks jumped might have been that they realized that not only were they going to die soon, but that they'd likely be burned beyond recognition, and so in their hurried and excruciating panic and pain they might have made a split-second decision that by jumping, at least there was a possibility that their remains on the ground would still be more identifiable for the sake of their loved ones searching for them and their closure. Of course, the impact would have likely rendered most unrecognizable, but possibly they didn't all realize that or decided it was a chance worth taking for those left behind looking to identify, retrieve, honor and bury them.

I found this comment under the excellent "Falling Man" article on Esquire.com:

art4652 11 September, 2020

While visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum, I made the difficult decision to enter the section of the museum that honors those who jumped to their deaths. It is a somber, yet respectful space where visitors can sit and watch a slide show of those who jump to their deaths that day. It was hard for me, since I had just lost my mom and sister, but I honestly felt these poor people needed to be seen. I felt I owed it to them to pause and remember them. They had jumped and then disappeared from memory because of the gruesomeness of their demise, but I felt they needed to be seen and remembered. So, I entered alone, sat on the bench, and watched the video montage of many people leaping to their deaths on that horrible day. So, as I read this article, I can understand the photographer's desire to find out who the Falling Man is. My heart goes out to all the victims' families.

I've been trying to find this video I found sometime back on Youtube.

It began with a video from a car sitting in traffic (I am not from NYC so I can't tell where the car was) and the time stamp is 8:46 am on 9/11.

Through the car windshield off to the right you can see the Twin Towers (not that far away) and suddenly you can see a puff of smoke that we now know would have been the first plane hitting the North Tower. Perhaps the car was approaching from a southerly direction because the tower closest did not appear to be damaged.

Whoever put this video together had pieced together many different videos, showing that morning's events from different angles.

When it came to the second plane hitting the South Tower, the video showed it from several different perspectives some very close and others from across the river. That it was an airplane was easily visible as the video showed multiple angles of the hit.

The video continued through the buildings collapse and people running and trying to avoid the debris cloud.

I'm sorry to say that I can't find the video on Youtube. It was easy to recognize because the first shots were from the perspective of the car in heavy traffic and the camera seemed to simply briefly pan over to the towers and then move on. It was only by noting the timestanp and looking closely would you notice what you were seeing.

As I recall, the entire video lasted around 45:00 minutes.

Does anyone else recall seeing this video and if so, do you perhaps have a link? It was a fascinating concatenation of scenes from that morning's events?

In the photo posted by R73, it looks like the woman has an umbrella close to her. Makes you wonder if she tried to use it as a parachute. I don’t know what’s sadder: the people who jumped knowing they were going to die or those who jumped with something they thought might help them survive the fall.

if it were a choice of burning alive or jumping with some fantasy that an umbrella could save me, I’d jump.

[quote]OP: The 9/11 Jumpers haunt me more than anything this time of year

The horrible truth is that they were pushed.

[quote] if it were a choice of burning alive or jumping with some fantasy that an umbrella could save me, I’d jump.

Even pre-911 is already was a very old joke but it is also true. If you are falling off a tall building you have absolutely nothing to lose by trying to fly.

r248 some may have been pushed out due to the mass of people at the windows, but some did intentionally jump.

That doesn't look like an umbrella to me. Are you talking about the black object? Could be a leather handbag.

It's different reviewing footage for twenty years and analyzing in hindsight knowing the buildings will collapse shortly, but it's hard to imagine two hundred people concluding that they won't be saved, have no other option, this is it, no more human life - all in the first hour after arriving at work.

I can't imagine the temperature that jet fuel burns. The smarter ones would have realized there is no hope for rescue. I understand why they did it. Some floors were probably worse than others with the fire, and that is probably where most jumpers were located.

One woman was seen trying to hold her skirt down the whole time she fell

That video should have cartoon sound effects.

The survivors of the station nightclub talked about watching people disintegrate and burn alive right in front of them or seeing someone with their hand burned off.

Someone upthread mentioned that people go into peaceful mode when they are know they are going to die. I remember reading from first responders and people who lived in the neighborhood here PSA 182 crashed in 1978 that a number of the remains that were found showed that they soiled their pants.

R256 You do realize that for the most part people’s bowels evacuate upon death?

[QUOTE] they soiled their pants

not surprised, the sudden surge of pressure on impact probably blew all muscle control off the anus.

Someone developed and sold parachutes to hang on the back of an office door shortly after 9/11. They were mocked in the Michael Moore 9/11 doc and never took off. But they could have made a difference for some.

What would have been on their iPods had they been invented?

r168 That's awful. I'm surprised people listened. I think you'd want to hop on the subway and get out of there. Not like you could work anyway what with a building burning right next door.

More music for the occasion:

R260/R262:

I can't take all the grief porn posting on Facebook/Instagram of everyone feeling the memory won't be complete about how they had absolutely no real connection to it, but just gotta post some maudlin crap.

Be grateful. You didn't die, not did anyone you know in all likelihood.

For the showtune queens:

Most of the jumpers on 9/11 were from Cantor Fitzgerald. That’s the bond trading firm that occupied floors 101 through 105 of the North Tower. I think like half of the people who died at the Trade Center were from that one company alone. It was some horrific number. I do know that none of the people from Cantor who were at their desks when the plane hit made it out.

I was an adult before the horrors of 9/11 truly, truly hit me. I remember seeing a video that showed the planes hitting from different angles. The idea of seeing something so wrong happen in real life has to be jarring. Like, I’ve seen a few car wrecks happen and it was a shell shock. To see an entire plane hit a building is still insane to me.

But this same video had video of people jumping. I…didn’t want to see that and never want to see that again. There was one scene where the fire dept was inside the lobby of a building and you could hearing loud thumps falling through shattering glass. Some of the firefighters thought it was falling debris but the chief said grimly, no, it’s people jumping. The amount of strength it takes to admit that and still do your job without falling apart is just remarkable.

All the people in the streets screaming and running from the dust cloud always gets to me, even after all these years. How panicked and terrified they were.

Bobby McIlvaine

I wonder what the customer service reps at United and American Airlines were told to do. Families must have been calling frantically.

I briefly had a part time job at Delta answering the phones. We had no training in emergencies. Heck they only hired part time recent college grads like me so they cold avoid paying benefits.

This footage taken from a hotel on the other side of the Plaza is shocking and terrifying in it's real time realness.

You can see several of the jumpers and probably the only footage of a jumper hitting the ground.

The couple filming it was understandably distraught.

The woman who was/is from Seattle is a radio jockey in was interviewed recently. Her name is Tami Michaels.

60 Minutes did an entire show on it tonight and for once, they didn’t truncate it after the football game ran over. They talked about the jumpers and showed a still photo of one. They also said the first fireman killed that day was hit by a falling body. That’s the most awful thing, horrible. Those poor people.

The Nauded brothers documentary is excellent. The soft-spoken cheif (the one with a mustache) said everything with his terrified eyes, specially when the South Tower starts collapsing, they were on the lobby of the North Tower and everybody starts running. The sound of the Tower collapsing is horrendous. Just some minutes earlier Jules Naudet had captured in film the elderly priest of the force. He was pretty speechless and terrified. He died when the Tower collapsed, and his body was the first one they pulled out of the rubble.

In the video I posted at #271 you can see the close-up of the plaza in the first minutes just after the crash. It had only paper and debris, when they do a close-up several mintues later the plaza is dotted red with the bodies of the jumpers.

Also the first two jumpes are at 3:48. The man filming didn't realize they were people.

the mess of paper flying everywhere reminds me of those days when paper still ruled in offices. How nowadays with collaboration tools almost no one prints stuff anymore.

In the 60 Minutes show, they didn't show the jumpers, but they did play sound recordings of them hitting the roofs and the holes they left.

Horrifying.

Just horrible, those poor people!

R271's video gives a sense of how many people jumped. So many. I had no idea that so many jumped.

r279 I heard over the weekend in one of the specials that there were 200 that jumped or fell

As a person who is afraid of heights, can not imagine jumping out of that building. Is there anyone here who has never seen a skyscraper like this in person or who has not gone to the top of one? Not the same as seeing one on tv or in a movie. They are absolutely massive. I remember feeling sick to my stomach at the Grand Canyon after peaking over the railless edge. A few years ago, my father-in-law rappelled down the 350M Stratosphere building during our trip to Las Vegas. Kind of like bungee jumping but with a controlled descent. Not sure if something like this could work in very extreme cases like this with a massive fire and electrical issues but maybe something like this could be helpful. One advantage is that no prior training is needed and you can send one person after another in a relatively short span of time.

It’s not the heat that causes them to jump. It’s the lack of oxygen. Fire eats 02. You start to suffocate. You go towards any window to get air. People always say “Don’t open a window in a fire.” But if there’s a window they’re going to open it because there’s no 02. It’s a primitive reflex to do anything to get air. When fire has consumed all the air in the room and a window is open, fire grabs that 02 too and sucks it in, like a tornado. That’s why there are fire tornadoes. You have to jump to breathe. You think “Maybe I’ll break bones when I hit, but I’ll live. Maybe something will break my fall. I’ve read of people surviving plane crashes, falling from 30,000 feet. Maybe it will be a miracle.” And you jump.

r282 and the smoke. when I had my fire there was so much smoke I got up against the screen in my window and opened my mouth as much as I could and tried to gulp in the air. My screen was bolted on the outside with butterfly clips but in my panic I made a fist and hit the screen dead center. I ripped out all the butterfly clips and that screen went flying. I then climbed onto my porch roof, Once I got out there though, with the smoke behind me I was afraid of heights and they kept telling me to jump but I couldn't. they had to climb up to get me.

