It was a sunny day in New York, one that a mild September can offer. And then, chaos. On September 11, 2001, the world clock stopped when the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. The quadruple terrorist attack, which left nearly 3,000 dead, marked the world, and many people remember where they were, what they were doing and how they felt when they saw the Twin Towers collapse. If the event had a global resonance, Americans, whose country was touched to the heart, were even more bruised.
Nathaniel, New Yorker in CE2 at the time (second grade), was living her second day of school: “It was early in the morning and my teacher got a call saying that my mother was there to pick me up. Of course, I didn’t understand why, because I hadn’t done anything wrong. Passing through the entrance to the school, I saw that many other parents were expecting their children. I have heard whispers that a plane has crashed into the “World Train Center”. “
Nathaniel’s innocence flies once the child arrives on Hudson Street: “I looked south and saw the World Trade Center on fire. We got home and turned on the news. Later in the morning I saw the two towers collapse on TV, I went to tell my mom who was in the next room and she didn’t believe me. Until she saw it for herself, ”recalls the one for whom the rest of the day was nothing but“ chaos, sirens and calls from worried relatives. “
“There was a before and after September 11”
It is while leaving a tunnel in Brooklyn that Tania, then a student, notices what she initially takes for a “strange cloud in the azure sky”. As her subway crosses the Manhattan Bridge, she realizes that it is a plume of smoke. “I saw flames coming out of the World Trade Center”, located 2 km to the west. While getting off the subway, near Central Park, she tries unsuccessfully to call her mother, then her boyfriend at the time with his cell phone. Her mother managed to reach her a little later: “She was hysterical. I had never heard her panic like that. She was terrified not to hear from me because I could have taken another subway to go to college, which passed under the World Trade Center. “
At the university, classes stop after about thirty minutes. And the young woman has “only one idea in mind: to get out of Manhattan.” With a friend, she finds her brother, a student at Columbia. Problem: Trains and subways are at a standstill on the peninsula. The trio walk more than five miles for two hours and cross a bridge to reach the Queen’s, east of Manhattan, before taking the G train to Brooklyn.
Photographer Camilo Jose Vegara has photographed the lower Manhattan skyline from the Manhattan Bridge for 30 years. Here is before September 11, with the Twin towers, during, after and today with the One World Trade Center # September11 https://t.co/pGQ8UIa1Cp pic.twitter.com/evOF8AIqS9
– Philippe Berry (@ptiberry) September 9, 2021
Arriving at her home, around 4 p.m., Tania discovers the images of the collapsed towers. Twenty years later, she searches for her words: “horror, destruction, the world changed. After the adrenaline, all the emotions of the day surged. “Tania confides that she was afraid for a long time when she saw planes in the sky and still thinks about the attacks when she is in public transport:” You never know when there may be an attack or a mass shooting. There was a before and after 9/11. “
“The attack solidified my desire to serve my country”
With the three hour time difference, California barely wakes up when planes hijacked by terrorists crash into the Twin Towers at 5:46 am and 6:03 am. Charlie Jasper is starting his senior year in Santa Monica. A friend picks him up in the car and shouts: “They bombed the World Trade Center!” “. They listen to radio host Howard Stern while driving and stare in awe at the images of the Twin Towers collapsing on high school televisions. “Everyone was scared but people stood together,” summarizes the one who is now a security consultant.
“This attack reinforced my desire to serve the country,” Charlie explains. Who will go to university on a scholarship from ROTC (reserve officers) and then enlist in the army and be deployed to Iraq. Despite his disillusionment with the war in Afghanistan, he is adamant: “Would I make the same decision today? Without hesitation ! “
“I woke up at 6 am in sunny San Diego. They were talking on the radio about a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers. I turned on the television and called Craig, my companion, who was brushing his teeth. We saw with horror the second plane crash into the other tower. We looked at each other, immediately realizing that it wasn’t an accident. And we wondered what that meant to both of us, as active-duty sailors in the US Navy, ”recalls Beth. For her, the mission will not come immediately. She will finally be deployed on a ship off Iraq seven years later, in 2008.
“I looked with horror at the offices in which I should have been burnt down”
Ida Draim, a Washington lawyer, was scheduled to meet with two clients working for Cantor Fitzgerald Bank on the morning of September 11. But the day before, their boss postpones the meeting, wishing to accompany his son for his return to kindergarten. It was therefore in her Washington office that Ida, after a morning jog, found her colleagues in front of the TV and saw the north tower on fire: “I looked with horror at the offices in which I should have been burned down. . The offices of the investment bank occupied the 101 and 105 floors of the North Tower. The employees were trapped above the impact zone between the 93 and 99th floors.
Ida confirmed a few days later that her two clients, David Weiss and Geoff Cloud, died in the attack. Cantor Fitzgerald was the company most heavily affected by the attacks: none of the 658 employees in the office that day, out of a total of 960 New York employees, survived.