Original subtitles

It's almost got worse, I think...

over time.

I go into a mode of...

complete irrational thinking.

This fear and this panic comes over me...

knowing that just like that something can happen.

There always is that question of why did I make it out,

why did I escape?

It's become a huge part of who I am.

I started working on this painting in 2002.

It's a recreation of the painting that I lost that morning.

I loved the whole experience of being away up there at the top of the World Trade Center,

that high up.

I'd often go for sunrise and because of the slats of the windows,

you have this big fan of reds and yellows and oranges,

and things sort of fanning out across the whole floor, which is amazing.

It's a view that no longer existed

but I'd been there that morning and I needed to recreate it.

I don't think it will ever be finished now.

Good morning, 64 degrees on this Tuesday, September 11th.

I'm James Faraday and here's what's happening.

It appears Michael Jordan will indeed be coming out of retirement

to return to play to the NBA.

Giants lose the opener following the Monday night game at Denver.

Yankees and Red Sox reigned out of the stadium.

I'm Stephen...

Just another typical day at work.

I walked into the train station in town to pick up the express into the city.

I sat next to a guy I knew from the country club.

We're just talking about the food in the club and that it wasn't very good.

So life was, you know, either unexciting or trivial,

depending upon how badly you want to classify it.

Growing up during the '70s and '80s,

what I wanted most was what was espoused in the pages of Glamour and Cosmopolitan,

to have it all, to be it all, to do it all.

In 2001,

I was running the worldwide division of market data for Cantor Fitzgerald.

The towers represented a place of great promise and great hope.

It was my home.

This was like awesome. I mean, you know,

I've never been on the 90th floor of anything.

We had pushed our desks up against the windows,

okay, because it was always fun to sit there

and look down at the Empire State Building, right.

That was pretty cool.

I'd been at art school

and I applied for the artist residency in the Twin Towers.

It was just a big raw 30,000 square foot space

on the 91st floor of the North Tower.

I woke up at four, got the five o'clock ferry and got to the studio for six.

I had actually made it in early because I wanted to work on sunrise painting

that I've been working on.

The light, everything was just so perfect for the painting

that I didn't... I didn't want to stop. I wanted to keep going.

But I... I knew I needed to get a drink or something.

And so I thought, no, I'll go now.

Took a break and went down.

I was still a new mom filled with the joys of everyday new worlds

opening for this little boy.

At the same time, I was anxious to get to work,

uh, because the projects I had at hand there were exciting and it was a place of peace.

Got and then went to make my way back up.

I remember the guy in the elevator holding the door.

And I still remember him pressing the 93rd and me pressing the 91st.

I pushed through the doors, the revolving doors,

and on my right there were two women standing and laughing,

and I looked at them and smiled and they smiled back at me,

and I turn left to head to the elevator.

Here I am in the 90th floor, I'm eating a bagel

and I'm holding a piece of newspaper against the wall

reading about Dell computers

because at the time they... they were hot and new, and everything else.

What the hell was that?

Well, what is that?

- Something... Somebody hit the World Trade Center or the... - The Trade Center.

Trade Center. It's just an explosion.

Suddenly the woman's washroom, which was over here,

the door slammed open... slammed open against its hinges

and out came what looked like a blow torch

and I remember ducking down like this

and screaming for myself, "Okay, this is it, I'm done."

Literally the second I, um, stepped out the elevator,

it was just like a big poof, and the building shook,

and smoke and debris came blasting down the corridor.

The elevator, as soon as we'd been thrown out of it,

it went into a fireball and dropped.

There was an extraordinarily loud,

louder piercing, whistling sound.

The explosion, uh, that had pummeled down those elevator shafts blew out

and enveloped everything and everyone in its path, and I was in its path.

I looked over to where the two women were and they were laying on the ground on fire.

And like them, I was on fire.

The guy who was the system administrator office manager,

he was really ticked off because all his servers went down

and he said, "I'm going to be here till midnight rebooting all these servers," right.

And I said, "Well, I'm from the tech industry, I'll be glad to help you out."

None of it... I mean, you don't think that a building

that's been around this long, this size is going to fall.

You just... Never even a thought.

And I'm really... Obviously I'm in shock, right.

I'm obviously not okay even though I think I'm okay.

And I'm trying to figure out what's going on here.

And this guy from one of the banks down... down that hall

came out like this begging for help,

face planted and between my legs and died.

It's the tower behind it but... There! There it is!

And look at the size of that thing. That was no...

You could see it from the Lincoln Tunnel and everything

where we were pulling into the Lincoln Tunnel and everybody stood up on the bus.

I'm sorry for whatever amount of people was up on that floor, you know.

Yeah, I know, it's destroyed.

What do you think would have happened

if you hadn't gone down to the lobby to get a drink?

I would have seen the plane coming right... right towards me, um...

because it was right at that window from the direction it was coming.

Yeah, it would probably have all happened so quickly that you don't get a chance

to really take in what's coming towards you and what's actually happening.

I remember coming into the door to the firehouse that morning

and the radio is blasting.

There's French vanilla coffee, mate, and there's a dozen bagels there.

So now without even looking I know Doug Miller's working, I know Nikki's working,

and cooking on the stove is Joe Mascali,

and he's making French toast that morning.

I remember telling him, "Joe, I want the first piece that comes off,

I gotta taste this."

We just had a plane that's crashed

into upper floor of the World Trade...

I get a phone call from the off-duty fireman

and he tells me, "Bill, I just saw a plane hit the Trade Center."

He says, "It sounds like it's going to be something.

You better head out also."

All of a sudden this woman, Lucy,

she just pointed up and we looked up,

and we saw that our ceiling was starting to smolder.

So we knew we had to leave.

I get on the expressway, clear beautiful day,

and I could see smoke coming from the Tower.

And then I went only a couple more blocks...

and there was body parts everywhere, strewn about the street.

At first I tried to drive around them.

It was just impossible.

And I remember saying the prayer, I said...

"Please forgive me."

And I dropped and I rolled,

and the flames were primarily out but I was still burning.