R282- If the buildings had been right ON the Hudson River and people were able to land in the river I think many would have survived.

Sure. From 100 stories up.

Just like they survive when they jump off bridges into the water below.

🙄

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is only 67 M by comparison. Less than 10% of people survive this jump. Water is like concrete at this level. No chance at all from these towers. Ditto for the emergency sleeves or stairs on the outside of the building as some have posted here.

If one takes the position of a diver- like your going to dive into the water- would that help your chances for survival?

[quote] I dont understand the notion that confronting reality, truly facing actual events and accepting that such things can happen is somehow disrespectful. Why? I really don’t get why so many westerners act like ostriches just because reality makes them uncomfortable.

I came to say this, and more or less what the commenter at R244 said. I feel that when we are living through history we owe it to posterity to bear witness. Even when (or perhaps especially when) people die as a result, the least that those of us who comfortably survived can do is confront the horrors they went through, and by so doing, honor them. I think it's more disrespectful NOT to look, and remove their deaths from the public memory.

It reminds me of my Dad's WWII stories. He was present at Dachau a few days after the liberation and his battalion was assigned guard duty of German POWs. But he always used to tell me about how the order came down from Eisenhower that all of the GIs had to go into the camps, and look. Look at the piled up skeletons, look at the ovens, look at everything and bear witness. Maybe his stories skewed my viewpoint about things like this.

R288. ALWAYS enjoy your reasonable posts. Thank you for your perspective

Eisenhower was adamant that everything at the camps be recorded and documented, because he didn't think anybody would believe it otherwise.

R266, I think it was 658 people from Cantor Fitzgerald. A few of them were people I went to college with, but I only remember one. It was a small college, and he was kind of a "star" senior when I was a freshman--the kind of guy everyone knows of. Good guy. The 3 or 4 of them who worked for CF and died were all in the same class and were friends. I watched the Naudet doc the other day, and when the first plane hit, I thought, "that's when they died." I'm not into grief porn, but I think of them every year around 9/11 and that's really the first doc I've watched since watching the news coverage on the day itself.

....

I have to say the first time I heard of Cantor Fitzgerald was in the HBO documentary "Out At Work." I was not impress with their employees. Years later, I met the guy who they tortured.

The people I know that are the most into 9/11 anniversary stuff are people with absolutely no connection with NYC or any of the people who were actually killed in the attacks. It's like a projection screen for their unresolved issues.

[quote]A few years ago, my father-in-law rappelled down the 350M Stratosphere building during our trip to Las Vegas.

I tried to do this when I visited with my friends a few years back. I got strapped in and they walked me to the ledge with their hand at my back and told me to jump. I looked down and it looked like I was going to land on the highway below. I said I couldn't do it, The butch lesbian who was behind me kept her hand at my back and said, "Let's just try a countdown." She did a countdown from 10. I freaked the fuck out and said no.

They gave me a little ticket where I could come back and do the jump for half price but I never returned.

My point being I really don't think I could jump.

[Quote]The people I know that are the most into 9/11 anniversary stuff are people with absolutely no connection with NYC or any of the people who were actually killed in the attacks.

Everybody on the planet has a connection to 9/11. It was a global event, not just a NYC experience.

A guy from my hometown worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and died in the towers. He was only 23. There have been several articles in the local media in the past week. Even though we were very close in age I don't remember ever meeting him, but I was in tears reading those articles. A lot of emotions from back then came flooding back to me, and the anger about so many lives lost.

[quote] My point being I really don't think I could jump

Pre-9/11 once while traveling I found myself near Buffalo. I stopped and spent maybe half a day looking around the area including Niagara Falls. At the time there was only a tubular rail fence set several feel from the lip of the cliff overlooking the falls. Looking down over the side I felt like I was being pulled . It was a quite disturbing and unique sensation. Based on that I've always felt the decision to jump might not have been as difficult as one would expect.

R296. Fully agree. Sat next to the wife of a firefighter who lost his life that day many years later during a New Year's celebration in NYC. Although she didn't go through all of the details, I felt her pain. A friend took her to the event to help cheer her up. I did my best. We danced all night

According to an internet post, only 50% of people survive a fall from 3 stories. Yes 3 stories! Not to mention the injuries for the survivors. Sadly, our frail bodies are not designed for such trama.

^ trauma

[quote] A few years ago, my father-in-law rappelled down the 350M Stratosphere building during our trip to Las Vegas.

This sounds completely INSANE and it’s giving me chills just thinking about it.

You sound very sweet, r299.

May I one day find a guy like you.

R299. I hope you're a big bull dagger. For fun.

I never thought I would feel sympathy for that cunt Barbara Olson, but I actually did. Even she didn't deserve it.

^ yes she did

For those of you who are maybe too young to remember, Barbara Olson was a right-wing harpie in the same vein as Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. She was always on tv back then.

I'm always early and on time socially and for work, unlike most people who have no problem strolling in thirty to forty-five minutes late on a regular basis.

It still bugs me that all those who showed up on time for work were the ones trapped and killed on the highest floors, and the lazy slow motherfuckers who just had to get coffee got the day off work and a lifetime of 9/11 storytelling how they were spared death and everyone is "sorry for their loss."

r308 same. I was a notoriously late person 20 years ago, when I was younger. I think 9/11 somehow reinforced in my mind during time that being late is not so bad after all. Now that Im older Ive done a total 180, I can't stand being late for work

R308, oh my gawd. I am always running late. Now I can blame it on my death/survival instincts.

Yes that does seem unfair but life is almost never fair.

It's sort of odd how Osama Bin Laden thought they were this great American landmark. I don't think they really were that. They were just office buildings. They held no real symbolism like the capital or statue of liberty.

Oh, dear

I think he was making a statement against the world order at that time, led by bad U.S. policies.

[quote]It's sort of odd how Osama Bin Laden thought they were this great American landmark.

They were the tallest buildings in America.

Wasn't some building in Chicago taller? Sears tower?

They were America's two fingers up to the rest of the world.

I don't like the memorial. A teacher of mine and native New Yorker posted that he hates how the WTC site is now a tourist attraction that rivals Central Park.

I liked Geraldo's idea I once heard. He said rebuild them exactly like they were and make them one story higher.

I tgi k it would have been much too creepy to have two replicas built, especially in the same location

The drain design they used is kind of depressing. The downward movement makes it seem like defeat. It should have been something higher so you like up at it. Gives you more a feeling of hope and that the victims are at peace not spiraling down some huge sink.

I like that idea too r317, but who on earth would want to work there? You would always be worried about it happening again.

I've always worked flexible working hours to suit myself so sometimes I got in early because of some meeting or excess work or because I wanted to leave early. Other times I would get in late because I had something to do and naturally worked til late on those days.

But in terms of being punctual - if I have to be somewhere at a given time, I am.

Well they have the Freedom Tower there now. I guess people live/work there.

I don't think it could happen again. Air travel is now so much more secure plus it would be like United 93. People wouldn't submit as easily and I think pilots are now instructed not to let hijackers in no matter what happens in the back.

(at least I hope so.)

They have made doors to the cockpit hijacker proof.

The cockpits on planes now have secure doors plus another barrier inside the door. They can't be entered like they were back then.

Also, if there were another attempted hijacking every passenger on the plane would immediately charge the hijackers and subdue them. A 9/11 situation could never happen again on a plane.

Do pilots leave the cockpit at all? What about to get food or go to the bathroom on long haul flights? is there places for that in the cockpit?

The flight attendants will stand outside the cockpit, and one will usually go into the cockpit when the pilot exits. They usually put a beverage cart as a barrier. The door is immediately locked. When the pilot is finished, the flight attendant unlocks the cockpit door so the pilot can return.

Some of the bigger jets have a toilet in the cockpit itself.

Remember the shoe bomber, just a few months after 9/11? When the passengers near him saw what he was trying to do they dragged him out of his seat, beat the shit out of him in the aisle, then tied him up with their belts and headphone cords. A doctor on the flight forced a tranquilizer down his throat that he found in the emergency medical kit. They were all like "oh no motherfucker, this ain't happening again!"

R323 Though that doesn't prevent pilots going rouge which has happened a few times since. But I guess there are only so many precautions that can be made.

[quote]They were the tallest buildings in America.

And the embodiment of American imperialism & exceptionalism.

I'm a European and even I know they represented the USA's economic centre.

1. Here's what I still ponder...OK. These planes that took off from Logan in Boston, were both scheduled for the west coast. They had a full load of fuel.

2. Everyone knows, the WTC Towers were targets. They were hit while Clinton or Bush 41 was POTUS. Parking garage, right?

3. And when you get a memo in the PDB in August that Bin Laden is determined to strike inside the USA, you know an attack is coming soon. The chatter is off the charts. So you should be watchful, and alert, right? I mean you have people who do that. It's their job to be watchful and alert. And that includes being especially careful to keep an eye on prime, soft targets that were already hit once, like the subways and the WTC.

4. Now in a city like NYC, It's always busy. But if an attack is coming in NYC, it's going to come at a time to do maximum damage. So a time when commuters and offices are most crowded. And Wall Street is symbolic. It is the financial center. The WTC is a modern highly visible, vulnerable target.

