♪ ("I FEEL LIKE I'M NOT OUT OF BED YET" BY LEONARD BERNSTEIN PLAYING) ♪
(BOAT HORN BLARES)
♪ I feel like I'm not ♪
♪ Out of bed yet ♪
♪ Oh! ♪
♪ Oh, the sun is warm ♪
♪ But my blanket's warmer ♪
♪ Sleep ♪
♪ Sleep in your lady's arms ♪
♪ Sleep ♪
♪ In your lady's arms ♪
(WHISTLE BLOWS)
♪ ("NEW YORK, NEW YORK" BY GENE KELLY AND FRANK SINATRA PLAYING) ♪
(SAILORS CLAMORING)
-Let's go. Get the lead out. -Come on, Chip. Come on.
Thank God!
-♪ New York, New York ♪ -♪ New York, New York ♪
♪ New York, New York ♪
♪ It's a wonderful town! ♪
(CHUCKLING) Hey, fellas, what's the big rush?
-We only got 24 hours. -Yeah.
Yeah. We never been here before.
What can happen to you in one day?
What do you think you're gonna do?
(SAILORS BARK, HOWL)
♪ New York, New York A wonderful town ♪
♪ The Bronx is up And the Battery's down ♪
♪ The people ride In a hole in the ground ♪
♪ New York, New York It's a wonderful town! ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
♪ The famous places to visit Are so many ♪
♪ Or so the guidebooks say ♪
♪ I told my grandpa I wouldn't miss on any ♪
♪ And we've got just one day Got to see the whole town ♪
♪ Right from Yonkers On down to the Bay ♪
♪ In just one day ♪
♪ New York, New York A wonderful town ♪
♪ The Bronx is up And the Battery's down ♪
♪ The people ride In a hole in the ground ♪
♪ New York, New York It's a wonderful town! ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
♪ We've sailed the seas And we've been the world over ♪
♪ Maine to Mandalay ♪
♪ We've seen the Sphinx And seen the Cliffs of Dover ♪
♪ But we can safely say ♪
♪ The most fabulous sight Is New York ♪
♪ In the light of the day ♪
♪ Our only day ♪
♪ New York, New York A wonderful town ♪
♪ The Bronx is up And the Battery's down ♪
♪ The people ride In a hole in the ground ♪
♪ New York, New York It's a wonderful town! ♪
♪ Manhattan women are all In silk and satin ♪
♪ Or so the fellas say ♪
♪ There's just one thing Necessary in Manhattan ♪
♪ When you got just one day ♪
♪ Gotta pick up a date ♪
♪ Maybe seven or eight On your way ♪
♪ In just one day! ♪
♪ New York, New York A wonderful town ♪
♪ The Bronx is up And the Battery's down ♪
♪ The people ride In a hole in the ground ♪
♪ New York, New York ♪
♪ It's a wonderful town! ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ ("FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN" BY AARON COPLAND PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
One of the things I wanted to do when I became governor
was to get the government out of things it was running
that it didn't have any business doing
or didn't, uh, really know what it was doing.
Uh, and at the World Trade Center,
there was a hotel and-- and office buildings
and, uh, this massive complex
that, uh, was run by a government agency
that really didn't know how to do it.
So we made the determination to-- to privatize it,
to sell it to a private owner.
Larry Silverstein.
I remember looking up at the Twin Towers
and I said to myself, "Wouldn't it be incredible
if someday I could own those?"
And fast forward to 1999,
I got a call from Governor Pataki, who said,
"Larry, would you have an interest in acquiring
the Twin Towers if the Port Authority decided
to sell them?"
And I thought for at least a minute--
ah, no, a second and a half, maybe two seconds.
-And I said-- -SPIKE LEE: Not a minute, a second and a half.
Second and a half. And I said, "Of course."
Larry is a developer, and a tough developer.
So he knew what he was doing,
but we knew what we were doing too.
So we had our battles.
It was a long process.
Lasted for about a year, year and a half.
Um, it was a competition among different developers in America.
And I ended up winning and I said to my wife that day,
I said, "Sweetheart, we now have the brass ring,
whatever you'd like to do for the rest of our lives."
But we looked forward to doing all kinds of things
that we had talked about doing over many years.
Kept delaying, delaying, delaying until finally the prize
that I really had sought with tremendous anticipation.
We won.
You know, it just closed a few weeks
before, uh, the horrible attacks.
And one of the things we found after September 11th
was that the Port Authority had almost no insurance.
Six weeks before 9/11,
we had taken title to the World Trade Center.
When Silverstein bought it, one of the things he did
was massively increase the insurance.
New York City has been targeted, attacked,
time and time and time again.
In 1776, American Revolution,
the Continental Army under George Washington
comes into New York.
The British sail in after him and basically shellac New York.
Again, in the War of 1812,
New Yorkers were targeted by the British Navy.
It all came to a climax when it became known in New York
that the British Navy was planning
to burn the place down, as they did in Washington, D.C.
with the White House.
There was always a Black population in New York.
Always, from 1625 onwards,
when the first enslaved people were brought here.
Back then, it was called New Amsterdam.
Slavery still exists
in New York state and New York City
-until 1827. -SPIKE: Oh.
STEVEN JAFFE: Black New Yorkers,
they were targeted during
uh, during the Civil War
in the Draft Riots of 1863.
New York City explodes. It just explodes.
Because of all this built up resentment,
they turn on, who else?
African American New Yorkers.
It's a race riot, which really means it's a slaughter.
Black residences are attacked and burned.
Still the most destructive riot in American history.
In 1920, some anarchist terrorists planted a bomb
on Wall Street.
They were targeting American capitalism,
and that bomb went off at lunchtime on a weekday
at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets,
right by the stock exchange.
Thirty-eight people were killed in that explosion
and over 140 wounded.
In terms of New York as a target during World War II,
Hitler thought and planned and hoped for
some kind of long-range bomber
that the Germans could develop,
that could get across the Atlantic,
bomb New York, and make their getaway.
There's this notion of...
not just strategically taking out or harassing
the great industrial city of America, New York,
the great financial city, New York,
the largest city, New York.
It's symbolic. It's about,
"Look at those arrogant Americans over there,"
and what's the most arrogant place?
SPIKE: There's a famous line...
-Yeah. -...in one of my favorite films.
-Casablanca. -Oh, yeah.
How about New York?
Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major,
that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.
The Japanese have a somewhat different thing going on here.
Admiral Yamamoto, who was
really the mastermind of Pearl Harbor,
continued to believe that "if we can hit them
in-- at home, in America, they'll kind of be so panicked
that it-- they'll be demoralized."
They create this submarine, the I-400.
It's the largest submarine built up to that time
and they can carry planes.
They're going to send them all the way around
the southern tip of South America
into the Atlantic, then sail up to New York.
It's not about "we're going to destroy so much property
or so much military armament,
we'll bomb the Brooklyn Navy Yard
or whatever and take out so many ships."
It's-- It's symbolic.
My name is Scott Raab. I'm a writer.
We're talking about the epicenter of capitalism.
To me, the greatest city in the world.
But it is still a soft target and it always will be
because New York City's a soft target.
It was a soft target for the virus.
It was a soft target for Al Qaeda.
What the-- What are you gonna do?
My name is Philippe Petit. I am a high-wire artist.
I was in the dentist office in Paris.
And, you know, in Paris, you have a stack
of old magazines, you know, and so I grabbed
an old magazine of three months ago or a newspaper
and I see a picture of two towers.
It's actually a picture of an architectural model.
And it says when they will be built,
those two towers will be the highest in the world.
So I drew a little pencil line between the two towers.
And then I saw in Paris Match, a big magazine,
double page, in color, the towers are almost finished.
And I say, "Shit, I have to run to New York."
Because my idea was to put a helmet, to bring equipment,
to be part of the workers finishing the towers.
So I would sneak in the building
and I will take pictures, I will take notes,
how the guards are dressed, where they go.
Is there any stamp or any security?
After eight months, I had what I thought was a plan.
I had rented a helicopter a month before
to see myself, like a kid, higher than the roof.
To just look at it and thinking when the day of the walk
I'll be at roof level, it will feel like the ground.
I arrive with all my equipment,
with suitcase, and then I do custom.
I don't know what, if something in my face,
they would say, "Hey you, come over here. Open up."
"Why me?" You know, anyway, so I open up
and the guy is flabbergasted
because it's pulleys and rope and turnbuckle.
So like a, um, man who sells car, you know, I say,
"Well, this is a block and tackle and this is..."
I explained everything. And at the end, he says,
"What's all that?" And I jokingly say,
"I'm a wire walker and I bring all this equipment
to put a high wire illegally between the Twin Towers."
And he joked and he says, "Ha, Ha! Hey, okay. Next. Next."
I spend the whole night rigging the wire.
I had also had two accomplices on the other side
that were disguised as, uh, architects.
They had the bow and arrow to, you know, send a fishing line
and ultimately the cable.
-What was planned is to walk across. -SPIKE: One time?
PHILIPPE PETIT: After the first crossing,
I run and check the anchor point.
That's the engineer in me.
Then I sit on the wire facing the tower,
the South Tower, that I just came from.
And I am above New York. I am the king of the world.
And I am really thinking,
-"Hmm, I like it here." -(SPIKE CHUCKLES)
PHILIPPE: "I should do another walk."
So I start kind of dancing.
And I lay down on the wire and I do U-turn and I do tiptoe
and I dance on the wire.
And my friends told me, "Philippe, you stayed 45 minutes
on the wire and you did eight crossings."
SPIKE: You know-- you were in your zone.