As this was all unfurling,

the building in front of me trailed the black snake-like smoke from the upper stories

and you could begin to hear the steel wailing and bending and glass breaking all over.

The instinct was to just make...

make your way down because you're so high up.

Made way to the stairwells and I... I remember them just being dark.

Obviously lights... lights were all out, so they were just dark. Sprinklers were on.

It felt like a really small... small space.

There'd be certain points that...

I'd... A panic would kind of kick in

and you suddenly realize that you can't see what's going on,

you don't know what's going on, but everyone's making their way down very slowly.

We have a number of floors on fire,

that look like the plane was aiming towards the building.

Transmitted very long...

I... I had popped on the corner of Liberty and West,

I got my gear on, I made sure I had everything I wanted.

Two good flashlights, uh, and a heavy-duty rope.

But as I crossed those six lanes of highway...

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Bodies are dropping right in front of us.

One lady coming down screaming...

hitting the ground...

and then there's really nothing left.

This is right in front of you?

Within three feet.

I remember...

a man and woman jumping...

hugging each other.

And they still had their arms around each other...

as they landed and that's the way it remained.

The color of someone scared,

their body color was taken right out of them...

and they were like ashen grayish blue,

that type of color instantly.

Hopefully attack...

And channel six has been designated a command.

Right now,

it's confusion.

I had three very clever sons.

When they were young, we were young parents, we weren't particularly wealthy.

So we'd have a lot of camping holidays.

Matthew, my oldest son, was very industrious, doing this and doing that.

Whereas Geoff would be spending most of his time sulking

because he didn't want to do these things.

And Robert, he's only young then.

I taught them all to read while they were camping.

I remember little hot heads you could touch

and they're sitting there reading their book.

In 2001, my middle son was in New York where he worked for Reuters.

The whole world watched Geoff being killed.

It's been a very strange and difficult 20 years.

This is a map of the Rhinog area in Southern Snowdonia.

It's where I was when the attack happened.

I was leading a group across Rhinog Fawr.

We'd got to summit.

I had a message on my mobile from my youngest son Robert,

who was in London to say something serious had happened and he was worried.

All I knew was Geoff worked for Reuters,

he'd been invited to a freebie lunch event in the Windows on the World restaurant.

Geoff was just under the impact of that plane in the North Tower

and he may have been killed outright, he may have been severely injured,

but everyone sees it and that was the point, he was killed.

When the first anniversary came around in 2002,

it seemed absolutely perfectly natural to me

to go back to Rhinogs where I was when the attack happened.

It's a beautiful area and I've been back every year since.

And it's absolutely remote...

and I don't see anybody at all.

And I just like to remember what happened and remember Geoff...

just quietly by myself.

There's a gap in the family, every day there's a gap.

It doesn't quite work as well as it did before.

Geoff was the fulcrum of the family,

he was in the middle...

and the effect on the family was disastrous.

Some of his remains came back...

and they had, uh, identified through DNA, um, his collarbone,

which I know for my mum had, um, significance because he'd broken his collarbone.

It just felt it was like him reminding her that he needs to come home kind of thing.

That you should be able to see, you know, that they name what the body part is.

Yeah, these... these used to have a really...

I never knew if it was a death smell

or whether it was just whatever chemicals they treated the bones to...

to clean them before, they obviously tried to extract DNA and stuff.

And then out of the blue, uh, we had more remains in 2008

his hair and his scalp and a bit of his face and his jaw.

You know, it didn't feel like him but it was... Obviously it's that last contact with...

you know, him.

For most people I think, you know, you just...

you move on and life carries on, doesn't it?

But you really don't know his last moments.

You've got people at the windows desperately trying to get air.

There's no one here yet, and the floor is completely engulfed.

We're on the floor and we can't breathe.

And it's very, very, very hot.

So how many people are with you right now?

It's like five people...

The resolution is very grainy on some of the... the video

but, you know, occasionally it's like, "God, is that Geoff?

Is that what he was wearing? Is that where he was?

Is it the right floor?"

I was reading and researching more about events surrounding his death

but things didn't sit well at all.

I just started to... to feel that, um, you know, we weren't being told the truth.

If... I know that a document exists, I want to see it.

Particularly if it's known to be something that doesn't fit in

with that official narrative that everyone's been spun over the years.

This was the grid of World Trade Center.

My brother's remains were found in, um, K-12,

so show you there where the black dot is

some 20 to 40 meters, um, south of the North Tower.

Um, you know, that for me is not a normal gravity-driven collapse of a building.

If it's not a normal gravity collapse, what is it?

I mean, I'm convinced it's... They used explosives.

- Who's they? - Oh, I don't know.

Afghanistan - that was the first thing to get me to question the events of 9/11.

All wars start with lies.

Uh, history is riddled with that.

There are conspiracy theories, whatever out there,

I don't really think I've sat down with dad and talked about them.

I understand that wanting to be on your own...

It's just easier for dad to deal with without talking about it.

There's an element of sweeping it under the carpet.

It has taken up a lot of my... my time over the years.

Perhaps on a subconscious level I'm channeling energy

to either deal or not deal with my grief.

I could see the smoke.

I looked at Brianna and I said, "Oh, boy,"

I says, "Daddy's going to be tired when he comes home tonight."

I said, "This is going to be a long day for him."

So I drove home, and by the time I drove home I had missed a phone call from him.

And he left a message on the machine.

He was like, "Yeah, baby, it's me.

Just called to tell you that I love you.

I'll talk to you later."

Danny loved being a firefighter.

He would say if we won the lottery, if I wanted to quit my job, fine,

but he was never quitting the fire department.

He just loved every minute of it.

There's a little bit of... of... of crazy in all of them.

And there was a little part of him that liked the fire.

He would be on vacation and I would hear him call the firehouse

and be like, "Did I miss anything? I miss a good job?"

I put the TV on...

and I was like, "This... this is going to be bad."

Here I am, 90 floors up.

I said, "All right, let's all go, no one's gonna get left behind."

And this woman Lucy said, "I'm not leaving."

And it's like, "No, Lucy, you're leaving."