5. From the moment the planes out of Logan went off course, heading for NYC, Air traffic control kept trying to contact them and no response. They they finally get some audio, "We have planes." Then the flight attendants confirm it's a high jacking and they perps have knives and a bomb. They now know they have a hijacked plane, three is more than one, and it is heading into NYC.

6. Apparently, our missile defense system, and our fighter jets were unarmed, and unavailable....in spite of the fact there was a practice military operation, a drill going on right at that moment on the East Coast.

7. Late we find out the hijackers went to flight schools to lean how to fly planes, and didn't care to learn about landing them.

Yes hindsight is 20/20, but I was really shocked at how completely unprepared we were and how the early planning, the flight lessons, etc. got past our Intelligence guys.

r311 I think you overlooked the name of the towers. The World Trade Center. People from all over the world worked in those buildings. It conducted trade all over the world. It was the center of finances for all over the world. It was the heartbeat of the world.

r331 Clinton did pass on info that OBL was dangerous and there was some talk of him trying again but the Bush regime ignored it.

6. it takes 20 minutes to load the missiles onto the planes and they said they didn't have time. The two pilots that eventually did go up went up planning on a suicide mission. One was going to ram the back of the plan and the other would ram the front. One pilot was male and the other was female.

7. I think that was total ignorance on the instructors part. Why wasn't he curious as to why they didn't want to know how to land a plane and why didn't he report it to someone?. Other than the instructor who else would know that they didn't want to learn how to land the aircraft?

R332, as I recall, the pilot school did report at least one of them, to the local FBI office in Minneapolis o in Arizona, I think. I guess this is where the lack of coordination and sharing between the CIA and the FBI really demonstrates how vulnerable we were. In the aftermath of 9/11 didn't they identify the hijackers within like 48 hours or less?

r333 I didn't remember that. I did hear yesterday though that it was illegal for the FBI and CIA to share any info with each other at the time. That has all changed now.

I can't imagine...wrap my head around it....that these people were just going about their normal day. They got up, got ready for work....took transportation or drove to work, entering their office for another day. The usual routine, that most of us do every day. I'm sure some were thinking about the day ahead and what needed to be done...or some may think, what a drag...another day of work. That day was so gorgeous, with lower temperatures and a bright blue sky. Then, they enter the office, go to their desks...having coffee or tea, bsing and joking with their co-workers before getting down to business. Never...never....never...it would occur in their minds that a plane would crash into the office, turning it into an inferno....then they had to make that terrible decision to jump 100+ stories to their deaths, or burn alive. It's beyond unimaginable. It goes to show how life turns in a split second.

[quote]pilots going rouge

They need to look their best after a long flight!

Amazing how the morons in the video at r271 disregarded the fire safety director’s commands.

Late in the video you can clearly hear him telling everyone to evacuate the building and they shouldn’t be on any floors.

Of course these fucking idiots stayed right there.

This is a good article that may answer some questions about the hijackers and how they eluded detection. Yes, it was illegal to share information between the FBI and CIA. Dumb. The fact that one of the hijackers rented small planes at a New Jersey airfield to practice flying and flew into NYC around the towers is chilling. Some of the hijackers lived in New Jersey from June until they blew up the world.

I guess the thing that still pisses me off was Condi's testimony that "we never imagined they would fly planes into buildings..."

I got picked up at B Bar by a guy who was staying in the Millennium Hotel, right across the street from the WTC, in the summer of '01. It was a lovely hotel. The sex wasn't all that great, though.

I know R337. I was thinking the same thing. They were pretty high up. If they had to get out of that building fast, at least they would have been on the ground floor and just run out. They wouldn't have a chance, staying where they were...having to deal with elevators (maybe not working) or stairs if that building was compromised. It was stupid...and they're lucky to still be alive.

I don't think Bin Laden expected the towers to fall. He probably wanted the burnt remains of the buildings to stick out like a sore thumb for the world to see.

Isn’t there a Joseph Gordon Levitt film coming out where he’s a pilot locked in the cockpit safe, but his wife is on the flight and the hijackers are going to do horrific things to her if he doesn’t comply?

^ It came out last year

Sometimes the call really is coming from inside the house. I cringe when I see comments here that something like this could not possibly happen again. Of course it can. If pilots are still exiting these doors during a flight, for whatever the reason, and flight attendants are stll entering these doors during flights, everything is possible. And who knows about the intentions of some young future "pilots" in training now. Much easier to coordinate an attack if the freaking hijacker is already in the seat! And then there are bombs and drones. A coordinated bombing attack on 10 planes could kill more people than 911. And the impact would be absolutely devastating. Many people would never fly again and the industry would be completely ruined. And then we have drones who can be operated by anyone at any time. Who needs bombs (or birds) when you have drones crashing into planes?! Hoping for the best but always expecting something.

Apparently, our missile defense system, and our fighter jets were unarmed, and unavailable

Numerous squadrons of interceptors had been based around the American coast with planes kept on hot alert but most of the squadrons and expensive ready forces were lost to the "Peace Dividend" following the fall of the USSR. American air defense was predicated on defending from attacks flying INTO the US. Incoming bombers would be spotted by the DEW line, ships, or the radar towers set into the sea like oil platforms. Once spotted then the planes would be loaded for combat. There had been a last line of defense around major cities like New York with HAWK and Nike missile batteries but those were deactivated in the 70s because Soviet bombers were no longer the primary threat to cities.

I don't know how many of you eve watched the movie, Flight 93, but it really captured to lack of preparedness by our military . The guys walking around baking into phones giving one another orders, assertively spreading misinformation, and no one was able to do anything. Planes were even flying in the wrong fucking direction! It really captured our ineptness, and confusion. Perfect metaphor for the Bush administration. Our arrogance and lack of readiness was on full display. Why do I call it arrogance, because those military guys thought they were the shit, and they had nothing. They were limp dicks.

Little by little the information contained in the declassified files are now being published.

In one of the documentaries they had a female pilot, who along with her flight instructor were the first two in the air over Washington DC after the Pentagon crash. Neither of their jets were armed as it takes like 15 minutes. They decided in flight that should they need to take out a plane, he would go for the cockpit and she would go for the tail, which would have also killed them both.

This guy makes good use of the zoom function.

Jujitsu. Ancient Asian battle technique Adapted over time to modern guerilla warfare and politics :Use your enemy's strengths against him.

There's some excellent shit in the 9/11 commission documents. None of the hijackers entered the United States illegally. We were so porous then in the ways we handled things, even though we had a watch list and monitored terrorists. Two of the 19 were flagged as known al Qaeda operatives.

[quote] Yes, it was illegal to share information between the FBI and CIA. Dumb.

That was what we wanted. What we demanded. It was supposed to protect our privacy and not lead to misuse of information gathering.

Like the non-sharing of info between certain entities and immigration. That all sounds good and I have always supported that non-sharing but I can envision situations where the public safety requires sharing. How about a serial killer illegal immigrant whose treating physician notices some body injury or marking that identifies him as the killer - should that doctor report said serial killer illegal immigrant to authorities? What if she falls in love with him? Wait I think I have a script in mind. Don't anybody steal that idea.

While the Twin Towers must have had a symbolic meaning for OBL it may just have been practical in that it was a target that was hittable and visible.

Though that guy that flew the plane into the Pentagon - he must have had high scores in his class cause I am amazed he kept it off the ground flying so low until it hit the building.

This is all quite upsetting to relive. I need to go work on my script.

And then came the stripping of privacy to the point that even what was checked out of the library wasn’t a protective right.

R302. It was completely insane. Especially given that he was 67 at the time and does not speak English! Unfortunately my husband and I could not translate the instructions for him as we did not jump. So I waited below...with my eyes closed. Since then, my father-in-law has walked across flimsy wooden bridges in Nepal hundreds of feet high. He also did some crazy adventure in Canada on a snowmobile over frozen lakes, mountains and shit. Not to mention Mont Blanc and our safari trip a few years ago in a game park without fences. How many times did the guide tell us "could you please tell your father not to take night walks" due to the lions, leopards, etc., And then last year he and my husband jumped out of a plane. Couldn't watch this shit due to my fear of heights. Waited and worried at home. He is hardcore.

R346 Exactly. Flight 93 movie really captured the chaos and confusion of that morning. Billions of dollars spent on our bloated military and the country was left utterly defenseless that day.

I remember reading about one man in the second tower, who briefly followed the directions to stay put. He was in his office, hesitating, and locked eyes with a person preparing to jump from the north tower. After that, he decided to leave immediately; minutes later, the second plane hit. He was one of the few survivors from his floor.

Another story I remember reading was from a guy waiting outside a locked office in the North tower when it was hit a few floors above. He had been eating a pastry and drinking coffee, he’s badly burned in a flash. He sets down his plate and cup and starts down the many, many flights of stairs. Instead of thinking about dying, he keeps reflecting on how rude it was to leave his breakfast like that, where someone else will notice and have to throw it away. Funny how your mind works, being in shock. He had to step over bodies, but was concerned about his trash.

R353, the irony was that the entire east coast of the U.S. was on that very day, engaged in military exercises, simulations, and available, all in one place. That part was mentioned in the movie but I have never seen it discussed in elation to 9/`11 attacks.

This is an excellent documentary about Bin Laden, Afghanistan and the Taliban. Excellent. Not made in America.

R354 I didn't know people not on the immediate floors impacted by the planes were also badly burnt, but it makes sense with such incredible heat. Must have felt like a furnace, even some distance from the burning floors.