PHILIPPE: Yeah. People say, "This guy is crazy,
he's risking his life."
Maybe the Twin Towers was a bit crazy.
-But any other wire-- -SPIKE: Oh, so you admit it was a bit crazy, right?
Yeah, it was a bit crazy. Then at the end, people say,
"So they arrested you?" Nobody arrested me.
They didn't have a high-wire unit,
and the guy will get on the wire and handcuff me.
-I gave myself up. -SPIKE: You surrendered, right?
PHILIPPE: No, I don't like that word, surrender.
I stopped walking, yeah.
MIKE SERGIO: Mike Sergio from Hell's Kitchen,
born in New York Hospital.
My name is Owen Quinn.
Originally from the Bronx, New York.
My name is Owen Quinn.
-ANNOUNCER: Number two. -My name is Owen Quinn.
-ANNOUNCER: And number three. -My name is Owen Quinn.
ANNOUNCER: "I, Owen Quinn, parachuted from the top
of New York City's tallest skyscraper,
the World Trade Center."
"In July 1975, I took an elevator halfway to the top
and walked up the rest of the way.
And then I put on my chute, strode to the wall,
and gave a hard push off into space."
I get a phone call.
Owen says, "Mike,
I'm gonna jump off the World Trade Center tomorrow."
I said, "That sounds like a good idea."
I had planned on this jump for two years,
and seeing how I had worked on the buildings,
so I knew when those buildings were complete
I was gonna get up there and jump off of it.
I had a camera and I took it out but it was, uh, old-school.
Click. Cli-- It wasn't pa-pa-pa-pa, you know?
So I knew I had one shot at this thing.
And I'm on the ledge like this, leaning over, and--
and as Owen said, the building goes out like this and then down.
And I'm like this and there's clouds going over
And I...
And I know I got one shot. One shot.
And he's out there like this and I said,
"Come on, Owen. We're losing the light." And he goes...
(IMITATES BLAST SOUND) ...and I said,
"Did I get it or not?"
When you go out of a plane,
you have the forward speed of the plane.
So when you pull that chute,
you're moving 60, 100 miles an hour,
so the chute comes right out.
But from a dead standstill, there's no resistance.
I fell for about 50, 60 floors
before I pulled the chute.
And there was a phone company across the street.
That was my benchmark.
I knew when I was even with that, pull.
There was a secretary as close as you and I,
and she was like...
-(SPIKE LAUGHING LOUDLY) -(CHUCKLES)
Coming in for the landing, I could see the cops down there.
looking on the ground, looking over here
looking around for my body.
And I floated right in over the top of them.
And I got about four or five cops there, and a guy says,
"Get a wheelchair and a straitjacket."
In the summer of 1976...
I came home from Morehouse.
I had just finished my freshman year,
and I was working at Baskin-Robbins,
scooping ice cream, 31 flavors.
I remember reading the Daily News. There was an ad.
Well, they needed 5,000 extras for the movie King Kong.
And it was for the final scene as King Kong fell off the top...
Kong!
SPIKE: ...and landed right between the two towers.
Right there they had a fake King Kong sprawled out.
I'm in the shot, but it's like 5,000 people,
so you can't see me.
I'd never been on a movie set, like...
"Damn, why's it taking so long?" You know? "Let's shoot!"
First take, I said...
I got on the subway and went home.
Rochelle Claerbaut,
former United Airlines flight attendant,
current copyright and trademark attorney
and music supervisor.
First of all, there was flight attendant,
and there was United flight attendant.
(LAUGHS)
At the time, United was growing and I--
and it was the world's largest airline.
I don't know if you remember those commercials
with Gene Hackman doing the voiceover.
My name is Curtis Beatty, Newark-based flight attendant,
sixteen years with United Airlines.
SPIKE: Tell us, how did you become a flight attendant
for Yo-nited?
CURTIS BEATTY: By mistake.
My sister, Andrea,
who was interested in becoming a flight attendant, uh,
wanted to go to the cattle call,
the interest meeting that they were having
when they were having one in Charlotte, North Carolina.
I actually got involved
and I went up and gave a brief story,
not being interested in being a flight attendant at all,
and I was chosen.
And from there, that's how my career began.
My sister was not chosen.
-(LAUGHS) -(SPIKE LAUGHING)
-ROCHELLE CLAERBAUT: Before the movie came out... -(SPIKE CHUCKLING)
...we were calling it a soul plane.
SPIKE: What was a soul plane?
When you had an all-Black, brown, and beige crew,
you had a soul plane.
-SPIKE: Yo-nited. -Yo-nited.
-(SPIKE LAUGHING) -Exactly. (LAUGHS)
And it was a very yo-nited crew.
ROCHELLE: You gotta understand, 767 had nine flight attendants
on premium transcon.
To have nine Black, brown, and beige flight attendants?
Are you kidding me?
(BOTH LAUGHING)
Ooh, and, like, don't even get me started about the time
Jonny Cocker was on one of those flights. (LAUGHS)
My name is Terence Hartsfield. I've been a pilot
for United Airlines for 24 years and 11 months.
-You get a lot of looks. -SPIKE: Must do. (CHUCKLING)
You know-- you know, people are looking and reading their magazine
-and they look up... -(BOTH LAUGHING)
...and are very surprised that you're getting on--
you know, that you're flying the aircraft.
And on Yo-nited, if you had a Black captain
and first officer in the cockpit,
that was the soul patrol.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
-SPIKE: Soul patrol? -Soul patrol.
The soul patrol. (CHUCKLES)
Glenn Baker,
flight service manager for United Airlines.
You could be in Dallas or Miami, walking through the concourse.
If you saw one of your own in uniform...
There's another brother flight attendant or a sister
coming this way, had never seen each other in our lives,
we were speaking and acknowledging each other.
You get the nod and keep right on walking.
-SPIKE: Got love, huh? -You got love.
Made you feel at home.
My name is LaChanze Sapp-Gooding,
and I'm an actor.
SPIKE: Tell us about your husband,
the beloved Calvin Gooding.
How'd you guys first meet?
We met at a restaurant.
You remember the old B. Smith's on Eighth Avenue
with the glass windows? It was Memorial Day weekend.
I was hanging out with my girlfriend.
Actually, I said...
-(SPIKE LAUGHING) -"Who is that?" (LAUGHS)
But he came over to the table and, um, introduced himself
and said to me-- asked me a question, he said,
"Do you get your hair cut at Scissors Hair Salon?"
I said, "Yeah."
He said, "I've been wanting to meet you for two years.
Your picture is right in front of where I sit.
Here's my card."
You know, finance brother gave me his card.
I was like, "Oh, okay."
And then, um, he said, "I'd love to take you out
for a scoop of ice cream, a trip to the moon,
anything you want."
And I said, "Okay, Calvin. I think I'll take all three."
So she was like, "You're going to call him?"
I was like, "No, girl. I'm not calling him. I don't know that brother."
I called him that same night. (LAUGHS)
-SPIKE: The same night? -Same night I called him.
SPIKE: But today they'd say you were thirsty.
-(SPIKE LAUGHING) -I was a little thirsty.
He said, "Some friends of mine and I are going away
for the weekend.
Would you like to join us up in Martha's Vineyard?"
I was like, "I'm going to the Vineyard."
My girlfriends were like, "You don't know him.
You are traveling away for the weekend.
He could be an ax murderer."
I said, "I am going to the Vineyard with this brother."
SPIKE: Well, how soon was that after the phone call?
That was six weeks after the phone call.
SPIKE: Oh, thank you. You weren't that thirsty.
-No, I wasn't that thirsty. -That's the power move.
SPIKE: "Would you like to accompany to Martha's Vineyard?"
-(SPIKE LAUGHING) -It was-- (LAUGHS) Yes, it was.
-It was a big ole power move. -SPIKE: That's the power move!
"Would you like to--
-Have you ever been to Martha's Vineyard before?" -(BOTH LAUGHING)
LACHANZE SAPP-GOODING: We got married in '98,
and I got pregnant in '99.
My name is Paul Washington.
I'm a captain in the New York City Fire Department,
Engine 234, which is in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
And I'm a former president of the Vulcan Society,
New York City's Black firefighters.
Man named Wesley Williams,
he was the fourth Black firefighter
in New York City history, and he was the first
Black firefighter to rise up through the ranks,
he became a lieutenant, captain, a chief.
He was the first Black fire chief in the country.
He founded the organization in 1940.
The first thing we had to do as an organization
was to fight against a practice called the Black beds.
Every firehouse has a room where they have, uh, a bunch of bunks.
Anybody can sleep in any bed.
However, if you were Black,
you had to sleep in one particular bed.
And it was always the worst bed,
it was always the bed by the bathroom.
So that was our first fight,
was to fight against this Black beds practice.
My name is Brenda Berkman.
I'm a retired New York City fire captain.
I brought the lawsuit that got the first women hired
as New York City firefighters,
and I got promoted to lieutenant and then captain,
and I was a responder on 9/11.
If you happened to have been born a woman,
it didn't matter if you were an Olympic-caliber athlete
or had the title of strongest woman in the world,
you could not even apply
to become a New York City firefighter.
So, that changed in 1977.
SPIKE: Hmm.
And the only reason it changed was because
Title Seven of the 1964 Civil Rights Act
made it illegal for states and municipalities
to discriminate against people on the basis of gender.
All we're asking for is a chance to prove that we can do the job,
and I think we're gonna be able to do that.
If I was sitting in the kitchen of my firehouse
and somebody came in five-foot-four, 110 pounds,
with a helmet on, turnout coat, boots,
and the tools and said, "I'm a firefighter,"
we would look at that person that's five-four, 110 pounds,
as a circus freak.