And I said, "Put your hands on my shoulder."

So she put her two hands on my shoulder sort of like this in reverse

and I grabbed... I held them like this because she wasn't going to get away.

As soon as I got to the door, there's a security guy there,

grabs me by my arm, drags me through

and he says, "They need you in the newsroom."

I get in the elevator.

The elevator is four floors, right.

The elevator doors open up, I step off the elevator, I walk five paces,

I step into the newsroom, huge gasp goes up.

Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

Oh, my.

That's the other one. That's terrorists.

That's terrorist, bro.

The assistant news director turned to me and he said,

"Grab the next cameraman out of the garage, go downtown."

Was there any on your part?

No, I... I wanted to go.

No, I... No, no, no, that... that's the job, you go.

I looked up and saw the second plane hit the South Tower.

I could see the flames, but most of all I could feel them burrowing deeper

and deeper and deeper, and through my clothes, and through...

my skin.

I began to feel my consciousness slipping away

and I screamed to my son, "Tyler, I can't leave you now.

I won't leave you now."

- Let's go back a little more. - I really can't.

You like about this.

We're watching some really graphic footage

that I don't think you've seen before,

although you were there for a lot of it.

I couldn't stand seeing the pity in their eyes.

It's all in a day's work, huh?

They diagnosed me with an 82.5 percent total body burn,

most of it third and fourth degree.

A fight that no one thought I would be able to come out of.

The three months in the ICU,

I learned to walk again,

uh, to do things like sit up through extraordinary pain

and open wounds that did not heal for years.

I felt then the way I feel today, which is incredibly grateful and strong.

I have so much to do with my life but I feel so sorry for that person.

She was... It's tough to look at.

I got beat up pretty bad.

Usually while I'm standing, I do some movements to keep limber.

I was happier in a sense back then.

Life was simple.

I've spent so much time in bed.

I had, through my injury, that beautiful moment

of being able to be strong and unabashedly myself,

whereas in business, uh,

there wasn't a time that there weren't unwanted passes,

there wasn't a time where a role wasn't most often

given to, um, a man before a woman.

Finally had a moment where I could be myself.

You had one goal, and it was to get back on your feet.

- Yeah, it was really easy. - And you did it.

Now the... the world has rushed back in, in so many ways

and all the, uh... all the debris,

of all the side effects of everything that happened

that hit this family have, uh...

come home in a sense.

I think of my son and, uh...

I just think that, you know, in summation it's all really...

for him.

Put it down, Tyler. Hello kid.

Hi.

You know, what happened with my mom obviously took a toll on me.

- It's mommy. See? - He knows.

Like, I've had, you know, my own emotional bouts, so to speak.

I had PTSD but, in my mind, I didn't think it was as severe.

But my PTSD, I don't think it generates sadness,

I think it generates just extreme levels of anger.

I think though that what you've done is be incredibly brave.

I mean, yeah, as I said like I try to model myself after you, be incredibly brave.

But when you've seen someone that has gone through an attempted murder

and who is physically torn apart...

It doesn't make me sad, it gets me really, really angry.

- Yeah. - I know who that man is.

I'll say his name freely as much as I want, I don't know, you know,

if it would be appropriate to say what I really think

- about that man on this camera but... - Who's that?

Osama bin Laden. I would do ungodly things to that man's body.

I would not let him die for a single second of it.

I would not, you know, let his eyes close or let him try and kill himself. Like...

That man would suffer greatly by my hands.

You know, I wish they brought him here just so I could torture this man.

It shouldn't be like a hobby.

I... I despise...

him to such an extent, like,

it's unbelievable the lengths I'd go just...

to, like, inflict physical pain on him. Like...

Yeah, I'd hurt him. I'd really hurt him.

I guess my mere presence is sometimes a trigger.

Anger about why were you there, why weren't you faster?

How could you not understand what was happening?

Why are you the mother that looks like this?

You know, why didn't you die that day?

Maybe you should have, it would have just been easier for us.

Morning Cleveland, it's United 93 with you at 350.

Intermittent light chop here at 35. Any weather reports?

United 93, Cleveland 13337.

13337 get.

Leroy specifically had always wanted to work for United Airlines.

That was his dream job.

Even before he met me, he probably had photo albums

filled of all the places he'd been.

And he would, like, write on the back of them where the place was.

And I'm like, "Why are you writing on the back of them?"

He's like, "Well, what if I forget when I'm old?"

He would send me postcards from places that would come two weeks after he came home.

At some point I turned on the television, um,

my phone started ringing incessantly

with people wanting to know where Leroy was.

And that's when I started to just feel panicked.

They didn't know what was going on and how many more planes had been hijacked.

I had called the United Airlines flight office.

They said everything was okay with his flight

and specifically the phrase the person said,

"Don't worry, I promise you everything is okay."

She said to me, um,

"Would you like me to send a message to him in the cockpit?"

And I said, "Yes, um...

please just tell him that I just wanted to make sure that he was okay."

That... that point he would have wondered, "What... what in the world is going on?"

Are you watching the?

So the plan on the way down

was for us to get into one of the towers.

I want to be there with the firemen, I want to document these heroic rescues,

I want to see the heroism and the bravery of the firefighters.

We parked a block from the North Tower.

You know, I come around the corner, I look up...

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

There was just no way we could get close enough...

to the... to the towers to get inside.

And I went over to the chief and he directed me to the...

to work out of the North Tower.

I took out the fact that it was a plane.

To me was a fire in a high-rise, we got to get up there,

we got to try to put out the fire and save as many people as we can

above and below the fire.

Everybody in the stairwell was very focused on getting out.

Because I was slower with Lucy...

I would be three or four steps below and she would lean into me.

Right, and I would take... Go down like this.

And then we went down slow, slow, slow.

And then as we got down lower, I saw the first firefighter come up.

And I still remember the faces on firemen as they're making their way up,

you know, as we're going down.

You know, their job was just to come up and help people

and there wasn't panic on their faces.

People didn't know what was going on,

but they did, um,

but didn't let that on to anybody.

You had these guys standing there,

I mean they're standing like... like soldiers waiting to go into battle.