BTW I've never seen discussed the weight of the huge planes on the floors helping to cause the collapse, was this a factor?

Jet fuel was cooking them. Those planes were loaded with fuel.

Did the fuel explode through the other floors?

^^yes, the fuel went to the floors beneath the crash site and all the way down the elevator shafts to the lobby. The people in the elevators were burned alive.

[quote] I don't think Bin Laden expected the towers to fall.

I don’t know, but recall when the bombing happened in 1993, their plan was to have the one building be bombed at just the right place that it would fall into the second building, thereby collapsing it, too.

Fortunately, they weren’t even close in their measurements.

There was no escape from the crash site and above in North Tower. All stairs destroyed.

Why did the couple in the hotel stay there in their room filming? Fucking insane. Get far far far away from 2 giant burning skyscrapers.

It's been said that some people didn't jump, they fell. Overcome by smoke they couldn't see and just stepped into the air.

Does anyone remember the (debunked) picture of the guy on the observation deck with a plane in the background?

Nobody above the impact zone in the North Tower (first tower hit) escaped. Only 14 people above the impact zone in the South Tower were able to escape.

was there still a restaurant up there - or catering rooms? Nobody tried to fashion homemade parachutes with tablecloths?

In the North Tower, there were people who died/were trapped/jumped from below the impact zone. James Gartenberg (86th floor) was one. He called into one of the news stations and was remarkably calm, said everything was under control at that time, but he was trapped in his office. The heat and smoke above the impact must have been insane, like being stuck in a chimney over a roaring fire. You'd do anything to get away from that.

[quote]OP: The 9/11 Jumpers haunt me more than anything this time of year

Why do they haunt [italic]you[/italic]? Because they know you were somehow responsible, are you saying?

And what does "more than anything" mean? Are you being overwhelmed by hauntings all around?

IT'S ALL ABOUT MY TRAUMA.

I don't know if this Frontline was mentioned

This 2002 FRONTLINE documentary chronicles John O'Neill's struggle to convince the FBI to pay attention to the threat posed by Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The former head of the FBI's flagship antiterrorism unit in New York City, O'Neill had investigated the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen. For five years, he led the fight to track down and prosecute Al Qaeda operatives throughout the world. But he was a controversial figure inside the buttoned-down world of the FBI. O'Neill's critics contend that his personal failings proved fatal to his FBI career. His supporters, however, believe his main failing was refusing to conform to the standard-issue FBI mold.

Yes, he died in the WTC. He was head of security for one of the brokerage firms. Interesting story.

^^^^the blurb is from the Youtube description, btw.

R370, Jeff Daniels plays him in The Looming Tower I think it is on Hulu and woth watching.

The story I remember is about the man who had been in the Towers for the first bombing.

On 9/11, when the plane hit the other tower, he rushed back to his desk, changed his shoes, and left immediately, while other people were trying to decide what to do and the PA was telling people to stay put. I can't remember if he took an elevator or just ran down the stairs. He went all the way down to the subway, got on the first train heading east and was in New Jersey when the 2nd plane his his tower.

No waiting, procrastination or trying to decide. He knew what to do immediately and did it.

I've thought of this guy many times and the value of just getting the hell away as fast as you can.

R264 Maudlin crap. Wow. Find some empathy.

Per the suggestion made by R171, I'm now reading Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 and it's a very detailed, holistic and humane account of the events of that day from nearly every conceivable angle. It's riveting and a great recommendation.

R370 and R372 The book The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright is very good. John O’Neill was a fascinating, larger-than-life, and deeply flawed person. He started his new job at the WTC just a couple of weeks before 9-11.

Here's an article CBS News published on July 26, 2001, announcing that the FBI has banned Attorney Genenal John Ashcroft from flying commercial due to a "threat." The threat was never revealed. CBS has left the article online all these years.

[quote] He went all the way down to the subway, got on the first train heading east and was in New Jersey when the 2nd plane his his tower. .

Should be "west", not "east". And "hit his tower".

The Only Plane in the Sky: An oral history of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff is also worth reading. I checked it out from my online library.

[quote]Our arrogance and lack of readiness was on full display. Why do I call it arrogance, because those military guys thought they were the shit, and they had nothing.

I guess you could call it arrogance...America was not remotely accustomed to things like this happening domestically. I honestly think most wealthy nations with large military forces aren't, that's why we have armed forces to keep enemies in check away from home. And up until 9/11 the Oklahoma City bombing was the largest scale domestic terror act that drew national attention. That is probably the largest scale event military, state and municipal workers were prepared for in peaceful times. 9/11 was the unimaginable.

Bioterrorism and cyber attacks are the new threats, both very dangerous

"Two of the 19 were flagged as known al Qaeda operatives."

Yet only a few were seen on airport security cameras.

In A New York Minute

The CIA was pretty inept I guess. I remember Zero Dark Thirty where Jessica Chastain is convinced she knows where Bin Laden is.

Every day she comes into work and writes the number of days it has been since she found him to show how they still haven't done anything about it.

R366

Yes, Windows on the World was up there, and I remember hearing that some of the jumpers were holding tablecloths like they thought they would work as parachutes; they didn't.

Even if someone had a REAL parachute I don't think there would have been enough time for it to open- Now if you attached yourself to one of those hand glider things and descended from the roof- That would have worked.

Obviously you’ve never been BASE jumping.

Thanks for the reco, r375!

The upper parts of the building were engulfed in smoke. Not just the ordinary kind of smoke, but thick, suffocating smoke and fumes from jet fuel. My sister who lived in Brooklyn said she will never forget the smell that lingered for weeks. So no helicopters, or hand glides or parachutes, etc. were going to save those people on the floors above the crash site. The French brothers documentary had the firemen in the lobby discussing the fact that a lot of people were coming down the stairs, and they had to help get the people out and one said that the people above the crash site were "gone." thee was no way to get to them.

I would have been tempted to try with tablecloths but I'd need rope too. Maybe appliance wires could have been useful.

The ethical dilemma would be needing a number of tablecloths so hording them. 4 banquet sized cloths might cushion a fall somewhat. I would have jumped from the west and prayed to be blown towards the river. Of course its very very far fetched, relying on things going right when law of averages say they would go wrong, but that's the way my mind works.

In one of the 9/11 series, I think Spike Lee for HBO, there was film and the story about a former worker who, not long after Phillipe Petit walked across the tightrope between the two buildings, did a jump off one of the towers with a parachute. He said he timed the pull chord when he was level with a particular building and was staring at a woman face to face when he did. He landed safely and was arrested. I got the sense he was familiar with parachuting and nota novice.

We’re standing on their GRAAAAAAAAAAVES!!!!!!!

I legit developed PTSD from overconsumption of 9/11 coverage. I was 20 at the time and had never witnessed anyone die before. But seeing pictures of people crowding around windows with smoke pouring out, and the photo of a man falling traumatized me.

R390 Here, I found the story I mentioned, but it looks like others have done it as well.

And here’s a guy in 1991.

R385, doubtful, with the tremendous heat, smoke and updrafts.

The famous photo of the Falling Man is speculated to be an audio technician working at Windows of the World that day. Over a 150 people were in the restaurant for meetings or breakfast.

There was a documentary about the falling man. I thought the NYTs use of the photo was despicable.

Why would a restaurant need an audio technician?

R357 and others, I read somewhere or saw on some documentary that the towers were built using some kind of steel skeletal structure and the jet fuel literally melted the steel in places and weakened it which is why the towers collapsed. It was the heat and the fuel as much as anything.

Is it true the only parts of the fusilage they recovered from the two planes were engine parts the broke off and fell to the ground at impact. The rest was incinerated. And yes it is all hallowed ground because all that dust was cremated people too.

R397: WOTW had a conference center on the 106th floor. (and thus, the need for a tech to set up microphones, operate sound system, troubleshoot, etc). A company called Risk Waters Media was hosting the first of a two-day conference, which began at 8:00 am. There were 71 attendees + 16 Risk Waters employees, and of course, the WOTW staff -- 72 people.

[quote]I thought the NYTs use of the photo was despicable.

Why?

Thank you, r400.

More about WOTW:

I'm watching The Looming Tower on Hulu and it is damned good.

R399, You're standing on their GRAAAAAAAAAAAAVES!!!!!!!

IIRC, WOTW was not open to the general public for breakfast but did serve it to people who worked in the complex.

Here's a very short video of some firefighters watching a jumper fall and hit the ground. The sound of the poor person hitting the ground is horrifying.

One of the firefighters says Fuck when the person hit the ground.

And this (great) footage on the plaza you can clearyl hear someone or somthing hit the ground at 2:32 and the footage of the middle-aged man who tried to climb down only to lose grip and fall down starting at 5:27. I think he was on the South Tower.

The contrast of the drama unfoldling for the poor guy who fell (he clearly didn't jump but lost his grip) and the music on plaza (I think it's some Bee Gees intrumental song) is pretty tragic.

This always makes me think of the religious views on suicide. Would be people who believe that suicide is a sin that sends you to hell really condemn these poor people to eternal damnation?

(remember that movie What Dreams May Come and its depiction of Anabella Sciorra in hell for a suicide. So torturous.) I can't believe in a god who would be that cruel to damn these poor souls who knew death was coming.

If it wasn't said upthread (and i totally think it may have been), i think the NYPD and ER would have been instructed on focusing on those already rescued, not those still in the tower (unless they were safe by their own actions, or with the rare possibility of being rescued). it was prob considered a lost cause for whatever reason.