As a circus freak. That's not a firefighter.
So what do they do?
They change the physical portion of the firefighter exam
to make it harder to pass.
It's kind of strange, though, that the first time
that they administer, uh, a test which women are allowed to take,
it is the hardest physical examination given
in the recent history of the New York City Fire Department.
REPORTER: There is not a single female firefighter
in the New York City Fire Department.
Female applicants tried but failed to pass
a tough physical exam last given four years ago.
The last test they gave in 1977
was the hardest physical they ever gave
because it was the first year they let women take the test.
So I think they, um, you know, actually went out of their way
to make the physical test very difficult
just in order to eliminate women.
And so I filed a lawsuit.
Now at the time, I was the only person
to challenge the exam.
When I won my lawsuit five years later--
-SPIKE: Five years later? -BRENDA BERKMAN: Five years later.
Other women who had taken the written exam came forward.
My name is Ella McNair, and I became the first
African American female lieutenant in the history
of the New York City Fire Department
in January of 2002.
Me being a firefighter in the city of New York
wasn't really just for me.
It was for those that looked like me,
that aspired to be a firefighter.
And if they see me, that would give them some hope
to know that they can do it also.
My name is Harriett Duren.
I'm a retired firefighter
from the fire department in New York.
This was probably one of the hardest things I ever did
in my life because I wasn't exactly, uh, an athletic person.
I was more like the young lady who didn't want to get her--
sweat her hair, get her nails messed up.
The hardest part is going up the stairs
with the 60-pound hose on your back.
My name is Regina Wilson. I'm a firefighter
for the fire department of New York.
I work at Engine 219 in Brooklyn, New York.
It took me out of my comfort zone.
Um, I was used to wearing skirts and suits and heels to work.
Then I'm breaking down doors and cutting roofs.
Sometimes you want to try yourself, the limits,
to see what you can do,
and so I stepped out of my comfort zone.
-SPIKE: Hmm. -REGINA WILSON: I decided
to try taking the test.
And in order to even be able to take the physical,
I, um, I started training for a whole year before
with a bodybuilder.
And there were about 50 of us that passed the new test,
which was based on incumbent male firefighters,
guys who were actually doing the job.
And we passed that test. Fifty of us passed that test.
And they didn't expect 50 women
to be able to pass that test, believe me.
SPIKE: So before your class,
there had never been a Black woman
-in the fire department? -Never.
I am Anna Schermerhorn-Collins.
I was a first responder on September 11th,
assigned to Ladder Company 9.
I was after the lawsuit women. Um, in fact,
up to that point, the only women on the job
were the women who were the original women hired.
And then I became the second woman
after the first group of women to be hired by the FDNY.
From the original women that came on the job
from a lawsuit in '82, I was the first
African American female firefighter hired in 15 years.
I'm Joe Pfeifer.
I retired from the New York City Fire Department
as their chief of counterterrorism
and emergency preparedness.
In over 37-year career,
I've gone to some of the largest fires and emergencies
in the department's history.
In 1993, when we... had the first bombing of the--
of the Trade Center, um, it shocked all of us.
It was Friday, February 26.
I can tell you it was a cold, cold day.
There was snow on the ground.
-(SIREN WAILING) -NEWS ANCHOR 1: A possible bomb explodes
under the towering World Trade Center in New York.
The explosion was centered, we believe,
about three to four levels below the ground in the garage...
and near the PATH train station.
My name is Hal Sherman.
From 1982 until 2002,
I worked for the New York City Police Department.
For 15 of those 20 years, I worked in the crime scene unit.
The bomb went off in the basement of the Trade Center.
They were attempting to knock over
the Trade Center by blowing up some of the, uh, piers,
the holding in the building in place.
The walls just blew in
and every-- everything went blank after that.
Walls collapsed, furniture's down.
It's a-- It's a mess downstairs.
Nineteen-ninety-three bombing, Windows had down at that garage,
they had a loading dock and they had refrigeration there.
They lost their receiving clerk.
RALPH PENZA: At one point today,
I asked Port Authority officials if it was true
that in the mid '80s, they had considered
the possibility that a car bomb could be planted in the garage.
Oh, sure, I-- I don't think that anybody...
um, anticipated the magnitude of this kind of a-- of a blast.
In '93, he was working for Cantor Fitzgerald.
Calvin was on the 104th floor.
Calvin was in the tower, and he heard the bombing.
And they made them all leave, they just, like--
just made them all get out of the building.
-(WHIMPERING) -Let's go get oxygen.
NEWS ANCHOR 2: Stairwells became smokestacks.
Clouds of soot billowed up the stairs
to the very top of the 110-story office tower.
The staircases in the World Trade Center
were extremely narrow.
In fact, if you had to walk down the stairs,
like, somebody coming up and somebody going down,
you had to turn sideways.
The stairway was packed.
We couldn't move forward or backwards.
There was smoke and then the lights went out
and I'd say about 70 floors, we had no lights.
We managed to get down to, I guess, about the third floor
and the door was locked.
The emergency door was locked, we couldn't get out.
REPORTER: You've had evacuation drills, procedures?
They take you out into the lobby. They look at you.
They tell you, "Oh, you know, in case of a fire,
come out to the lobby and wait for further instructions."
There are no further instructions,
that thing was a total waste of time.
All the procedures that they put in place were useless.
NEWS ANCHOR 3: A van, authorities believe the explosive was in one,
possibly left near a ramp
of the underground garage. And some speculate
a second vehicle may have been used for getaway.
It was like, uh, the size of a foo-- half a football field
that was wide open and you could see
multiple stories below grade.
It was a very powerful bomb.
We started traveling down
each level, looking for survivors,
and every firefighter has a light on their helmet. Okay?
So, I'm crawling around and the lieutenant
is on the opposite end in this big area,
and all of a sudden my light goes out,
and it's pitch dark.
I have a tool, I had a hook.
So, you put that in front of you
and you kinda guide yourself like blind people do.
And all of a sudden, my hook went down into something
and I'm kind of, like, losing it.
So the lieutenant said,
"Stay where you are, stay where you are."
And he was able to come over to me because he had a hand light,
and we threw something down into this hole.
We never heard it end. It was like an abyss.
Because when the truck in the garage blew up,
instead of going up, it went down,
and it blew down to basement number 6.
NEWS ANCHOR 4: It was investigators down in the rubble
who uncovered the key evidence, a small piece of a yellow van,
which had essentially been blown to bits.
There was a pretty mangled piece of metal,
which I didn't really know
the significance at that given time,
when I was told that it was actually part of the rail
from the Ryder truck.
We put it actually in a stretcher,
people thought it was a body, and brought that piece of rail
to the NYPD lab, where the VIN was raised by two criminalists.
They applied acid to it.
And that was how they really got the investigation rolling
because they were able to identify the vehicle
and knew that it had been rented.
NEWS ANCHOR 4: From there, it took only hours
to trace the number
to a van rented from Ryder Rental in New Jersey.
Salameh Mohammed had rented the car there
a week ago Tuesday,
and reported it stolen on the very day of the blast.
Ironically, this morning,
when he came back to the rental car company
to collect his 400-dollar deposit for the car,
police made the arrest.
REPORTER: After only four days of deliberations,
the five-month trial ended.
The jury found Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad,
Mahmud Abouhalima, and Ahmed Ajaj
guilty on all counts,
including conspiracy, use of explosives, and assault
in connection with the bombing
that killed six people, injured a thousand more.
The guy who was convicted, he said, "We'll be back,
you know, those towers are gonna fall."
So they were closed for three years
and Windows was renovated.
Windows was the restaurant.
Then there was Cellar In The Sky.
Then there was The Greatest Bar on Earth.
Well, The Greatest Bar on Earth is named that way
because that's what it is.
It's a bar that has three bars...
On two floors, the 106th, the 107th floor.
I'm Bill Brinnier, and I am an architect.
Frank De Martini was my best friend.
I met him at Pratt when I first got here.
SPIKE: You guys were at Pratt together?
BILL BRINNIER: We went to Pratt together.
We sat for the architects' exam together.
I mean, we did ever-- we were partners
renovating brownstones around here.
We used to park our motorcycles on the fifth floor here.
-We-- -SPIKE: (YELLING) This building?
This building. We parked upstairs.
SPIKE: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!
-(CHUCKLES) Is that amazing? -SPIKE: So, you parked your motorcycles
in this building we're at,
-before I bought it? -Yup.
Leslie Robertson, who was one of the lead engineers
on the design of the building, and his firm had the contract
to, um, maintain the structure.
They were looking for an architect member
of the damage assessment team after that bombing,
and Frank said, "What the hell, I'm gonna go apply."
They liked him, they gave him the job.
My name is Cheryl Tyler.
Former Secret Service agent. First African American female
assigned to a presidential detail.
Proud Black woman.
Graduate of Spelman College, class of 1979.
People were on guard.
People were thinking...
that they would try an attack again
or do something else again very quickly.
I don't think America...
(SMACKS LIPS) ...was prepared...
for something like this to happen in our country.
Initially, when it happened, I mean, you know,
domestic terrorism was somewhat new at that point.
So, it wasn't like, "Oh, this is gonna be a repetition,
that, you know, we're gonna have this going on and on."
FEMA had put out
a terrorism training handbook for firefighters.
FEMA had this picture on the-- on the front
of that training handbook that had the drawing
of the Twin Towers with a target on the front of it.
I think after '93, the bombings...
we became a little, um, too overconfident.
The night before, Celia was cranky, so cranky.
She wouldn't sleep.