Some of them who were just sort of staring up at the towers unblinking...

wondering if they were going to be sent in clearly.

Is there anything that the fire department can do about a fire that high up?

They're up 80, 90 stories.

My gut feeling is no, there... there are...

So I worked for USA Today at the time here in Washington, DC.

I was thinking this is probably the biggest story of my lifetime.

And if I get to New York, you know, this is going to be a huge story to cover.

I was cussing like, "God, I wish the traffic would move."

And you're kind of hitting the steering wheel and you're just stuck.

That's when I decided, you know, you need to roll down the window

and kind of calm down, you're going to have a heart attack,

you're acting like an idiot and stuff.

And that's when I put my arm out.

It was my first day at the Pentagon.

I, um, had gotten online with an email

and had just, um, pulled up some of my old co-workers from New York,

and sent them an email just to let them know that I was online.

I think I probably put in the text, "Hey, I'm a small fish in a big pond

but, heh... but I'm here."

And it was such a crystal blue sky that day and it was a brisk kind of feel.

And that's when I heard the jet and then I looked up,

and I saw it as it started to turn and bank and dive.

And... and it's just so astonishing.

Holy, the Pentagon.

Where is it? Oh!

Leave those cameras running!

A fireball just goes right beside me.

I'm sitting in my cubicle and the first thought that popped in my mind is,

"What kind of a place is this?"

Things were on fire around us, I could hear people moaning.

I heard one lady scream, "I can't move."

And then it was like silence.

They say, you know, things are in slow motion.

It really did seem like it was in slow motion.

Everybody on that plane is dead.

All those areas where people were sitting at desks or at their job

or, you know, or maybe they're getting a cup of coffee or whatever,

they're all incinerated.

There was another lady behind me named Antoinette.

Antoinette had this beautiful purple sweater that she had worn to work that day.

And I caught a quick glimpse of her silhouette through the smoke

and I could see that it looked like her sweater

had kind of melted or burned on her.

She said she... she said "My skin is on fire."

She says, "I feel like I'm just burning. My skin is on fire."

And I told her, I said, "I know it hurts, baby, I know it hurts,

but we have got to find a way to get out of here."

And then I heard a voice, "Is there anybody in here?"

And I called back, "Yes, we're here!" He says, "I can't see you."

I was like, "I can't see you either," I said, "but we're in here.

We're in here."

And as I'm reaching out through the smoke,

there's a hand on the other side and he grabs me,

and he pulls me and he pulls me out.

I mean it was like a cruise missile with wings went right there

and slammed right into the Pentagon.

And the toughest thing for me right now is,

I've got a 14-year-old daughter

and a lot of her friends have parents who work in the Pentagon

and I just talked to her on the phone

and those kids are going through agony tonight.

They don't know if they're okay.

At some point a public affairs guy from the Air Force came up to me and he said,

"I heard that you witnessed the plane going to the Pentagon."

I just started like sobbing uncontrollably.

I was just like... I dissolved into tears and I was really kind of embarrassed about it

because here's this guy in uniform and, you know, quite buff, and very military,

and here I am this kind of like weak-kneed, uh, guy crying.

And I said to him, I said, you know, "This isn't like me,"

you know, and, "I've been... Went to Somalia

and I've covered all these stories, I don't know why I'm acting like this."

And I'll never forget this, he, uh, threw his arms around me and started hugging me,

and he's like, "You're in a state of shock,"

you know, "This is perfectly natural.

You shouldn't be ashamed of anything."

Man, this is really good with this tomato.

It's really good with the basil just incredible.

Just incredible.

So we had a guy who lived two doors over, right.

He'd been in Iraq and in these kind of situations.

He said the problem was, you know, you weren't activated.

He goes, "When I get activated to go overseas,

- I'm activated, I'm prepared for that." And, uh... - I agree.

Yeah, and he said, you know, "You just weren't activated that day,

so, um, that's why it was so shocking and jarring."

We've had conspiracy theorists say that he...

It just was an illusion to him, that it was really a papier-mache bomb.

- Are you serious? - Oh, my God, you haven't...

he unfortunately invited him to our house.

Okay, all right, all right.

Truly he was fascinated.

Yeah, because I mean to me it was just like it's all out there,

it's so easy to understand that this really happened

for somebody to kind of question it at all.

I just kind of wanted to understand why.

So... Uh, so she's right, she was really mad at me,

the kids were really mad at me I had these people over.

We barbecued some chicken and stuff and sat there with them.

But I was just trying to, you know, understand them.

I mean, to me it was fascinating.

So I told him what I saw that day and he said,

"Well, you know, sometimes your eyes can play tricks on you."

Really, really sad stuff.

The result is, you know, somebody invites you to do an interview like this

and you have an opportunity to talk, you talk because their narrative's out there.

And if your narrative isn't out there competing against their narrative, then...

You know, if this is the space and they're occupying most of it,

then people start thinking that way, they start drifting in that direction.

And you don't want that to happen.

Look at the time...

it's 9:11.

Oh, it's that's so funny.

I'm in the North Tower.

I saw a bunch of civilians that were exiting a staircase.

My thinking was, "Let's go to that staircase,

find out how we can direct the people the quickest way to get out of this building."

And... and it looked like, uh, a bunch of little ants coming out of an ant hole

and they didn't know where they were going.

I still remember so vividly that point of turning around the last stairwell

and seeing flash of light coming in because you now finally made it out.

I wanted to know how much of the building we were evacuating

to see how well we were doing.

I remember the highest number I was told was the 70th floor.

"What floor you're from?" And they are 70th.

And I said, "We're doing a good job."

And then, uh, only moments later...

it seemed I heard... I heard a loud rumble coming from above.

Take two. Take two and two, one.

This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center.

You can see the firemen assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents,

and you can see the two towers, a huge explosion, raining debris on all of us.

Got to get out of the way!

I remember I'm thinking it was the building I was in that was coming down.

It was the loudest noise you ever heard in your life.

The twisting metal and the building coming down as eight subway cars

coming into a train station at the same time with their brakes squealing.