R410 : Me, too. When they were trying to figure out who the Falling Man was (as well as other jumpers), I was totally baffled by the insistence of some family members that they could not have jumped. That would have been cowardly suicide!

Unlike just sitting there & being roasted alive? That would have somehow been more a "honorable" or "acceptable" way to die??

Because burning have death would have been "better"? Wouldn't have just standing there, burning up to death have been suicide as well?

I remember reading about a guy in the Triangle fire who pushed or threw young women out a window who were either afraid to jump or afraid of going to Hell if they did. He did it so they wouldn't burn alive.

r413 that sort of reminds me of the powerful ending of They Shoot Horses Don't They?

R411, not really, the firefighters were climbing floors up until the moment the towers fell.

This guy made it up to the 78th floor.

In one of the documentaries I saw over the weekend I thought it was moving how a woman in the second tower said she forced herself to watch the people jumping in the first tower hit so as to be a witness for history for those brave people.

The woman was so eloquent. (just remembered it was on 2020 with David Muir.)

R408 I don't know what's worse in that video, the BeeGees muzak or the completely callous reaction of the guys filming. Jesus.

the worst thing is ALL people could have survive from south tower. There was a untouched emergency exit The plane hit in a way that it didnt crash it .It was full of smoke so people dint get in there thinking that it is blocked as it iwas assumed. Only few people, around 20 ran away that way. But all those people trapped , calling 911, crying, screaming for help didnt know that.

Is it possible they lost consciousness before they landed?

R408- The guy(s) videotaping this have some great footage but they sounded like two MEATBALLS.

I'm sure they felt no pain hitting the pavement at that speed.

can you imagine? seeing plane below you. some of them had to see it if they were on the same side

Here is a youtube video of the instrumental songs that were playing right before the buildings collapsed.

is this photoshopped?

Yes, r424. Famous hoax.

jesus

I've been thinking about the people who didn't burn up or suffocate from the smoke, but were walking down the stairs with the firefighters escorting them when the towers collapsed. I know the fire and emergency crews had to look for survivors, and they did find two or three people in the rubble, but watching the collapse on TV I just felt like there was no way anyone survived. They had to have been vaporized or crushed.

How many did they pull from the rubble, and how many recognizable bodies were found? Not many I would bet.

R428 firefighters who were outside of towers died too, 100 of them and 78 policemen, and people who got outside already from the building but in the end they were killed too . what an irony

R428 You should read about the largest group of survivors after the collapse of the building related to the survivor’s staircase. It’s also at the end of the Nat Geo Hulu limited series documentary. It’s unnerving all the coincidences that had to happen to place them there at that particular moment in time, mainly the rescue of an African American woman who struggled to get out of the building.

is that true the owner of WTC , old jew didnt come up having brakfast that day? and his kids didnt show up at work there , too

R432 He only owned it like two weeks at that point, I doubt he had any type of routine at that point.

R433 not two months???

R433, don't bother responding to the troll.

I remember watching this unfold on the news here in the UK on that day when I got home from school. We had a special assembly the next day. Its one of those collective flashbulb memories that you never forget, like Princess Diana dying.

R435 me? I just asked the question.I heard stories, but I find them hard to believe.

My point is, if you are going to have a conspiracy theory about it, it’s the Port Authority that off loaded and sold the building just before it was destroyed are the ones to be suspicious of not the new owner. Spitzer after all was a Republican and probably in cahoots with Bush.

I have to wonder if the pros, like the fire department guys, had any idea the entire tower would collapse. I mean, yes, the place was an inferno and they were trying to get people out, but did it occur to them they were racing against time to get them out? Because I would think their training would inform the way they moved around. And yet they took the gamble, the risk to keep going in there, to keep climbing higher to evacuate as many as they could. I could never do that. I could not do that job.`

I also wonder how helpful civilians were to the evacuation. At my office which was a 28 story building, we had designated people who volunteered to supervise in such emergencies. So if the fire alarm went off they would make the rounds knocking on doors or going to various cubicles and work stations and making sure everyone moved out efficiently and fast. We had two fire drills while I was there. So I have to wonder if any similar measures were in place.

I do not understand people. If my building was on fire, and a family member called me and said it was on TV, that a plane hit the building and it was burning, no way would I be sitting there listening to some PA system telling me not to leave. I would have been going down the stairs immediately, because one thing I do know: Fire spreads. Plus the smoke and the smell of jet fuel would have been one hell of an incentive.

R440, wasn't it only the people in the south tower who were told to stay put, because it had not yet been hit. The thought was that they were safer in there than trying to evacuate onto the plaza with falling debris, bodies, etc. from the north tower, and at that point, I'm sure no one imagined the south tower would be hit as well, by a second plane.

If indeed any of the people in either tower were advised to stay put AFTER that tower had been hit, then I agree with you, I would never have paid attention to a PA system telling me to stay put and would have tried to leave via stairway if any of them were still passable, which apparently was not the case for one of the towers (I don't remember which).

This was a black swan event. 60 minutes this week interviewed fdny survivors and they said there had never been a high rise that collapsed due to fire. They operated as if the rescue was about getting people out before the fire spread everywhere. They did not think about the building being pulverized to dust. An engineer watching on TV called fdny and warned the buildings were sagging inward and going to collapse. This message was relayed to the fdny chief outside on the Plaza and it's captured on video. Just as the message was delivered, the chief looks up and the first tower comes down.

R441 most of people from south tower would have been trapped anyway,because not everyone had the time to come down

R442, I'm thinking the majority of survivors were from the North Tower, the first one hit, because the crash site was higher up. With the South Tower that plane hit it almost at a midpoint, further down, and probably did more immediate damage. The South Tower collapsed first. It took a little more than 2 hours from start to finish for both of them to get hit and disappear.

R443, I should have referred it as the south tower. I used first tower as it was the first to come down. But yeah it was hit second. I guess being impacted further below led it to collapse faster.

Meant for r444

R438, if you’re referring to Eliot Spitzer, the then-NYS AG, he was NOT a Republican.

For me, this is still so traumatic 20 years later Hijacked planes, where some passengers and flight attendants were stabbed, beaten or killed out of the blue. Ambushed pilots who were just doing their job. Some were able to make mayday calls. But this was not a typical mayday. No engine fire. No smoke. There were people rushing towards them to beat or kill them in unimaginable ways. And there was no help. Fast forward to the calls on the planes from passengers and flight attendants who experienced the terror of the erractic flights until the end. And the poor people working at their desks that day, some of which clearly saw and heard the planes heading directly towards them. The horrible day ended with people jumping out of buildings in the sky that eventually collapsed into dust and debris. This will be talked about 1000's of years from now.

The US has been such a drama queen about this attack. "The survivors staircase" - a structure of national historic importance. The museum is maudlin and cost a fortune. The Santiago Calatrava station a white elephant. The middle class and rich families with their HANDS OUT for massive payouts. Sure, all the people who were there and breathed poison, they deserved the money first - not rich widows in leafy suburbs. The 20 year war in Afghanistan and 7 year war in Iraq. Trillions upon trillions wasted. The hosannas and boilerplate sloganeering.

It was an appalling and shocking attack but it was milked ridiculously. DRAMA QUEEN USA

I wonder if we'll ever get a really good film about 9/11. The US is (somewhat understandably) so precious, and seemingly growing more so, about that day that I think no one really wants to put themselves in the way for the inevitable backlash. United 93 was visceral and harrowing, but it glided past the other attacks. World Trade Center was visually on point, but was otherwise awful.

In retrospect, it seems incredible to me that strict measures to prevent hijackers from taking control of planes were not instituted sooner. Although I believe the WTC tragedy was the first instance of hijackers flying planes into buildings, of course it was not the first instance of planes being hijacked. Far from it. That had been happening for years, though obviously not frequently.

Would anyone like to speculate as to WHY stricter measures were not instituted years earlier, after the first incidences of plane hijackings? It's so sad to think that this horrific tragedy and all that loss of life could have been relatively easily prevented.

r451. Human nature? there are likely thousands of well-known high security risks out there nobody is bothering to fix.

People think "it's not going to happen to me." School shootings. Neighborhood gun violence.

Infectious deadly virus pandemic. There is a vaccine. But, it's not going to happen to me.

Understood, R452. But as I said, planes has been hijacked before, and that had been happening for decades -- though, again, not frequently. Did the airline industry simply not take those hijackings as seriously as they should have because none of those planes were used as bombs and flown into buildings?

R449 why USA had to pay workers for breathing that shit? Shouldnt it be company?They are not responsible? They knew it was asbestos

I wonder where 93 was supposed to hit

R456, it was either the White House or the Capitol Building, with most experts concluding it was the latter.

R429 : According to the linked article, 293 bodies were intact and 21,900 "pieces" were recovered.

This is a gruesome bit:

[quote]We learn how some first responders tried to “reconstruct” bodies, often mingling remains from different people in one body bag. He tells how the blast meant that sometimes parts from one person ended up inside the body cavity of another. And how the different authorities failed to coordinate on the most basic levels, adding to the confusion.

The toxic waste of the crushed building was far more than "asbestos". Any first responders on those burning piles deserved the cash. They almost all got sick. And they had to fight for cash.