And, um, I was so tired 'cause I was so pregnant.
He said, "I'll take care of Celia."
So he got up and he was walking her around the apartment,
and he finally was able to get her to relax.
And he would do this, this was his ritual.
He would just walk her around the apartment,
sometimes he would sing to her,
he would just walk her, just walk.
Fast walking too. And then, um... it got quiet.
And I woke up at about 4:00, 4:30 in the morning
and I went into her room and there he was
laying on the floor on her carpet
with her on his chest asleep, and they were both sound asleep.
And I said-- I looked at them, and I was like, "You know what?
They look so peaceful. I'mma leave them there."
I wasn't gonna wake them up.
So I left them there and then when it was time for him
to leave for work, I went in and got him up and said,
"Babe, you gotta get ready for work."
He had bought all these really nice shirts and pants,
and I said, "My husband is fine."
And I was thinking that when he walked out the door.
SPIKE: Can you say that a little louder, please? Say it.
I said, my husband is fine...
(LAUGHS)
...when he walked out the door because he looked so good.
Well, September 11th was an absolutely beautiful day.
It was one of the most beautiful days of the year.
It was a beautiful day.
It was a beautiful, beautiful late summer day.
Beautiful...
uh, summer day.
The sun is out, the sky is blue. There's not a cloud in the sky.
It was pristine clear.
It was a bright, sunny day.
Blue skies. Was amazing. Like, it was a beautiful day.
It was this beautiful fall day.
The most beautiful fall day
that you can imagine in New York City.
It was a beautiful morning.
-It was a beautiful day. -Beautiful sunny day.
Well, I remember it was a sunny day.
The most glorious day.
It was such a beautiful September day in New York City,
the sky was blue, barely a cloud.
Ah, it was beautiful out. It was clear.
It was so beautiful. There was no clouds.
It was a wonderful day.
It was a beautiful day. It was clear.
-Most beautiful morning. -It was perfect.
It couldn't have been any more beautiful.
And it was warm.
And of course, 9/11 was one of the most beautiful days
God had ever created.
Uh, so, it was just clear.
REPORTER 1: You're at 82 degrees.
REPORTER 2: It's gonna be a beautiful day today, sunshine throughout,
low humidity.
Really a splendid September day,
the afternoon temperature about 80 degrees.
A relative humidity of 70 percent.
Sixty-six in Newark, 64 degrees in Bridgeport,
Sixty-seven in Midtown and heading for 80.
LEE HARRIS: It's Tuesday, September 11th. I'm Lee Harris.
It's primary day, and the polls are open in New York City.
REPORTER 3: Sunshine today, the high 80, going down to 60 tonight.
My name is Daphne Carlisle,
and I'm a survivor of 9/11.
I was in Tower 1 on the 82nd floor.
I was the office manager
for New York and New Jersey Port Authority.
I got to work, like, about 15 minutes early.
That's a miracle, you know.
And downstairs, when you go into the World Trade Center,
there are, like, three elevators.
You have to wait at least
two times before you can get on one elevator, and there's three of them.
So, there wasn't all that many people there,
I was like, "Wow."
It-- It wasn't even that early in the morning,
so I was like, "Where is everybody at?"
I had an appointment on September 11th
to have my eyeglasses fixed.
But as I got to the World Trade Center that morning,
it was just a few minutes past eight o'clock, 8:00 a.m.,
I thought, "I'll get my glasses fixed now, drop them off,
and then I'll go to work so I'll save a little time later
and not have to leave the kitchen
at 12 o'clock in the afternoon."
My name is William Rodriguez.
I was an employee of the World Trade Center for 20 years.
I was the person in charge of cleaning
the North Tower stairwells.
I woke up late and I said, "You know what?
I'm gonna take a sick day, I'm not gonna go to work."
And I decided to call my supervisor,
Anthony Saltalamacchia, and I said,
"Anthony, put down a sick day. I'm not going to work."
Well, he actually called me and said, you know,
he was gonna be late or he wasn't gonna come in,
I said, "No, no, no. You have to come in here
because, you know, this has to get done."
-And he went crazy. He said, "No, you're crazy!" -(SPIKE CHUCKLES)
"You gotta come to work."
This has to get done. I was like, "And I'm not,
you know, letting anybody else do it besides you."
He said, "Will, if you don't come,
nobody wants to do your job,
people will punch out their cards and leave."
It was because I was the person in charge of cleaning
a hundred and ten flights of stairs.
-One person. Humanly impossible. -SPIKE: Whoa.
-Hold up. Hold up. -Yes.
-SPIKE: What tower was this? -North Tower. I was the--
-SPIKE: How many flights? -Hundred and ten flights.
-SPIKE: And what's your job? -Cleaning them all.
My name is David Paterson.
I was the New York State Senator in Harlem
and became the 55th governor of New York state.
September 11th, 2001, was primary day.
The Democratic primary for mayor.
September 11th, 2001, I was in Brooklyn
on Fulton Street, campaigning for Fernando Ferrer
to be the mayor of New York.
We were going to elect the first Latinx mayor of New York.
I'm a proud Democrat.
And I went to vote.
Steve Buscemi, actor.
I was supposed to be at the Toronto Film Festival.
They wanted me to travel on the tenth,
but if you remember, the 11th was primary day,
and I really wanted to vote.
So, I said, "You know what? I will vote
really early in the morning, I'll get on the first flight,
and I'll be in Toronto by 10:00 a.m."
I was going to vote. I made enough time
to get out of my apartment, go vote, and hop on the train
to head to Kennedy Airport for my Flight 19 to Los Angeles.
GÉDÉON NAUDET: My name is Gédéon Naudet,
and I'm a documentary filmmaker.
JULES NAUDET: And I'm Jules Naudet.
I'm also a documentary filmmaker and his little brother.
We, one day, decided, I said,
"Why don't we do something on the fire department?"
And, you know, the only way we thought
about doing it is following a young rookie firefighter
on his nine-month probationary period.
What's your first name?
-Tony. -Tony? All right.
JULES: Someone who's thrown there, doesn't have any family members,
doesn't know anything about the job,
and suddenly, through his eyes,
so the audience would discover what it-- what it means.
That sense of brotherhood, of courage,
of family, and all that.
We were finishing
a 24-hour shift with the probie as usual,
whenever he was on, we were on.
And I think at about 8:15 in the morning,
uh, we receive a call, usual alarm,
you know, the bell rings,
and all it says is "odor of gas."
I go on the chief's car. I don't see Gédéon,
but I know he's probably in the engine
so we're never together at the fire scenes,
and arrive at a corner, middle of the street, normal,
you know, there's a couple of other fire trucks there.
I think 8 truck is there, and, you know,
we're milling around, there is a small odor of gas,
Chief Pfeifer, which I, you know, spent already a lot of time with,
is, you know, checking the, uh, the grades outside
and, yes, there was a little bit.
Connor's missed call.
Routine-- really normal routine call.
(GAS DETECTOR WHIRRING)
That morning...
at 8:46...
I was in the street at an odor of gas,
and we were about a dozen blocks away
from the World Trade Center.
And we heard a loud noise of jet engines.
And this plane at a low altitude raced past us.
(JET ENGINES ROARING)
-FIREFIGHTER: Holy shit. -FIREFIGHTER 2: Shit.
(EXPLOSION)
And as I'm sitting in the...
ophthalmologist chair,
I felt-- I felt something.
I'm Michael Benfante,
and I'm a September 11th Tower 1 survivor.
I'm thrown off balance, and I'm yelling
because I'm hearing everybody scream and dive under desks
and I'm like, "What's the commotion?"
I'm yelling at them even though I'm feeling it myself.
Boom!
And the building, like, sways, so we went like this.
And I could see debris and flames
shooting out from above.
DAPHNE CARLISLE: So my co-worker said, "What do you think we should do?"
I said, "I don't know what you gonna do, but I'm leaving."
I'm not looking for nothing, I'm just leaving.
I was at my place,
84 West Broadway
between Chambers and Warren Street.
-SPIKE: Ooh, you're close. -I was right there.
It knocked the lamp off my side table.
I'm Tonya Lewis-Lee, producer and filmmaker.
The news had been on, and I wasn't paying attention to it.
And then all of a sudden,
there was a shot of the World Trade Center...
and it was on fire.
And for a second, I thought some--
like, I had accidentally changed the channel and it was a movie.
And Jackson and I were sort of hanging out in the bedroom,
getting ready to get him ready for school.
SATCHEL LEE: My name is Satchel Lee, and I'm an artist and creative.
JACKSON LEE: My name is Jackson Lee.
I'm a sneaker designer and a filmmaker.
And I didn't really understand what was going on, obviously.
I'm four years old. And she saw that there was
flames coming out of a building
and she asked me, like, what movie am I watching.
It looked like a movie.
Like something out of The Towering Inferno, like a movie.
It-- It was like a movie, man. Pop, pop, bam!
Something like out of, uh, a Bruce Willis Die Hard movie.
-It's like it was in a movie. -It's like in the movie.
Like in the movies, when you run for your life,
when there's a big thing following you,
-that's what we did. -I remember my father saying
he thought he was watching a movie.
Is this a real thing? Or is this like a movie?
Is this-- Is this a movie?
I said, "Are you sure it's not a-- some type of a movie?"
It felt like watching a movie.
I thought I was watching Independence Day.
Did you see the film Independence Day?
They got it right. They got it right.
That's exactly what it was like.
I always see these in the TV, movies, you know, programs,
but never seen the real life.
It looked like a war movie scene.
And I'm thinking, "I'm in a movie set."
-We thought it was a movie. -It feels like a bad dream or something.