In my memory, it was silent and slow motion

but it must have been so, so loud because this noise made me look up.

And I look up to see the South Tower collapse,

this big cloud coming down.

There was a fire engine on the other side of the road.

I hadn't even made it and it was down.

It was 110-story building.

It bought us a couple of seconds.

I turned around and there was a door.

The door wasn't locked.

Go through the door...

and we ran through the door.

There were people who...

There were people who, um, did not, um, get to the door

that, um...

that... that... that did not survive.

To even see the sun sort of coming through this haze,

an officer had come up to me and said, "Do you want me to take you away from this?"

I'd seen my flip-flop peering out of the rubble

and I turned and said, you know, "I need to get my flip-flop."

He said to me, "I think you've got more important things to worry about."

We just walked away.

Marty, I'm.

We don't know what's happened inside.

What we know we have to do is just keep running the other way.

The firemen are going this way, so are the police officers.

We don't know what's happening.

The only light around was my flashlight.

Now I heard these people screaming on the other side of that door.

"Help! Help!" and all.

I said, these are the same people I just told, "Good job, you made it."

And I felt so responsible for them.

Plus, the people that are inside the stairwell were with me.

I tried getting that doorway open

and I couldn't, it seemed blocked.

I was watching everything unfold on TV

and I just got this wave of... of... of... panic and just sheer terror.

And then the phone clicked and it was Brian from the firehouse.

And he said to me, um, "Nancy, Danny's been hurt.

I'm coming to get you."

And you know that's not good.

Like, they're not coming to get you if he broke his arm.

I said to Marty, I said,

"You know what, you got to roll on everything.

Roll on everything."

And I said roll until you run out of tape...

because this is history.

And this is literally the first draft of history.

Just tell me, what... What did you see? What did it look like?

Clearly people could not even form words.

That was my first real moment

where I stood back from it

and began to process

the enormity of what had happened.

I was in newsman mode for the, you know...

the... the hour leading up to all of that.

Brian picked me up.

We didn't speak the whole ride.

But there was not one car on the road,

just us.

It was eerie.

We pull up to Bellevue

and there are nurses and doctors,

and they're standing outside.

No one was coming.

And I ran inside.

They were lined up in the hallway,

all of the guys from his firehouse.

And Chief Jankowski stood up.

And I said, "Where is he?"

And he just looked at me and he was like, um...

"Nancy..." And I'm like, "Where is he?"

And he was like, "He's gone."

I looked up and there was Chris Barry,

another guy who was with Dan that day,

and he was gray...

and no one would look at me.

No one would look at me.

John D'Allara, this emergency service cop,

was coming down the stairs at that point

and he asked me, "What's up?"

Just like that, like, "What's up?" And I said, uh,

"I think we're trapped in here."

I said, "Get all these civilians."

I said, "The door seems blocked."

And then he and I, we just started pounding against that door.

And each time we hit it,

we got it open a little bit more

and finally we got it open wide enough.

And I remember telling him, "You stay here at the door

and keep this door open and I'm going to go out

in that area with my flashlight

and I'm going to bring those people back to this doorway."

And I remember telling them, "If you could see my light, I'm a fireman,

come to my light."

About 15 people came to my light

and I remember putting a hand on the wall,

and said, "Follow this wall back, it goes to a doorway

and go in that doorway," and they did.

And it seemed to evacuate that area.

And John came over to me.

I said, "Where do you work?" And he says, "ESU, too, up in Harlem."

And I said, "We come from opposite ends of the city

basically to respond here." And, yeah, we have. And...

And then out of nowhere...

he says to me, "My wife's name is Carol."

I remember, I said to him, "My wife's name is Cynthia."

And then he says he has a seven-year-old boy.

I said I got a six-year-old boy.

And I believe he said that he had a two-year-old boy.

And I have a two-month-old boy, I said.

That's what we talked about

for the next ten minutes or so, our family.

I don't know whatever brought that upon us

to be talking about our families.

That's never happened in an emergency situation.

It's almost like...

you're telling the other person...

your eulogy or something.

Apparently what had happened was...

somebody who, uh, had fallen from the building

landed on him...

as he and his group were going into the South Tower.

It cracked his forehead in half...

broke his nose,

broke his eye socket,

broke his neck.

I just remember they brought me in

and he was covered up to here.

I remember just kissing him on the cheek

and whispering in his ear...

and telling him that I would always love him,

and I would make sure Brianna knew him.

And she would know that he was a wonderful man...

and he would be part of our lives forever.

He was so proud of the fact

that he played football since he was six years old

and never broke his nose.

And I remember thinking, "God, he's got to be off he broke his nose."

From what I understand, the person who ended up hitting him was a woman.

People have asked me, you know, like,

aren't you angry and I'm like, "Are you kidding me?"

What... what... what was her last thoughts?

What... The nightmare... The nightmare.

But he was going into the South Tower.

The South Tower collapsed.

He was going to die one way or the other that day.

I just remember thinking I have to go home.

I have to do laundry.

I have to get Brianna.

I need it normal. I need to go home.

I need to get my daughter and I need to go home.

And then it's going to be okay if I go home.

If I just go home, it's going to be okay.

And here comes Brianna.

"Where's Daddy? Where's Daddy?"

And I knelt down,

and I looked her straight in the face and I said,

"He went to heaven to be with God."

And she said, "Why?"

And I said, "Because a bad thing happened today

and God needed good people to help Him."

And she was kind of like, "Okay,"

and she walked away.

It's been a while.

Tuesday, 9:06 a.m.

It's like, "Hey babe, just called...

called to say that I'm... I love you.

Everything's fine. I'll talk to you later."

In the beginning, right after he died,

I'd listen to it a hundred times a day.

End of messages.

It was just about me holding it together...

making sure she gets to school,

making sure she goes to parties,

making sure her home life is warm and loving and...

and she was always going to have me.

It was... It didn't matter, she was always going to have me.

Where's Brianna? In her beautiful room?

I am.

- Where are you? - I'm right here.

And sometimes there was guilt.