The families of the dead professionals enjoyed a 7.3 billion US taxpayer payout. That was highway robbery. Then the Industrial Military Complex stuck their hands in the kitty for trillions more, for the useless wars that did not respond to 9/11 nor destroy the enemy. Sending working class soldiers to be maimed and killed and shellshocked. For what?

GREED GREED GREED

Rinse repeat during the financial meltdown. When the too big to fail bankers were almost all bailed out.

Fucking plutocracy. The 9/11 museum should have a GIANT BLINKING Las Vegas style Dollar Sign $$$$$$$$$$ on it's roof.

r439 many of them knew there was a chance they would not survive. One fire captain said on the way upstairs one of the men said, "we may not make it out of this one" they all started shaking each other's hands and telling each other it had been nice to know them. The captain was the only one that survived out of that group It wasn't his men but some he had been on the stairs with. The captain is the one who with his men were helping the woman down the stairs and she got the fourth floor and told them to go on without her. They said no. they all survived.

my brother in law was a detective at the time and went down to the towers to help. He eventually got Parkinson disease which others also got. But they wouldn't cover him because his uncle had had it it and might have been hereditary.

Many of the write-ups I've seen draw a connection between American religious views and general squeamishness/taboo on suicide with some kind of collective consensus "not to talk about the jumpers."

But is it possible that the reason little publicity surrounds the 9/11 jumpers is that life insurance policies wouldn't pay out if they ruled that it was suicide? It's cynical, but I can easily imagine that.

Since US airplane hijackings began in the early 60s the incidents ended with the release of the passengers. A fortress cockpit would still leave the passengers vulnerable. It was thought better to minimize resistance to the hijacker rather then get passengers murdered. Fly to Cuba or whatever and bring the passengers home alive.

That worked until this.

I'm on the 83rd floor!

Ernest Armstead, emergency medical specialist:

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. The psychiatrists and those from the post-trauma team say it is good for me to talk about her and the rest of that day. They say it is the only way I will come to terms with what happened and finally free my mind of her. So here I am talking to you.

This lady was among a half-dozen people I saw who probably fell a thousand feet or so when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center. I am not sure how she got on the plaza. Maybe she was on her way to Los Angeles and was ejected from the jet by the force of the collision. Or maybe she was an office worker in the tower sitting near one of the windows and she was swept away when the building caved around her. Or maybe she was trapped and jumped to escape the flames, though I don't think so. I happened upon her even before most of those people were seen jumping.

She was an elegant lady. About my age, early fifties. I could see that even with all that she had been through. I could tell that she had her hair done up very nicely. Brunette. She had on tasteful earrings. She was wearing pretty makeup. And in my profession you notice clothes because so often you have to cut them into pieces to save lives. That was the first thing that came to mind: This lady is well dressed....

Triage is the first thing that should be done at a disaster like this. It basically means 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 you're engaged in triage, you have one thing in the back of your mind all of the time, My backup is coming. My backup is coming. That's the reason you can tag people who obviously need help and not stop and give it to them right then. You know you need to get everyone tagged, and you know that someone with a medical bag is coming right behind you.

That certainly is what I was thinking when I met the lady in the plaza, the big open space between the two towers that had a fountain ad a round sculpture in the middle. I had finished tagging everyone from the stairwells, when I turned to face the plaza. I had not noticed the people there on my way upstairs because I was in such a hurry and there was such a crowd of firefighters blocking my view out the window. But now I saw something that was so horrific that I am glad I missed it the first time around. 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 toward 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 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!"

I went back to the lobby, putting her out of my mind for now. There was so much that needed to be done. I began tagging the hundreds of people coming out of the building....

I can honestly say that I didn't fear death, though I walked for hours in a wretched place I can only describe with a biblical reference -- "the valley of the shadow of death." I felt death, I heard it, I saw it and I smelled it. And with that lady in the plaza, I even talked to it.

I am sorry but I never really believed that story.

Oh please r467. He was an EMT — he didn’t make up shit. I also can’t believe anyone could make up a story that graphic and bizarre.

It’s hard to imagine or remember, but the idea that terrorists would die for their cause is new. These terrorists didn’t live to know the extent of their success, though I personally enjoy knowing the United 93 hijackers died fully aware of their failure. What a waste.

Whoever is trying to talk to me at R468:

I have you blocked so I can't see whatever it is you're trying to say.

Sorry.

If her body was mangled beyond recognition, why was her head perfectly intact? That's a very hard impact. And how could her blood circulate with no... working veins? The heart would give out in seconds. And how could she get enough breath to yell with one lung?

Look at all the MAGAts dying of COVID for Trump...who got the best medical care and has been vaccinated.

Suit yourself r470.

R471, when people die, all kinds of crazy can happen to the body as its system gradually shut down, one by one — but it is a very remarkable story for sure. I could imagine that this whole story lasted 15 seconds tops before her body finally turned off. It is freaky, but very strange things can happen when a human being is dying from traumatic injury.

God rest that poor lady. It is possible she was carrying on from adrenaline and pure pushy grit. Did you ever meet women in finance?

She was definitely dying as the EMT said, but if he upper body was still intact, to a large extent even damaged, she's be able to talk. I think Medics who deal with triage on a battlefield would be able to confirm that, as would any medical professional who dealt with trauma after an earthquake or some other catastrophic kind of event.

With the details in the story, I wonder if that lady was ever identified. Or if family and friends read the story and figured it out?

I would hope that would never be released r476. Too horrifying. See link on bodies/heads having a brief spell of consciousness.

The EMT story is possible, in the gore sites there videos of people who have been run over by heavy trucks and have their bodies completely destroyed with only the upper part of the torse and head intact and who are alive. There was one video of a young man in India that had that type of injuries and the footage was several minutes, he even asked someone to lend him his phone to call someone, probably say his last goodbyes to loved ones. Those videos are pretty shocking. If you have the brain and heart intact, you can survive for some short time catastrophic injures to the rest of the body. Poor woman .

Sorry, but a brief thought:

Ever notice how air-to-land phones fell out of favor and were ripped out pretty much right away after 9/11??

I did a brief google, found an article which said (and this was on 9/11) Verizon had decided to stop with this service because it wasn't "profitable."

Yeah, right.

what is your point?

What does that even mean r479? Why would corporations stop offering these phones if they were money-makers?

Because of Flight 93 calls. They didn't want that happening again.

The EMT is in the new excellent National Geographic documentary on 9/11 sharing this exact memory. I hadn't heard it before, but he seemed viscerally impacted by retelling it and expressed that he was plagued by the searing image it left in his mind ever since, which he obviously needed a lot of therapy for to process. It's frankly very hard to imagine it even being plausible, but I believe it still. I wonder if she somehow landed feet first onto the ground, thus her lower half bore the brunt of the colossal fall, but spared her head from direct impact, which unfortunately kept her lucid and alive briefly?

I don't have enough medical knowledge to know. I can believe it happened and equally, it's not impossible the guy lied. There are some people with issues. Maybe an equivalent of Munchausen's syndrome. We know people will claim to be at some historical event and it turns out that it was impossible as they weren't born yet or were in jail, etc.

[quote]I wonder if she somehow landed feet first onto the ground

I don't know if I had the clarity to think about this in my last 10 seconds, but I would try to land with my head first on the pavement to make sure my brain was dead before the impact destroys my body first. Even if it was just for a split second. Horrible way to go, but still less horrible than what the people went through who burned alive, suffocated to death or the ones who's bodies were half crushed between steel girders and concrete slabs.

She was probably one of the people wating in the South Tower's sky lobby and was pushed out by the force of the impact.

Why is the OP's original post grayed out???

This conversation is actually very interesting.

I don't think people falling out of the sky or a building have the capacity to "right" their orientation unless they have a parachute on...am I wrong about that? it's pretty much an uncontrolled trajectory.

I don't know, i've never been skydiving. but even if you were able to, would you have the mental faculties in such a traumatic event to say "i want to land head/feet first" and right yourself accordingly? If someone is a skyjumper, let me know if I'm wrong. (Obviously BEFORE you deploy a parachute).

Not to get totally OT, but this example of someone possibly being briefly conscious after losing most of their body (in this case, decapitated in a car accident) still freaks me out:

[quote]My friend’s head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression . . . and he was dead.

The severed head gazing in horror at his detached body! The ultimate "oh, fuck..."

I have always wondered about the people who were directly hit by the planes. One moment you're on the phone or staring at your computer and the next, nothing. The lucky of the most unlucky? I imagine most people didn't have a clue but there were probably few who had the right window view and did know.

R470 how would you know someone is talking to you if you claim to have them blocked?

r489 - this is ghastly. Seems modern-times. What is it from?

[quote][R470] how would you know someone is talking to you if you claim to have them blocked?

Because registered users receive a notification when someone mentions one of our posts, along with a link to the response.

R493 but you could easily unblock for a second to read the response if you didn't want to be rude, as you also claim

Its just so inconceivable to think about. I can't even wrap my mind around it. And we've learned nothing. We still import Islamists by the tens of thousands.

stop with the blocking posts. we need some answers here about shit.

Well, this is about to be paywalled.

R495 hey fuckface, we have a way bigger problem with home grown deplorable terrorists that "Islamists"

*than

Islamists are a serious problem for Western societies.

I believe the story at R465/R466. My ex is a paramedic and one of the worst cases he ever attended was a railway worker who'd been pinned between two boxcars. There had been some type of derailment where the one car was butted right up against the other with the worker pinned in between the two. Anyway, when he got to the scene, the guy was still alive. So much so that one of the firefighters was up on the rail car next to him, holding a phone for him so he could talk to his wife. There was no way he was going to live because as soon as they separated the cars the guy's guts fell out and he died. I guess the cars were literally holding his body together.