-It just felt like a dream. -It's-- It's a nightmare.
A nightmare. A bad movie.
On September 9th...
I took an early morning United flight
from JFK, New York, to LAX, Los Angeles.
I had to meet with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I was trying to convince him to play Max Schmeling.
I was working on a film called Save Us, Joe Louis.
And I co-wrote it with the legendary Budd Schulberg.
Budd Schulberg of What makes Sammy Run?
Budd Schulberg that won an Oscar
for his script, uh...
On The Waterfront,
and followed that with another of my favorite films,
A Face in the Crowd.
On the morning of September 11th...
I was asleep at the Mondrian Hotel,
and the phone rang.
I called you and we're talking,
and you're like, "What happened?"
And it was my wife, Tonya,
telling me to turn on the television.
BUSTA RHYMES: DJ Scratch blew my phone up
every second until I answered my phone to tell me,
"You better get the fuck outta your house right now."
At 9:14 a.m., I received a phone call.
-My telephone rings. -Telephone rings.
-My phone rang. -My son called me.
-Charles called me. -I got a call.
-I got a call from my mother. -I got a phone call.
-I got a phone call. -I got a phone call.
Called me, and say, "Huntley, wake up."
I was actually asleep.
My... wife and I were asleep.
And the phone woke me up.
I was awakened by a phone call from my sister-in-law.
She calls me, she says, "Turn on the TV."
And I said, "Well, what channel?"
"Any channel, just turn on your television!"
Rochelle called me.
She said, "Turn on the TV."
"Something terrible has just happened in New York."
I turned the TV on.
I got one of those calls of "turn on the TV."
Turned on the television.
-Turned on the TV. -And I turned on the TV.
I turned on the TV set.
Then we put on the TV.
And I turned on the news.
I sit in front of the TV like millions of other people.
She said, "Turn on your TV,
a plane just flew into the World Trade Center."
I was like, "Get the fuck outta here."
The first report was that a small plane had hit.
Well, we understand that there has been a plane crash
on the, uh, Southern tip of Manhattan.
My first instinct was...
this has got to be some small plane that got lost,
inadvertently flew into the Twin Towers.
Like a Cessna or something like that.
Small plane, single engine plane.
A small two-seater or a four-seater or whatever.
I thought it was somebody that went off course.
Some idiot in a small plane.
Maybe a plane flying by that might've just accidentally
crashed into the towers.
We sort of all assumed initially that it was an accident.
We thought it was an accident.
Because of this thing that had happened
so many years ago before I was born,
of a B-25 bomber that flew into the Empire State Building.
REPORTER: A Mitchell bomber crashed into the 78th and 79th stories
at a speed of about 200 miles an hour.
Thirteen lives, in addition to those of the crew of three,
were lost instantly.
(SCOFFS) I knew it was no accident.
One of my first transmissions...
was that the plane was aiming for the building.
-(POLICE SIREN BLARING) -JOSEPH PFEIFER:
JULES: In less than three minutes,
we're, um, under the awning of One World Trade Center,
the North Tower. I get out, Chief Pfeifer gets out,
he puts his bunker gear,
and I remember asking him if I could go in with him,
-and he says yeah. -JOSEPH: Yeah. You stay with me.
JULES: We go in.
SPIKE: Were you scared at that point?
Not really.
At that time, I don't--
It's almost like I don't think it's real.
The moment where it hits me
is when I come in the revolving door
and there is two people who are on fire
and clearly dying and literally in front of me.
I chose not to film the dead and the dying.
-That was-- -SPIKE: Tell me why.
I think I was protecting myself. It was so horrible
that I wanted not only to protect myself,
but I thought no one should see this.
My name is Jack. I was up on the 73rd floor
when the explosion took place. Some of us walked over
to the window just to look up, to see what happened
in the One World Trade.
DISPATCHER: (OVER RADIO)
On the, um, loudspeaker again, and they said,
"Well, everything is okay now
because this is in One World Trade,
not Two World Trade."
I was in Two World Trade at the time.
-(SIREN WAILING) -And they said,
"This building is completely secure.
Not to worry."
My name is Sixto Ramos, actor.
I lived with my cousin, Rosie Perez.
I'm on the third floor when somebody calls me and said,
"Did you hear that?" I go, "What? Did I hear what?"
I hear Rosie screaming downstairs. (SCREAMS)
I can hear Sixto running down the stairs
like dun-dun-dun-dun-dun,
screaming, "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!"
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
So I started screaming. "Oh my God! Oh my God!
Oh my God!" And we just hold each other
and we're both jumping up and down screaming.
"Oh my God. Oh my God."
"Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God."
So I said, "Turn on the news." We turned on the news,
and we couldn't believe it.
(NERVOUS CROWD CHATTER)
If it was a mistake, it probably would have swerved.
Yeah. After they were trying to get on with it,
they would have teared the building away.
-They meant to do that. -For real.
That wasn't no-- that was no coincidental shit either.
(ANXIOUS CHATTER)
(MULTIPLE SIRENS WAILING)
So we got ourselves together and we started going downstairs,
and my daughter called me. She's like, says, "Mom."
-SPIKE: On your cell phone? -Yeah. On my cell phone.
SPIKE: Right.
And she called me, and she says, "Mom, what're you doing?"
I said, "Well, I'm going down the stairs, I'll be out in a minute."
My name is Mark Desire. I'm an assistant director
for the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
I've worked there for over 23 years.
I was a part of a crime scene reconstruction team.
We have vehicles, but you don't self-deploy.
-You just don't head out, right? -SPIKE: Right.
You get orders and go out, so...
The side door to the crime lab burst open,
and our team lead, Ralph,
our team lead came in and said, "We gotta go."
-(SIREN WAILING DISTANTLY) -(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
REPORTER: Smoke is pouring out.
-They haven't found nobody yet. -Nobody handled it yet?
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JOSEPH: And I can remember one lieutenant coming up to me,
not saying a word,
and we looked at each other,
wondering if we were both going to be okay.
And then I gave that lieutenant a...
(SHAKILY) I gave him the orders to go up...
to evacuate the building.
And that said lieutenant turned around
and took his firefighters.
That was the last time I saw my brother Kevin.
I could tell you that...
every firefighter,
every police officer, every paramedic,
every rescuer that went into the building that day...
even though it-- it's our job,
they-- they saw the burning towers...
and they made a personal decision to go in.
(MULTIPLE SIRENS BLARING)
I watched firefighters and emergency service unit
run into the building and just think, "Wow, you're gonna--"
I heard them get their instructions.
"We're gonna climb 80 stories and start to carry people out."
I'm like, "Eighty stories." I'm like, "Wow."
REPORTER: There are fire crews just screaming into this area
from every conceivable direction.
(FIREFIGHTERS CLAMORING)
My name is Troy Owens.
I am a retired New York City firefighter.
I was a first responder at 9/11
and I was assigned to a firehouse in Red Hook,
Engine 279, ladder 131.
When the buildings got hit, the tour had just began.
One of the guys was like, "I'm surprised we're not going to that,"
because we're right on the other side of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.
You turn on the TV where you are,
and we're talking, and you said...
The second plane hit the tower.
And I was like "No!"
(AIRPLANE ENGINE ROARING)
I turned my head, and I actually saw another plane coming.
-SPIKE: You saw it? -We saw it.
-SPIKE: On TV or-- or-- -I saw it in real time.
(AIRPLANE ENGINE ROARING)
(EXPLOSION)
BYSTANDER: Oh, man. Another one.
(CRASHING EXPLOSION)
(BLASTING AND CRACKING)
-BYSTANDER 1: Oh my God! -BYSTANDER 2: Holy shit.
BYSTANDER 3: Holy shit.
(CROWD CLAMORING)
(TIRES SCREECHING)
What next? Oh my God...
(SIREN WAILING DISTANTLY)
(CROWD CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY)
We were looking at each other like,
-"What the hell just happened?" -And I said,
"What's going to happen? Are we being invaded?"
-And he said, "Yes!" -"Remember what you told me?
You said, when there's, like, martial law
and people-- chaotic shit, they start raping women
and doing stuff like that.
So I said, "Let me go get my kids."
And I said, "No! Don't leave me here by myself."
He says, "You got the dogs."
I said, "The fuck are the dogs gonna do?"
So I said, "I'll be back. Hold on."
"I'm gonna go get a gun. I'm gonna go get a gun."
"So if a towelhead comes in here--"
I said, "You can't call them towelheads, that's racist."
He goes, "We're under attack!
Who the hell cares?"
This is an attack. We're under attack.
-My city was under attack. -This is terrorism.
A terrorist attack,
I can't tell you anything more than that.
I saw the plane hit the building.
-CAMERAPERSON: A second plane hit? -A second plane hit.
A whole 'nother plane just hit, the engine just fell over there.
-(SIRENS WAILING DISTANTLY) -(CROWD CHATTERING)
(CAR HORN HONKING)
My name is Laura Coates.
I'm a senior legal analyst for CNN and an anchor.
So, my oldest sister, Tracey--
-SPIKE: What's her name? -Tracey.
She was a flight attendant for United Airlines.
-She was-- -SPIKE: Where'd she fly out of? New York?
LAURA COATES: She flew out of Boston to LA,
and her flight was the one that crashed
into the Twin Towers.
But she didn't get on the flight that day
because her baby sister, me,
needed someone to help her drive to LA.
Let me take Laura and drive her cross country,
and we'll go and start her first day of work,
which is 9/11.
And her flight crew, the pilot,
the flight attendants, everyone else
that she'd flown with for the whole month--
that was her assignment for that month--
was that flight. I can't imagine what my life
would have been like had she been on that flight.