I would... I would feel guilty

that I am getting the chance to watch her grow.

And people would be like, "Well, you should enjoy it,

you know, twice as much for him." And I'm like,

"Yeah, that's... That's not a thing."

I wore black for a long time.

Crazy Italian lady.

Um, but everything that I wore with him,

I packed away

with his clothes because that was my life with him.

How long did you wear black for?

Till 2005.

You only wore black?

I only wore black.

Wow.

Yeah.

It feels disloyal...

to not be in excruciating pain every day like you were.

It hurt to breathe.

Some people actually have full other lives.

They... they remarry.

They have children with that person.

They... they have the dream again.

So does that make me pathetic?

I think it just makes me heartbroken.

I think it just makes me somebody who lost

her favorite person in the whole world.

When we join the military and raise our right hand

and take our oath of service or oath of office,

we understand

that there's the potential for us to lose our lives.

All of us shared the same emotion

of urgency to get airborne,

to protect and defend.

It was after the Pentagon was hit

that Vice President Cheney said,

"Aren't there fighters at Andrews?"

Like, "Someone get them airborne."

And that orders came from him through the Secret Service.

But we were still configured for training.

You know, I've had people say,

"Well, how come you didn't have missiles on board?"

We don't fly around with hot missiles.

We don't fly around with hot bombs.

We don't even store them all made up together.

They live in the bomb dump way like

far off beyond the golf course and the fishing lake.

They believed there was an aircraft

that had turned around

and was coming down the Potomac River,

which would mean headed for the White House or the Capitol Building.

That aircraft had been taken over by terrorists.

The fate of those passengers was sealed.

In that sense, they were already dead.

And our job was simply to prevent more deaths.

So we knew then

that was when we would have to ram the jet.

We're airborne.

And Sass says, "I'll take the cockpit,"

and I would take the tail.

Like a kamikaze,

neither one of us would be coming back.

Shanks was just a nice small town about 200 people, I think.

Great place to raise children.

You know, it's a small town but still a lot of things to do.

You know, have a great little league baseball program

that, you know, the community has...

and sports like that.

This isn't going well.

In 2001, September,

my wife and I owned Ida store on main street.

Then I'm back and forth, you know, through the morning

from the store to the house, you know,

around, I don't know, nine o'clock or so,

turned TV on and was watching, these things were unfolding.

The plan that they hope they never have to implement,

the plan that they spent years...

Right around ten o'clock, I called my sister Jody.

As we were talking, she said to me,

"Rick," she said. "I hear a plane."

And I said, "Okay."

Didn't really think much of it.

And she said, "No, it's... it's loud."

Immediately I heard the plane, I heard the engine's roaring.

Seconds later,

it hit and my porch just rumbled and shook,

and I saw the fireball going up in the sky.

Jody said to me,

"Oh, my God, it crashed!"

And I said, "I know," and I said, "I got to go."

Somerset County, all units responding.

Plane down.

Switch to central operation.

I was the assistant fire chief at the time,

but we've never trained for commercial airline crashes.

Someone from United Airlines called again.

He asks me, "Are you alone?"

And he said, "I think that last plane was LeRoy's."

And...

I was, um, next to the window.

I remember just slamming my hand against the glass.

I was... I was just beating it and I was...

I was just saying, "No, no, no."

I... I just said, "You pro...

you promised me that he was okay."

I remember pulling up, you know, seeing the scene.

I just remember getting out and walking

and I'm wondering, "Where is this plane?"

There was no fuselage, there were no wings,

there were no... there was no tail.

There's nothing, you know,

just debris through the... through the trees,

you know, into...

into the woods but, you know, there are no people.

What we were explained is that

with all the jet fuel and the fire,

the human body is so made up of liquid that...

You know...

there wasn't very much left of anything.

As I was walking down the power line,

I was looking on the ground and...

and then I did start to see some small pieces, body parts.

Bone fragments, um, some skin,

a little bit of blood here and there,

But nothing that I could recognize that it was a human being.

In the days after,

the focus became the story

of the fight back on Flight 93.

The voice recorder picked up the sound of the passengers

outside the cockpit door.

One yelled, "In the cockpit! If we don't, we'll die!"

We have seen it in the courage of passengers,

who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground.

Passengers like an exceptional man

named Todd Beamer.

And would you please help me welcome his wife,

Lisa Beamer, here tonight?

It was a story that everyone probably needed to hear

and wanted to hear.

He said that a group of them

were getting ready to do something

and then he hung up and he never called back.

He went down fighting.

But it wasn't just the passengers.

Everybody had their role to play.

None of the crew are mentioned in their narratives.

People would say to me,

"There was a black pilot on that flight?"

That's how little they knew

about who was in the cockpit.

And that's a huge part of the story.

But the heroes had been identified

at that point in everybody's mind...

and nobody wants to sort of rewrite history.

It felt like that was a hijacking

of everybody else's stories and everybody else's grief.

I feel protective of Leroy

and I feel protective of his legacy.

Life kind of turned upside down.

Visitors coming through,

wanting to know the story, what happened.

You know, as they're driving by,

if you're on the... on the street

or on your porch, um, you know, talking to you.

I'm not saying it was a burden, you know, we were gracious.

It was just something that, you know,

you dealt with on a daily basis,

especially myself, you know,

being one of the first responders.

I mean it definitely was a life-changing event for all of us.

And where... where do you work now?

I work at Snyder of Berlin,

just about five miles from here.

It's a potato chip factory, snacks, um, popcorn,

cheese curls, things like that.

Very less stressful than jobs I've had before.

Yeah, I enjoy it. It's close to home.

It's probably somewhere I'll just stay until I retire.

The passengers on Flight 93

should never have been put into a position

to have to make that choice.

We failed Americans

because of so many layers.

Soviet Union falls and...

and suddenly we believe it's the end of history...

and we just let our guard down.

If you look back at the timeline,

Flight 93 was already down by the time we took off.

There was no way that we could have intercepted it.

If the passengers had not made the choices that they did

and took the actions that they did,

that aircraft would have crashed into the Capitol Building.