This particular incident was so disturbing and my then partner had nightmares for weeks.

I don’t think the word “brave” really applies to the 9/11 jumpers. I kind of struggled with this because it felt off to me from the beginning but I didn’t really know why.

Now I do.

Brave—-The word refers to those who sacrifice their own lives to save others either directly or as explorers to the unkown. The 9/11 jumpers were reacting to immediate death. Their own. By burning or suffocation. They jumped instead. Maybe that choice gave them their only control over that situation. But I don’t think I would call it brave.

I always wondered about that stuff in R489. I read that the same thing happened with the guillotine and chopping off heads. It’s like chickens. The two parts both move for a bit afterwards.

And I really would not call them “heroes” either.

Wow r502. Just wow, and not in a good way. Good thing that you were never in that same situation.

A lot you know R505

its gutsy to jump of a supertall skyscraper to your death. I don't see the need to dissect lexis. If someone wants to call it brave go ahead. It's a brief moment of bravery.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

This may seem an absurd idea- & perhaps wouldn't even result in the sparing of any lives - but could high-rise buildings have substantial cushioning surrounding their buildings, at least outside their entrances?

I say go back to the early 20th century version. Nobody needs to be that high up in the air in a building. Its just asking for trouble.

"Stand back- the building is not secure!"

Reading upthread, Verizon did away with the phones on the back of seats immediately after 911, because of Flight 93? It was because of those phones that people were able to make calls to their loved ones to say their goodbyes and finding out about what's going on in NYC and Washington DC. Not everyone had a cell phone back then. Thank God for those phones then. Of course, now everyone has a smart phone where those phones are no longer needed. To remove them shortly after didn't make sense.

You would think that after witnessing first-hand disasters like the Titanic most on DL would be hardened to tragedy. I think it impressive y'all are still moved.

R512-My father and I went to San Francisco on American Airlines in July 2005 from JFK and the 767 we were on still had those phones on the plane.

A fire fighter friend once told me a story about a car wreck where the woman was burned so badly she was melted into the seat. Against all odds ,she was awake and quite lucid. He said the pain should have killed her if nothing else. She talked to them for a few minutes,then closed her eyes and died. He has seen it all,but he said that was the freakiest thing he ever dealt with. SO I do believe the medic's story,strange shit happens sometimes.

I didn't know emergency responders divided people with colored tags.

Not to judge at all but wouldn't the responder at least ask her what her name is and does she have a message for her daughter? No idea what it was like doing that job in such an awful situation, so every respect for them.

R502 I don't agree with you at all but kinda understand your view. Just wondered why you mentioned that one of the people who fell landed on a bystander?

Can someone please drop this thread off the top of the Empire State Building. TIA

Father Mychal Judge was a Catholic priest who served the FDNY. He's often said to be the first casualty of the day but that was a misunderstanding; his remains were the first taken to the Medical Examiner and were labelled #1.

At any rate, the official story of his death is that he was in the lobby talking to firefighters when a piece of debris blew in through a window and hit him. But the rumor from day one was that he was outside the lobby on the plaza giving last rights to a jumper when another jumper landed on him. I don't know why they would change the story but that's always been the rumor.

He was very much loved by the firefighters and was out to his closest friends but not to the public. In the Department, only Fire Commissioner Thomas von Essen knew but he was outed after his death. If any of you know the actor/singer Max von Essen, Commissioner von Essen was his father.

Fact check on phones on planes.

About Father Mychal Judge, from Mitchell Zuckoff's book "Fall and Rise the Story of 9/11".

Page 244

The FDNY Responders also would soon include a charismatic, pious, sometimes joyously profane sixty-eight-year-old chaplain named Father Mychal Judge. His lifesaving skills included leading scores of people to Alcoholics Anonymous, where he, too, had found rescue. A day earlier, the silver-haired Father Mychal had rededicated a renovated firehouse in the Brony, where he reminded firefighters of an essential truth about their work: "You show up, you put one foot in front of another. You get on the rig and you go out and you do your job, which is a mystery and a surprise. You have no idea when you get on that rig, no matter how big the call, no matter how small, you have no idea what God's calling you to. But He needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us....So keep going." When Mayor Rudy Giuliani reached the trade center, he'd call out to Father Mychal: "Pray for us." The priest assured the mayor that he would as always.

Page 359

When it's twin fell, the North Tower lobby filled with blinding dust and debris, plunging everyone into pitch darkness and forcing FDNY commanders to flee. Flashlights guiding their escape, they climbed frozen escalators from the lobby to the mezzanine, where Chief Hayden stumbled on a body. A beam of light revealed it was Father Mychal Judge, the senior FDNY chaplain, last seen in his clerical collar and his white helmet, praying for the horror to end. Judge had suffered an apparent heart attack during the collapse. Efforts to revive him failed, and five men carried his slumped body to St. Peter's Church, a scene captured by Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton.

I believe Mychal Judge was shown alive in the lobby...quieting praying in the National Geographic documentary. That was sad...then his demise.

*quietly praying...geez, many mistakes today...

I did try to make it clear that what I said about Father Mike was a rumor, but it was a widespread one. I meant to add I also think it likely Father Mike's story got conflated with the death of Danny Suhr, the first firefighter killed at the scene. He was struck by a jumper and his neck was broken. Suhr below.

You can see Father Judge in the lobby of Tower One in the Naudet brothers' film (link below) starting at around the 47:00 mark - to 48.20.

Two other segments from the Naudet brothers' film taken after after Tower Two had collapsed.

55:06-57:31

and

1:01:39 - 1:02:34

Father Mychal Judge's body being carried away from the scene

Father Judge's body was first taken to St. Peter's Catholic Church, a block away, and placed in front of the altar. Eventually he was removed to the ME's office, the first remains to arrive there, leading the misconception he was the first victim, as mentioned above.

^ leading to

I’m sorry R509 but that’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Are you thinking that during the next terrorist attack wherein all means of egress have been obstructed or obliterated, workers in an office tower can simply walk out of an 81st floor window, fall a quarter of a mile to the ground, bounce off the surface, and then evacuate the premises and go about their lives as if nothing ever happened?

I mean.

I thought the story was that a jumper fell on top of Mychal Judge? WTF?

As far as I know the world's record for the highest freefall off a building and surviving without a parachute or wires was a special stunt in a Burt Reynolds movie. Over 200 feet by a professional stunt man into a gigantic air bag. I think there is a good reason why this record has stood for almost forty years.

It was like a little city.

This simulation is frightening, esp. the last 10 minutes.

A woman interviewed in Whole Life Times said she went to a yoga class in Manhattan in the 70s during the years the World Trade Center was being built.

At the end when everyone was quiet for a few minutes during final meditation, a man loudly said "Don't enter the World Trade Towers when they are completed. They will go down in our lifetime."

R534 Mr Burt Reynolds sure was an awful actor.

That's really interesting r535.

Harrowing accounts of escape.

R531 Fr. Mychal Judge died of blunt force trauma to his head after being hit by a piece of debris (probably cement) when the south tower collapsed (he died instantly). Firefighter Danny Shur died as a result of a jumper (it's also rumored that people on the street were also injured by falling bodies). Shur, however, did not die instantly as it's often reported. Dr. Kerry Kelly, Chief Medical Officer of the FDNY was on scene at 9/11 and initially treated Shur on site and they got him to an ambulance, though she knew from the state of his injuries he would ultimately die.

I was 18 on 9/11 and vividly remember the coverage that day. One image seared into my mind is at one point the cameras panned in to show the north tower and I remember a person leaning out the window waving a white shirt...that image has stuck with me since then. I know fairly quickly the US media started "censoring" the footage of that day because of the trauma and carnage. From accounts of people who were in the vicinity around the WTC was littered with body parts.

As for the jumpers, I think they are heroic in their own way. The floors above the impact zones becomes infernos with the heat of the jet fuel (which was believe to be near 1000 degrees) traveled upwards through the steel of the building let alone with the smoke. Jumping was, in my opinion, the last act of control they had. They were aware they had two options burn to death or jump. If I think about it, I think I would've jumped.

Street scenes.

Has anyone read "The Only Plane In The Sky"? Opinions?

The 1993 WTC bombing, profiled on an episode of the TV show "The FBI Files" that aired Feb. 9th, 1999. Mostly reenactments, but it's the only 'documentary' I can find. The incident seems largely eclipsed by 9/11.

R542 Yeah 9/11 basically wiped that 1993 bombing out of people's mind. Part of that is because the death and destruction of 9/11 was on a much larger scale and it played out real time on air. The 1993 bombing really was the opening shot at the WTC that would then take another 8 years to finish. In the National Geographic documentary, several people who worked for the Port Authority in 93 did actually correctly guess the next attacks would come from the sky. The biggest blunder of 9/11 was the decision to tell people in the towers (particularly in the South Tower) to remain in their offices. If they had begun to evacuate the South Tower right after the plane hit the north, it would have saved most people who ultimately became trapped or were killing in or above the impact zone of the south tower.

If you watch the video linked below of the Naudet Brothers' film, you will see that the brother in the North Tower is filming after the South Tower fell. In fact, he states that the firemen from Tower One's lobby told him to leave his camera's light on to help them see through all the dust. He comments when the firemen discover Father Judge's body. Because of the dust clouding the scene, the viewer can't see much (neither could the firemen), but the comments are about Father Judge.