I think she thinks about that...
maybe more than she wants to admit.
SPIKE: So you saved your sister's life.
LAURA: I think destiny and fate saved her life.
Gentlemen, this is a...
a difficult moment for America. I, um...
Unfortunately, we'll be going back
to Washington after my remarks.
Today, we've had a national tragedy.
Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center
in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.
My name is Renita Edmond,
and I am an ambassador here
at the Empire State Building for the last 22 years.
We thought when it hit the Twin Towers
that we were the next target.
So that's why everybody had to leave.
I actually thought it was the end of the world.
LEE HARRIS: 1010 WINS reporter Steve Torre
is at the Empire State Building for us.
Steve, what's going on there?
STEVE TORRE: All right, Lee, as soon as we got here,
we received word that once the explosions happened
at the Trade Center,
the Empire State Building was quickly evacuated.
SPIKE: The thought was Empire State Building is next, huh?
The Empire State Building was the next target.
And that's what we thought. We were tall,
and so were the Twin Towers.
My name is Kerwin Devonish, born in Barbados,
live in New York, and I am a cinematographer.
I grabbed the camera and ran outside.
And as I turn the corner and I look up,
I see a hole in the building.
It just kept burning.
-(SIRENS BLARING) -All of a sudden, I heard all the fire trucks going,
and I started walking down while everyone was walking up.
I'm Barry Alexander Brown, director and film editor.
Threw my rollerblades on. First I shot on 6th Avenue,
just a shot, "Oh, look at this."
And then I went all the way over to the West Side Highway
where there was just thousands
and thousands and thousands of people walking up.
-(SIRENS WAILING DISTANTLY) -(NERVOUS CROWD CHATTER)
DRIVER: (OVER LOUDSPEAKER) Everybody get away from the truck.
-(CROWD CHATTER) -(SIREN BLARING)
SPIKE: Arnold Schwarzenegger's office called me and said,
"Do you still wanna have the breakfast meeting
with Arnold?" I said yes.
We had our meeting. None of us were thinking about...
the script, the film, Save Us, Joe Lewis.
We were looking at the TV.
BRYANT GUMBLE: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
We're looking at a live picture from Washington,
and there is smoke pouring out of the Pentagon.
It would appear that there has been
another major explosion,
this one in the nation's capital.
DAN RATHER: Apparently, a plane and or a helicopter
was flown into the Pentagon, but that's not been confirmed.
The police now have closed down the Capitol,
the House and Senate. They have closed down
the Justice Department, the World Bank has been emptied.
My name is John Coyle.
I'm a retired FDNY lieutenant.
This one thing we had learned
in, uh, fire marshal school about, uh, terrorist attacks,
is there are frequently a secondary device
to, uh, kill the first responders.
I thought it was a whole elaborate scheme,
that there were gonna be secondary devices,
meaning they put bombs in the garbage cans or mailboxes.
My understanding is that the Washington Monument's been hit,
that some of our embassies have been hit.
And then they blew up the stock exchange,
and my building is right next to the--
-CAMERAPERSON: On Wall Street? -Yeah.
And now I hear somebody said at the news
that they said they're going to do it every half hour.
I called President Bush, and I got him right away.
Uh, and I asked him to shut down the airspace
because we didn't know what might happen next.
PETER JENNINGS: All federal buildings in Washington
have now been evacuated.
All aircraft in the skies over the United States
have been ordered to land at the nearest airport.
REPORTER: At Kennedy Airport, tens of thousands
of air travelers were told, "You will not fly today."
The terminals that serve American Airlines and United,
the two airlines targeted by terrorism, were closed.
What's going to happen for you now?
I don't know, we're trying to find some place to stay over.
We can't get in touch with anyone.
REPORTER: At LaGuardia Airport, passengers were evacuated.
And with no place to stand, they lined the access roads,
waiting for information or transportation home.
There was announcements to evacuate the terminal.
I kept on going.
Went down to our inflight office and saw our operations manager
and asked him, I said,
"Tell me what happened." He said, "Go home."
I said, "You gotta tell me what happened.
Was it one of ours?" He says, "Yes.
And one of ours is still missing."
Last we heard, everything was grounded.
But then there were reports that there was a rogue aircraft
-in the sky. -DAN RATHER: Another aircraft
has been hijacked in the Eastern Corridor.
BRIAN WILSON: Police officers here are saying that they believe
there is a hijacked plane now headed toward Washington.
SPIKE: People were thinking for years that it was going to the White House,
but it was going to the Capitol Building, right?
Correct. That's what I thought.
SPIKE: And where do you think they were headed?
Based on the information that was coming out...
they were headed to the Capitol.
SPIKE: Why the Capitol Building?
The White House, yes, is where
the leader of the free world lives.
The US Capitol is where all the decisions and power is.
And I'm not diluting the fact that if you
tried to kill the president of the United States,
that that isn't an impact or that doesn't send
a clear message. It does.
But when you take out
the legislative, executive branches
of the United States government, you've shut us down.
The Capitol is the symbol of the United States,
not the White House. The dome.
NEWS ANCHOR 5: United Airlines is confirming that its Flight 93,
that's a Boeing 757,
it said is deeply concerned about that flight right now.
They confirmed that it was a United Aircraft,
-and that was Flight 93. -Saw some flight attendants too
who were arriving for work as well, that had cars.
I'm like, "Hey, we're going to Rochelle's house
because that's where we can all bunker down." So we did.
She came out to greet us, face beet red,
snot and tears all over her face.
So when my friends arrived, um...
the first thing I said to them was,
"There's another plane in the sky, and it's one of ours".
CEECEE LYLES: Baby, you have to listen to me carefully.
I'm on a plane that's been hijacked.
I'm on the plane, I'm calling from the plane.
I want to tell you I love you.
Please tell my children that I love them very much.
And I'm so sorry they... Um, I don't know what to say.
There's three guys, they've hijacked the plane.
I'm trying to be calm, we're turned around,
and I've heard that there's planes
that have been thrown into the World Trade Center.
I hope to be able to see your face again, baby.
I love you. Bye.
I didn't know who or what was coming.
That's why I wanted to get out of the city
and get to, like, a more rural place.
So then I said, "You know what? We're gonna leave."
I looked at my mom and I said,
"I'm so scared, my bones are shaking."
And I said, "Oh, baby." Because that was the moment
that I realized that he was clocking everything too.
And right before we're getting ready to leave the house,
I said, "What about the hamster?"
So my mom's like, "Oh, shit."
Oh, okay. I ran back upstairs to grab Sonic.
MICHELLE LAMPKIN: Michelle Lampkin.
-ASHLEY LAMPKIN: Ashley Lampkin. -NAOMI LAMPKIN: Naomi Lampkin.
We ran to our manager's office and we were like,
"Can we leave?" And our manager said,
"Well, if you leave, today will be your last day."
So I said, "Okay, today's my last day."
We took off, we took off running straight to the school.
Um, we got to the school, and it was madness in there.
My name is Roy Isidro Vlcek.
I'm a native New Yorker, and I'm a documentary filmmaker.
I was at P.S. 234.
It was the third day of second grade.
SPIKE: Where is P.S. 234?
ROY VLECK: P.S. 234 is an elementary school
on Chamber Street and Greenwich Avenue in Tribeca.
We could hear people screaming outside,
we could hear more sirens than you ever could imagine.
Anna Switzer, our principal, is making
crackling announcements over the speaker system.
I remember being in the classroom
and, like, hearing people's names being called
over the loudspeaker.
"Can Ashley Lampkin come downstairs immediately?
-Immediately." -And then my name was called.
They called Ashley and they told her to get Naomi.
We get down to the cafeteria area and I see my mom
at the end of the hallway. I let Laura Siskin know,
"There's my mother, there's my mother."
She's like, "Okay, go."
I get to my mother and she tells me,
"Roy, uh, people, two people, flew planes
into the World Trade Center today.
Um... I'm not gonna stop you, if you need to look."
I say, "Okay." We walk out the door.
-(SIRENS BLARING) -(CROWD CHATTERING)
We got in the car, and Jackson was there,
and we had the hamster in the back seat.
As I'm going towards the stairs, it gets louder
of screaming and yelling and, like, craziness.
And I just see parents, like, grabbing their kids,
and like-- like-- like, just grabbing them and running,
not even saying anything. Then I see my mom,
and she's like, "Get Naomi, now."
A lot of the kids ended up having to stay over
up in Riverdale because their parents
could not leave the city after.
'Cause they did stop people from leaving.
Right now, everything is shut down nationwide.
There are no flights going out at all.
-CUSTOMER: No flights? -No flights.
All flights are shut down. Then I thought about the train,
and this was the last train leaving LA.
Packed my bags, went down to Union Station.
The train from LA to Chicago was called the Southwest Chief.
I pleaded with this African American woman,
who was the head of their ticket booth.
I said, "Please, sister. I have to get home."
The lady told me, "Spike, I can't get you on the train.
All the seats are sold out." I was pleading.
She said, "Spike, let me see what I can do.
Stay right here." So I just waited and waited.
She came back a half an hour, "I got you on the train."
She had talked to the head of the Pullman porters.
(TRAIN BELL RINGING)
The Brotherhood of the Pullman porters,
historic, A. Phillip Randolph.
Historically the porters on trains were Black.
So she spoke to the porters and they said, "We got Spike."
They rotated their sleeping quarters so I had a bunk.
The trains didn't go all the way from LA to New York.
You'd go to Chicago, you have to switch trains in Chicago.
And that train is called the Lakeshore Limited.