I was 26 when 9/11 happened, I was really young.

I wasn't anybody.

In the years that followed,

I was just simply doing...

what everyone else in my fighter squadron was doing,

doing training missions, deploying overseas.

Going to Iraq in '03, I was a nighttime Scud hunter.

I was flying at night wearing night vision goggles,

uh, hunting mobile Scud ballistic missiles.

I finally had to leave the jet

because I just couldn't balance everything

as a single mom.

You sort of worry about the world

that your daughter's growing up in

compared to the one you grew up in?

I do.

9/11 was the gestation,

really the... the very beginning of the forever wars

that... that America has found itself embroiled in.

Obviously there's all the blood and treasure

that has been spent on those wars...

but there's no doubt in my mind

that, uh, 9/11 was a turning point,

not just for America's history but for...

for the globe in general.

We get down to the lobby level

and that's when I started to realize that this was something big.

I remember looking out like this

and particularly to my left because that was the really main lobby,

uh, and the windows were all broken,

it was completely covered in ash

and there were these security guards, I'll never forget.

They're walking towards the exit

and they go, "No, run! Run! Run!"

So, you know, what I grabbed Lucy's hand

and, you know, and... and the two of us run.

One of the security guards goes, uh,

"Don't look right! Don't look right!"

So obviously first thing you do is you look right.

And I look out

and that was the plaza between the two buildings.

It looked like a battlefield.

And all I saw were debris and bodies.

And the one I remember in particular,

there was a man about my age,

uh, with dark hair wearing a white shirt,

dark pants, black shoes.

That day I was wearing a white shirt,

dark pants, black shoes.

You're almost looking into destiny's mirror.

I looked around the room,

it was me and three other firemen that were left.

And his sergeant was there, Sergeant Curtin.

And he pointed right at me, he pointed his finger,

I remember him saying, "I think we should get out of this building now."

And the EMT started to grab me

because I was covered in blood,

and I said, "No, no, no, it's her.

She has... she has a breathing thing going on, you better take care of her."

So they took Lucy that way

and the EMT took me by my wrist this way,

and then we were just about to get into the ambulance

when someone yelled, "Watch out!"

And I remember turning around like this and thinking myself,

I mean, come on, I mean, what do you mean watch out?

What... what could happen now, right?

And he looked up and I looked up,

and I could see the top of one World Trade, the antenna,

it started to wobble.

And then I saw sheets of concrete or something

coming out like, being ejected.

And next thing I know, I see it

right over my right shoulder start to implode.

And I just ran from the falling building.

Oh, my God, there it goes!

At this point in time when we were exiting the building,

I did not notice South Tower had come down.

I didn't know all the destruction around us already.

I took one step, I got blown about 40 feet.

But I crawled into a window...

I just kind of tumbled into the room.

I went under a desk, I got into like a ball.

I felt so vulnerable as I was getting buried.

And I see this cloud, look like a tornado coming towards me,

this as tall as the buildings

swirling with what looked like debris in there,

uh, coming towards me.

We stood behind the pillar and we just covered our eyes.

I remember at one point looking up like this.

I couldn't see my fingertips.

It was completely pitch black.

It was cold and it was quiet.

And I remember thinking to myself,

"All right, this is what it's like to be dead.

I can handle this."

The image of them flashed in front of me,

my older son, my younger son.

And when the image of my younger son flashed in front of me...

I said, "Man, you'll never know your dad."

Now it was for sure I was never going to see him again.

I remember looking up again

and then it went from black to gray

to like a beigey-looking thing,

um, and then it cleared up.

But then I suddenly realized

that my throat was completely blocked

by the... by this cloud, the debris in the cloud,

and I put my fingers in my mouth,

and I dug my mouth out.

And poked... poked my finger down my throat

to make an airway.

What did you see?

Everything. I saw chaos.

It's just chaos out here, really is.

I saw the Twin Towers fall.

It's amazing, it's crazy.

I can't believe it's happening.

I really can't.

Nightmares. Armageddon right here.

We're still alive

and I remember trying to take a breath and I couldn't.

Police officer, he said, "Are you all right?"

I said, "No, I can't breathe and I can't see."

And he washed me off with some bottled water they had.

We walked further up the block

and there was a chief there who I knew.

I remember I walked up to him, pretty beaten up,

I saluted, I said, "Chief, there's been a collapse.

We've lost some men back there.

I got some guys, I know where they went down."

And he said to me, "Bill, we lost a lot of men here today."

He said, "Get in the ambulance and get out of here."

John D'Allara went down

right in that area where we were.

Every guy I had breakfast with that morning,

there was 12 of us working that day

and I was the only one to live, the only one to come home.

People have asked me in the past...

"Did people have time to worry?

People have time to think?"

It was so quick, it just came down and that was it.

Wow.

The events of 9/11

seeing it on television all the time,

it is pretty horrific.

I would not like to be in any public service at all.

Obviously we had lots of them

after the actual event that first year.

I much rather be on my own. It's my son.

I'll think about him, you know, quietly myself.

Every year on the anniversary,

I go back to the Rhinog mountains.

I've done for 20 years.

I find it means more to me being here on my own.

You look around, this is a beautiful place to be.

Beautiful place to be.

The one time of the year I can concentrate on Geoff

and I can really think deeply about Geoff,

be upset all I want, to be on my own.

It's a concentration of grief at that time.

Remember quite clearly Geoff's first words.

We lived in the countryside with the fields all round

and his very first words were "combine harvester".

He was very, very full of fun

and used to bridge all the gaps between people.

I certainly miss

what he would have been now, what he would have achieved.

He should have been alive today.

He would have been...

He would have been a real essential character today.

Matthew tends to be so occupied,

trying to refine the details of how Geoff got killed.

He almost thinks about nothing else.

So this is actually only about 50 percent

of the books that I bought to do with 9/11.

It's extremely hard to connect the dots

and actually see that there is a much bigger picture

than the initial story we were first told.

But it's an attempt I've got to try.

And it totally consumes you.

I was probably just overstepping a mark

and spending too much time on this stuff, you know.