Go to time 55:06-57:31.

The second clip is about the firemen trying to find a way out while carrying the body of Father Judge. A fire chief goes out to investigate and after finding a way out, returns to discover the first group of firemen carrying Father Judge's body have already found a way out. They carried him to St. Peter's Church and laid him on the altar.

Go to time 1:01:39 - 1:02:34.

Again, that’s in hindsight. Now we think differently of things, but back then the building next door (and not attached) was on fire. People and debris were falling from the windows, killing people on the street below. Plus all of the emergency responders setting up below. To evacuate and office of that size directly into that would not have been a good idea.

It’s no different than the airline’s long-standing policies of cooperating with hijackers so no one gets hurt, which was the policy on 9/11. Nowadays, no able-bodies passenger wouldn’t think of jumping on the fuckers, but not back then.

Rise And Fall 9/11 or The Only Plane In The Sky? Which do you recommend?

Well, over the years, most hijackers just wanted to go somewhere. They didn't plan on crashing a plane or killing passengers. So I can understand why these passengers were compliant. But now we know better. Now we know that what ever their stated intention, they are threatening passengers' lives and yeah, we'll jump them. Plus on at least one plane, passengers calling to alert the ground authorities said they had a bomb. So another reason to cooperate.

My own pet peeve: I cannot understand why structural engineers didn't tell them that the buildings would collapse.

Doc. on Atta and friends. I wonder what kind of mindset makes you a "suicide bomber"? It has to be rare, yet they somehow found 20 or so willing to die the most horrible suicide imaginable.

I've watched the French brothers' documentary two or three times, and it is very good. But IMO, the two best things I've watched were The Looming Tower on Hulu. (I'd read the book.) and as flawed as it was, the movie, Flight 93.

R549, what would you say were the flaws of UNITED 93? (That's the correct title.)

r545, from the man at r511 who escaped the south tower. He said after the second plane hit the staff led them down into the mall instead of out onto the street level. They only had under an hour before the building came down to escape so it would have been nearly impossible to get everyone out though the mall. They could have risked going into the street but good lord it was like hell raining down.

[quote]People in suits with walkie-talkies kept us away from the doors that exited out to the street. Instead, they herded us all onto a single narrow escalator, which went down to the basement level, where a huge mall used to exist under all of the World Trade Center buildings. That's how we were exiting the South Tower, single file on a single escalator. My head was pounding, and the slowness was terrible. I kept thinking, "Let's move it along."

Please recommend best books about the day

[quote]The biggest blunder of 9/11 was the decision to tell people in the towers (particularly in the South Tower) to remain in their offices.

I don't think this will ever happen again. It a high-rise building has some kind of catastrophe everybody in the surrounding buildings will high-tail it out of there.

[quote]Nowadays, no able-bodies passenger wouldn’t think of jumping on the fuckers, but not back then.

That happened with the shoe bomber guy, a few months after 9/11. The other passengers dragged him out of his seat, beat the shit out of him in the aisle of the plane, and then hog-tied him with their belts and headphone cords. A doctor who was on the plane found some tranquilizers in the emergency medical kit and forced them down the motherfucker's throat. They were all like "this is NOT happening again!"

Best book about the day please?

R554. That is only because they suspected something based on his very obvious and strange behaviour! Who knows what ELSE people are currently planning? For sure, more attempts (some successful, some not) will occur! We travel very often throughout the world. How many times have we accidentally passed through security with banned items including liquid and other potentially dangerous items, etc., (blaming my very innocent father-in-law and his Coca-Cola!) since that day! Security is what it is.

[quote] I wonder what kind of mindset makes you a "suicide bomber"? It has to be rare, yet they somehow found 20 or so willing to die the most horrible suicide imaginable.

Not rare at all. Martyrdom for 𝑱𝒊𝒉𝒂𝒅 is a guaranteed ticket to heaven.

Atta was an autistic incel. They exist in every culture

[quote] Not rare at all.

Which is why it happens hundreds of times a day.

Oh wait...

Islam. The answer is Islam.

[quote] Has anyone read "The Only Plane In The Sky"? Opinions?

I read it & can highly recommend it.

Thanks R561 downloading now.

Anyone got opinions on Fall and Rise 9/11 book mentioned by a few posters?

...Also, about the hijackers' motivations: I think possibly only the pilot-hijackers were aware that it was a suicide plot. The "muscle-hijackers" (the dumber brawn used to subdue the passengers) might not have known how it was going to end.

I was commenting on society and the media at large really. Every victim has to be a hero. Like every murder victim was a great person, always smiling, generous, would help anybody, give you the shirt off their back, etc…. Even if they were gangstas, drug dealers, up to no good. Like the guys killed by Aileen Wournos. They were trolling the highway looking for a cheap whore. They didn’t deserve to die of course, but they weren’t salt-of-the-earth. Sometimes you’re just a victim.

Atta and his buds would make a great movie. All the planning and intrigue. Psychological drama. Rami Malek?

[quote]Atta was an autistic incel. They exist in every culture

I do get an incel vibe from the "underwear bomber" from Christmas 2009. He had posts online about how he wanted to get married to control his lust for women, but couldn't yet because he was only 18 and didn't have a career and house etc., and said that he shifted his fantasies to jihad instead. Maybe in a combination with other factors, sexual frustration drives some of these young men to extremes.

[quote]Atta was an autistic incel. They exist in every culture

Islam sure didn't help the situation.

The "underwear bomber" was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from Nigeria where his father was one of the wealthiest men in Africa..

r562, I'm still in the middle of reading it, but so far it's excellent. I just finished the first part of the book that goes into great detail about the four hijacked planes. Afterwards, I watched a History Channel special that aired for the first time this month called 9/11: Four Flights, which synced up perfectly with what I had just read in detail in the book. I haven't read any other 9/11 related books, but I do plan on reading The Only Plane in the Sky next.

"The Horrifying Fraud" by Thierry Meyssan.

The Terror Conspiracy by Jim Marrs

"Solving 9-11" by Christopher Bollyn

"The New Pearl Harbor" by David Griffin

I wish the Twin Towers could be rebuilt and all the batshit conspiracy theorists loaded on two planes and flown into the towers so they could see exactly how it happened.

Educate yourselves.

^^stop it you fucking asshole.

Really what was fucking shocking and tragic was that a place that was teeming with life and energy, full with (mostly) healthy people at the peak of their lives, most of whom had great jobs (I bet a lot of them feeled they were literally on top of the World), in less than 2 hours became a place of such horrible scenes and, ultimately, a mass grave. I mean it was all over by the time the mid morning coffee was starting.

TBH, they shouldn't have rebuilt the WTC there. They should have built a beautiful park on the entire site and rebuilt the WTC someplace else. The place is a mass grave for Christ's sake.

* most of the FELT.

I wouldn't want to work in the new WTC. I would be a nervous wreck.

I'm done with skyscrapers. Now that covid has distributed corporate office space, I don't see the need for skyscrapers at all, frankly.

^ I have never been to the new tower and hated going to the original towers when we visited when I was a kid…the elevators were rickety and I got bad vibes there.

Fuck you, R580!

For people who need visuals

I went to the Observation Deck on the original WTC on three occasions, as well as Windows On the World and I was pretty nervous. I remember thinking each time I was there that I could never work in the WTC.

The weird animation in the elevator of her Freedom Tower was unnecessary and distracting, but I guess that’s what some people need, I could have done without it and wish it was an option to turn it off or on.

R584 ^Was there a single express elevator that took you to WotW, or did you have to change elevators?

There were two express elevators that took you to WotW, or you could use one of the other elevators and switch to another one on a higher floor.

R577 I 100% agree about them building that new tower. IMO the area should be treated like a graveyard as over 1000 people who died there have never be identified. The new tower is a symbol of how American capitalism puts business ahead of human lives.

Meh. Many old cities are built on bones.

R589 Yeah true, but most of us weren't alive to see those bones being made live on TV.

the thing is. everything was pulverized and blew and washed away. or was trucked away. It's not hallowed ground and I think it's maudlin, just like the soon to be created "homeland" security. It's all jingoistic.

[quote] I wish the Twin Towers could be rebuilt and all the batshit conspiracy theorists loaded on two planes and flown into the towers so they could see exactly how it happened.

And for good measure, let's also include all those who believe the '20 presidential election was rigged.

That's a huge piece of real estate and Manhattan is relatively small and one of the most expensive areas in the world. That whole area was never not going to be rebuilt.

The new tower has struggled since it opened to get tenants and has yet to turn a profit for the Port Authority. Just before covid the building peaked at about 60% full time occupancy and 30% part-time/break out spaces for companies who had their main offices in smaller (lower) buildings.

[quote] TBH, they shouldn't have rebuilt the WTC there. They should have built a beautiful park on the entire site and rebuilt the WTC someplace else. The place is a mass grave for Christ's sake.

Following that reasoning not one Japanese city would now be on the same site it was in 1945.

Can anyone who has been to the museum post what you remember from it?

Fascinating! If the pictures were ever found, does the public have a right to view them?

Under the rubble.

Wow, R597 posted the first new thing I have learned about 9/11 in years.

R552, R555, did you read the freaking thread through its entirety? Many books have been mentioned. I recommended The Only Plane in the Sky way back in the 380’s, with a link. Why do some people need to have their hand held every step of the way??