They called ahead and made sure I had, uh,
a place to sleep on that train.
And everything was frozen.
They stopped the trains, they stopped-- closed the tunnels, the bridges.
-(CROWD CLAMORING) -No subways running right now.
Long Island railroads, limited service.
All the buses are shut down, everything's shut down.
We didn't know where we were and what was gonna happen.
We didn't know what was coming next.
There is no evacuation plan for the city, none.
INTERVIEWER: How are people getting off the island right now?
Right now... (SIGHS) ...they're walking.
I tried to stop at an ATM.
I couldn't take no money out because nothing was working.
I had no cash on me.
I pulled them out before lunchtime, so they're hungry,
we have no money, and now we gotta walk.
Get out of the street. Let's go.
-Get on the sidewalk, move back. -Let's go, let's go.
(WHISTLE BLOWING)
Clear the area!
Telling us to get off the street.
Where we gonna go? There's nothing running.
-Where we gonna sleep then? -Yeah.
I want to go home.
You guys gotta move.
On the street, everybody's looking up with their faces
and their mouth open.
You know, I didn't even see-- looked-- turn around
and see the building yet. I just, like, looked ahead
and just saw people's faces and they were just, like, just staring up.
I then turn around and I look up,
and you just see a huge gash, a huge hole.
WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ: I say, "Oh my God, the people from windows!"
I started screaming, "We gotta go back. We gotta go back."
So William was like, "Let's go back into the building."
I said, "No, no, no." I said, "That's, like--"
you know, "That's-- that's crazy."
My supervisor that I just already pulled out,
said, "No, no. Rodriguez, you stay here.
You're not going back in."
I say, "You know what? Forget you."
It was another word, but it sounded like, yeah.
And that was the last time I actually seen him.
So he ran right into the building.
Timothy Pearson.
On September 11, 2001, I was the commanding officer
of police service area number two.
We went to the North Tower
and we started evacuating the building.
There were a lot of people who were evacuating the building that time.
A lot of them were coming from various floors.
The officer that was with me was asking,
"What floor are you coming from?"
So we knew they were coming from 50, 60, 70,
but where they were coming from was underneath
where the planes had hit.
Everybody up above those floors were trapped.
You could see quite a few people up above
on the northwest World Trade Center,
up above where the airplane had hit.
And they were leaning out of windows,
trying to get air as the building was burning below them.
Those are my people up there. I could see people...
shaking tablecloths out of those windows on those upper floors.
Oh, Lord!
-BYSTANDER 1: Oh, my God. Oh, shit. -BYSTANDER 2: Holy shit.
(BYSTANDERS GASPING IN HORROR)
Wow.
It's just like there's bodies everywhere, falling down.
-BYSTANDER: There are bodies falling down? -Didn't you see it?
PEDESTRIAN: Yeah, and everybody started running out, and we saw the plane,
and there was smoke everywhere, and people are jumping
out the windows over there, they're jumping out the windows,
I guess because they're trying to save themselves,
I don't know.
-(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER) -Shit.
(THUDS)
CHANDA ADAMS: People falling, burning, out of the windows,
landing on pure concrete. They'd rather jump and die
because they're dying from the smoke,
they're dying from the explosion.
They're dying from heat, whatever.
They'd rather just jump to their death.
Some of them's jumping, bodies are just falling out,
basically, out of the-- just out of the building, just dropping.
It was just terrible, it was the worst thing I've ever seen.
It was the people that couldn't get past
the floors that was on fire, that felt like they had
no choice but to jump off the building.
What the fuck could they have been going through
in that moment?
Like, we could never comprehend that.
More than anything else, seeing that,
it was... it was finishing me.
These people that needed help the most,
and no matter how much help was there...
you could only come to terms with the fact
that you couldn't help these people.
-(HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRLING) -(SIREN WAILING)
BYSTANDER: Jesus in heaven...
I didn't see it at first. And then eventually,
I started seeing the bodies come down.
And as business cards and highlighters
and I thought I saw a stapler, started raining down,
we're like, "What's this stuff coming right out of the building
right on top of us?" And then I saw the first jumper
from up close. As, uh-- As he fell,
the eye contact with this individual and...
And, uh, yeah, he was a Caucasian male, late twenties.
White shirt, khakis, brown shoes,
blue eyes. That's how close he was.
We started coming down from the 55th floor.
That's when we started to see firemen coming up.
And we're on the left, you see the firemen,
you're supposed to get over and let them through.
They were carrying hoses,
5,000 pounds of stuff, and they're exhausted.
SPIKE: What was the look in their face?
Well, it's the rescue look. You know, "Let me get up here and get these people."
It wasn't like, "Let me get up here and I know I'm not coming out."
No, they didn't have-- there's no fear look like that.
Those guys knew.
They knew, and they still went up.
-SPIKE: What is that? -This is the master key
that opened all the doors of the World Trade Center.
There were five master keys on 9/11 available,
and the one that was used was this one.
The people with the four other keys,
they went out running.
Cannot blame them,
but they had the other four keys,
and this opened everything.
Then I said to the police officers, "Yeah,
I have the keys, and let's go."
The four, five and sixth floor will not open the doors
through the stairwell. It says "no re-entry."
And the fourth will say "re-entry."
Then three doors will not open, three floor,
consecutively, all the way to the top.
I go straight up, opening door, getting people out,
opening doors, getting people out,
until I get to the 39th floor.
When I get to the 39th floor, the police officer
comes through the other stairway with two fire chiefs.
And we're talking about what's going to be the next step.
And as we're talking there, we hear...
(IMITATES BANG)
And we hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop inside the building
above me. And we hear on the radio,
"We lost 65, we lost 65."
God, my friends, they're really trapped now.
We gotta go up, we gotta go up.
The policeman said, "No, Willie. You've done enough."
I say, "No, no, I'm going up." He said, "No, no.
You're still my responsibility. You're a civilian,
better if you leave now."
Frank and his two partners went over
and got everybody out of the corner office
and paraded them over to the stairwell.
And Nicole said,
he chose her to lead the group down the stair.
She was screaming at him,
"Come on, come on, come on." And he said, "Honey,
I'm going to be in the back. I'll come at the tail end.
You guys, you go first and I'll follow."
So after the last person went down,
he sent one of his guys to follow,
and he and one other guy went up.
-(SIRENS BLARING) -(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
TONY BENETATOS: Everybody's been recalled.
All available units must come back to the firehouse.
They said, "All off-duty firefighters
report to your firehouse."
My name is Kirk Coy,
twenty years New York City Fire Department.
My car was parked right downstairs
but when I went downstairs, I didn't even bother with that.
I'm run-walking, run-walking to the fire.
I was only ten blocks away.
-(ALARM RINGING) -(INDISTINCT CLAMOR)
Firefighters are arriving from home.
Normal people are fleeing the city,
people who work first responders were getting in their cars
and just racing into the city.
Cars were coming in like this, man, against the traffic.
We went through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
And then we're driving in and it's eerie
because it's like, was nothing,
no traffic, no nothing going through.
And as we were getting, I guess, closer to the Manhattan side,
like this big rush of air came through and it shook the engine.
-(EXPLOSIONS) -(FLAMES RUSTLING)
-PEDESTRIAN 1: Oh my God! -(CROWD SCREAMING)
-(TOWER RUMBLING) -(SCREAMING)
-CAMERAPERSON: What happened? -(CAR HORNS BLARING)
(SCREAMING)
(SIREN WAILING)
PEDESTRIAN 2: Let's go!
(INDISTINCT SCREAMING)
(OVERLAPPING SHOUTING)
-PEDESTRIAN 3: Hey, let's go! -PEDESTRIAN 4: Let's go! Hey, let's go! Now!
-FIREFIGHTER: Keep moving, guys! -PEDESTRIAN 5: Oh, shit.
Move back! Move! Move back. Move back. Move back.
-Back! Back! Back! -PEDESTRIAN 6: Yo, are you a cop?
-(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER) -(DISTANT SIRENS)
(CLAMORING)
Yo, right there. Yo, yo, yo!
(SIRENS CONTINUE)
(CAMERAPERSON SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
-(INDISTINCT SHOUTING) -(SCREAMING)
-(SIREN BLARING) -(PEOPLE SHOUTING)
(SIRENS CONTINUE)
(COUGHING)
(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
-(ALARM RINGING) -(SOBBING)
(RUMBLING)
I need some water. (SPITS)
(SIREN BLARING)
-That's what they wanted. -CAMERAPERSON: That's what who wanted?
The Arabs, that's what they wanted.
They've been trying to take that out for ten years.
-CAMERAPERSON: They got it. -For ten years.
They got it, but what are they gonna pay for it?
What are they gonna pay for this?
(WHISTLE BLOWING)
What are they gonna pay? I'm ready to go back.
Right, give him air. Give him air.
You can walk, you can film, just give him air.
(SHOUTING) Make a hole. Make a fucking hole!
Get the cameras out of here, let's go.
Get off now, go!
(RUMBLING)
FIREFIGHTER 1: Everybody all right?
FIREFIGHTER 2: Yeah, I'm okay.
FIREFIGHTER 3: How's the way out of here?
FIREFIGHTER 3: Yeah, I'm right here.
FIREFIGHTER 1: All right, come on down this way.
Yeah, let's get out the way we came in.
-(INDISTINCT SHOUTING) -(COUGHING)
FIREFIGHTER 6: You got a light?
(OVERLAPPING CLAMOR)
(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
JOSEPH:
(ALARM BLARING)
Our apartment was 93 Chestnut, Newark, New Jersey.
We're listening to the news.
They said that there was still one plane
that was being tracked by fighter jets.