I think it is a bit unhealthy, yes.

Uh, I mean I'm trying to balance

this fine line between supporting him,

on the other hand trying to stand back a bit

and think, "Matthew,

you sure Geoff would want this?"

Or, would he not say look,

"We can't recover what happened,

so get on with your life.

Try and think about that."

If it had been a lot more transparent in terms of,

you know, the investigation,

there weren't all these unanswered questions,

it would have been way easier just to move on.

But because I sort of opened this can of worms,

it's not easy to put back.

We've never spent an anniversary together.

I don't know if I'd be any closer to my dad

with or without Geoff dying.

You sort of find your own way in life,

don't you, as a... as a bloke.

And that's the way I am and it's the way my dad is.

And that's partly just not having

those conversations with dad,

but it's also him not offering it.

Would you've wanted Malcolm

to put an arm around you after September 11?

I don't.

Well... But... I mean, you're,

you know, a strong character is the way you are.

You... You know, I don't know how you've...

you've coped over the...

I said I don't know what it'd be like to...

to lose a... a child but, you know, um...

I've always been sort of self-dependent and,

you know, inward looking somewhat,

I suppose that might... might be the result of that.

I don't know.

But, uh...

But we haven't really sat down as,

certainly not us and not really as a family,

sat down and talked about the impact of,

- you know... - Not in 20 years.

What happened and... and, you know...

- Never? - No.

Not as a family, no.

I don't know whether it'd achieve anything, do you?

I think I probably would have avoided ten years of depression.

Ready?

- You ready? - Yeah.

Was it clear to you

that the firemen were seeking shelter inside the rigs?

On 9/12, I covered the story,

slept in the satellite truck at Ground Zero.

On 9/13,

covered the news all day,

slept in the satellite truck again.

Covered the news on 9/14,

did the six o'clock news and then went home.

At the time I thought 9/11 was just the beginning.

That we were going to have suicide bombers in Broadway shows,

suicide bombers on the subways.

I thought that this was sort of the...

the opening salvo

of an ongoing series

of terrorism attacks on New York.

Started to rule my world.

When is the next event going to happen?

We are, all of us, survivors of 9/11.

If you were alive on 9/12, you're a survivor of 9/11.

I'm out of the car

and my wife is there, and we hugged and hugged.

So I said to my wife, I said, "Where's Jay?"

She said, "Oh, he's up in his room."

Went upstairs, poked my head into his room,

I said, "Jay!"

He looks up at me and he says, "Hi, Dad."

And my son was not even four.

He had built towers with his wooden blocks

and had a model plane

that he was smashing into the... into the blocks.

When you saw that,

was there any part of you that regretted

not having come home sooner?

No, and, you know what, it's interesting, Arthur,

because nobody's ever asked me that question.

Should I've come home sooner?

Maybe so.

They brought me down to Ground Zero.

That day they found someone and you watch them...

flag, stand at attention.

The respect, everything stopped dead...

and they bring the person up.

It was just beyond anyone's comprehension

of what was going on.

These firefighters are so damaged.

Certain things, once you've seen them...

you could just never not see.

My heart is broken for all of them.

The group is made up of retired firemen.

Just like the firehouse kitchen would be.

It's the same type of joking around

that goes on and the same on the course.

Danny's funeral was on Monday

and people waited for hours to see me.

People just kept coming and coming,

thousands and thousands of people.

It was the most incredible thing.

Firefighters in their turnout gear,

covered in dust, had come from Ground Zero.

Just... they just kept coming.

Do you think in a way, Bill, going to all those funerals,

it must have been really traumatizing experience?

Yeah, you kind of lose emotion.

It was just one after another

one week after another and lasted 11 weeks.

There's just so many guys.

I realized it wasn't healthy for me.

So I just was going to one... one a day.

I never thought I'd live more than two years after 9/11,

two, three years at the most

due to my breathing, so many difficulties.

At least it was positive.

I was going to see my boys for some time.

So every day it goes by now, it's... it's all good, yeah.

And my two boys are doing great.

I... I couldn't ask more from them, uh...

I'm glad I got to experience these last 20 years.

And if I wake up tomorrow, it'll be... it'll be good again.

- Yeah! - Oh, yes!

There's a difference between moving forward and moving on.

I've moved forward.

I haven't moved on.

Daddy will catch you. Daddy will catch you.

There's a part of me that will always be that day.

In a blink of an eye, I'm back there.

I was numb.

My survival mechanism was... I just turned numb.

I used to feel like a visitor from another planet.

I would come home and it'd be like

returning back to a life that no longer existed for me.

If you weren't a first responder,

you were just a civilian like I was.

And you have the same psychological needs.

You have the same physical needs.

You have to deal with medical and government systems

that you normally would never deal with, right?

You don't even know what you're supposed to do.

You're part of a great unwashed.

If you were a civilian, an office worker

or a tradesman or worked in a store...

it's very real for you.

But we were just forgotten.

We became a footnote in the story.

I wanted to stay there more than ever.

But I then just got to a point

that I actually couldn't handle the way I was feeling

and the fear that I had.

And the sort of panics, that noises and sounds and smells.

I called a friend because I...

I think I said to her, "I'm scared.

What I'm going to do if...

if I don't leave?"

Because I couldn't... I couldn't keep, um...

It was that thing of I can't live with,

this fear and this emotion and this feeling that I have right now.

Um, so, we literally booked a flight, she came... She flew home with me.

Um, which was amazing.

I was scared

because I couldn't cope with feeling the way I was feeling.

I loved that city. Loved it.

Such amazing friends there.

I had... Yeah, I had a great life there.

Even with the studio space in the towers,

I'm still so thankful

of having an opportunity to be in a space like that.

My dad was a printer.

He worked in downtown Manhattan.

And when I got to be about 13 years old,

my dad and mom would let me travel to the city by myself.

I always said to myself,

"People from all over the world travel many miles,

they spend a lot of money to vacation here in New York,

and I'm a boat ride away."

Every time I traveled on the ferry,

I took a picture of those towers.

I cherish them.

It brings back the memories of when they still dominated the skyline.