NEWS ANCHOR 6: Dateline, Pittsburgh.
Large plane crashes are reported in Western Pennsylvania.
The source of this are officials at Somerset County Airport.
They announced that the plane, Flight 93,
has now been taken down
in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
REPORTER: United Airlines is confirming
that its Flight 93 did crash near Pittsburgh.
Then we knew that everyone had perished,
knew the whole crew.
And at this point, one of the five roommates
who was with us, her name is Angela Hood,
she ran down the hallway in the apartment...
screaming, yelling, but she was praising God.
And...
I was trying to find out what was going on with her
as she ran to the back room.
And I'm trying to calm her down,
but she's trying to tell me something.
I was supposed to be on that flight.
SPIKE: But do you believe that the flight crew
and the passengers crashed the plane,
or was it shot down?
I believe it was shot down.
It was a 757...
that held 150 something people, I believe.
So, I mean, that was a large plane and it was just
so small wreckage found or seen. And when I saw the site,
I was like, "I believe that plane was shot down."
I don't believe the crew members or whatever
took the plane-- crashed the plane.
An article came out in Der Stern,
a German news magazine. They were saying this guy,
Frank De Martini, saved our lives.
We would have died. (CHUCKLES)
We were definitely gonna because we could not get out.
And the stairwells on that floor were blocked.
Anyway, so he saved those guys
and they couldn't get any farther up.
So they began sweeping the building and they...
Best guess is that they made it down to about the, uh,
somewhere between the 25th and the 15th floor
before the, uh... before that building was demolished.
We started going down, we made it to the lobby.
When we make it to the lobby, all I see is destruction.
Those beautiful glass at the front of the building,
they were all gone, there was no glass.
And the revolving doors... there was no revolving doors.
The only thing you saw was the empty frame.
As I stood in front of the revolving door
and I look out, what do I see?
The area is cordoned out by the World Financial Center
with that yellow tape that say, "Crime scene. Do not pass."
I see that all over. And behind, I see the police,
and the police looks at me, "Don't look back!
Don't look back! Don't look back!"
And when they tell you don't look back, what do you do?
You look back.
And I turned around, and when I looked back,
I saw the most horrible thing I seen in my life.
I saw all the bodies
of the people that jumped out of the building.
I saw them unrecognizable because the impact was so hard
that the only thing you-- you could see
was hair and flesh.
And I was like, "Oh my God." I started screaming.
And when I started screaming I hear, "Run, run, run!"
The police is running across the street
and I feel the floor trembling,
and it's the building is starting to collapse.
BYSTANDER: Oh, God, no!
(SIRENS BLARING)
(WIND HOWLING)
I started running across west, heading towards that building,
one of the financial buildings that we were gonna take over.
Almost made it to the building, probably eight feet
from the doorway and nailed me right in the butt.
Just knock me right through the glass,
broke the glass, hit my head and elbows,
my feet were hanging out.
So when the debris hit the building, it came down.
That's what broke my foot, shattered my-- my left foot.
-Anthony, you okay? -ANTHONY: Yeah.
Will you let me in please? Oh my God.
Oh my God!
Watch out, watch out.
(SCREAMING)
(SIRENS BEEPING)
BYSTANDER: Get in here!
I was running for my life and, uh... (GULPS)
Me, the fireman, John, we were just taking off, man.
This shit was falling down behind us,
it was coming up behind us. I just saw this truck
and I knew it was right behind me
and I just slid underneath it. And we stayed down there
and everything just went black.
Now everything, your whole world changed.
Any sense of invincibility or security or safety,
it just, like, turned upside down.
Now you're bewildered and you're shocked
and you're just-- you don't know what to do.
Then I think, "I messed up."
(ALARM BLARING)
What was I doing down there? What was I milling around for?
Why wasn't I getting out of there?
Why was I looking around?
Why am I talking to a cameraman?
You felt like a tornado of wind just coming at you
like you were in a storm. You could hear the debris
coming past you, you can hear things going on.
Uh, to be honest with you, at one point...
I was asking myself was I dead or alive?
Because I was trying to figure out,
could I see, could I hear?
After a while laying there on the floor,
it was complete silence.
(WHISTLES) Give me a second. Okay?
-Uh, you got a napkin? 'Cause-- -SPIKE: Take your time, brother.
-It brings it back. (SIGHS) -(FILM CREW MUTTERING)
Ken Covello, live truck operator for Fox 5.
It just enveloped us, and it was... it all of a sudden
went from a bright sunny day to almost pitch-black night.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JUDEAS: Where are we?
PEDESTRIAN 1: Judeas, wait.
JUDEAS: Which way to go? (COUGHS)
PEDESTRIAN 2: Lay low!
VOICE: (OVER RADIO) Are you guys okay?
Everybody stay low!
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(COUGHING)
CAMERAPERSON: What happened?
It collapsed, the top floors collapsed down.
I saw it b-- blow, and then ran like hell.
Thank God, I'm 69 but I can still run. (CHUCKLES)
There's got to be firemen trapped back there, though.
We sort of made our way through the dust.
We found Amy. We didn't have Brian.
I said, "We've gotta go get Brian. Where's Brian?"
I said, "Oh, he was walking back to the truck."
I said, "We gotta go find him."
The pile was five stories high. I was like,
"Oh, he's in here someplace." And I was going to start
looking for him, start pulling debris out,
see if we can find him.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
DAPHNE: I remember telling my coworker, you know, "Muiyawa,"
I said, "I have to go." He says, "No."
He was going, "Daphne, no."
So I'm like saying, "What the world..."
Still don't know what's going on out here.
And so then when it cleared up a little bit, you know,
and everybody got up and got their selves together.
I'm like, "Oh, no. I'm really left behind now."
Not still knowing.
-INTERVIEWER: This is a terrorist attack. -Excuse me?
INTERVIEWER: What we understand is that plane might've been hijacked,
and it's linked to terrorists.
MUIYAWA ONIGBOGI: Terrorist, yeah.
-INTERVIEWER: This didn't happen by chance. -Hold up. I didn't--
Did you-- (LAUGHS)
Did you say a terrorist hijacked the plane into the building...
No, I couldn't even fathom that.
No, no.
That's when I found out what happened,
when that lady was telling me.
(DAPHNE COUGHING, SOBBING)
MUIYAWA: Daphne, don't give up now.
Daph? Come on, don't give up.
I'm just tired, I'm tired... (SOBS)
The second tower fell and...
I just went out.
We had a terrace, and I just went out
to the terrace and, um...
just started crying.
I was really in shock. I couldn't believe it.
My daughter was screaming her head off, and I couldn't--
you know, it was-- it was just a lot.
I was screaming, she was screaming
and I just-- I just kept calling.
I just kept calling. Even though no one could answer,
I just kept calling.
BRENDA: I'm looking at all these people who are fleeing Manhattan.
-SPIKE: The exodus, right? -BRENDA: Right.
Nobody was pushing or shoving or...
They were trying to help each other
get across to safety in Brooklyn.
There's a part of the Manhattan bridge
where it's almost like a little skyline or something
that you can walk-- people can walk in and not be in traffic,
and she fell right in there. She was like, "I'm not moving.
Don't ask me. Don't tell me. I don't want to know."
-Get up. What are you doing? -ASHLEY: And she was like, "No."
She was full-blown, like, tantrum.
A guy came over and he's like, "You guys look like
-you need this more than me." -Here's a banana, an apple
-and a bottle of water. -ASHLEY: He was like,
-"You need it more than us." -It was like gold.
They was like... (GASPS) "Food!"
JUDY WHITEMAN: My name is Judy Whiteman.
And I am an administrative assistant.
JOJO RODRIGUEZ: My name is Joanna Rodriguez,
and I'm a makeup artist.
-And this is my mother. -When I got on the bridge,
I think that's the only time I thought of the danger of it.
I said to myself, you know, "We could be sitting ducks
on this bridge if another plane comes."
And my phone rang again. It was Jason.
He said, "Where are you at?" And I said,
"We're, like, in the middle of the bridge."
And he screamed, "Get off the bridge!
They just-- they're announcing on the news,
they're gonna blow the bridge up."
I grabbed her, and I grabbed Ashley's hand
and I was like, "You gotta run."
It was chaos. And the only thing I could think of
was to go to-- to my wife's building.
My wife worked in publishing on Hudson Street.
I ran to Hudson Street...
and as I approached her building,
she was coming out of the building.
Her building was fine.
She was the only person coming out of her building.
Diane was leaving work and she was going to
head downtown to look for me in the streets.
SPIKE: And I bet if there's a camera there,
-that would have been the greatest embrace in Hollywood. -MICHAEL LOMONACO: Yes. Yes.
-Yes. -(SPIKE CHUCKLES)
I worked at Windows on the World for four years.
Before I started working there, Diane said to me, "Is it safe?
Is that building safe? Don't you remember the bombing
in 1993? Is that building safe?"
I said, "Diane, it's the safest building in America."
But every morning for four years,
and I mean, every morning,
as I rode two elevators, I had to take two elevators
to get up to the 106th floor,
I said the Hail Mary.
I prayed on the entire trip up, every...
every day for four years.
Hi, I'm Carolina Salguero.
And I was a photojournalist on September 11th.
When my father died, um,
in July of 2000, I kept his powerboat
so that I could actually photograph New York City's
waterfront from the water and get around by water.
Because if you don't have your own boat, it's really hard.
So I had a powerboat. So like, okay,
I'm getting the boat. So then we swing out
into the Upper Bay and I look. It was just a wall of black,
brown, brown, black smoke. And I see a little bitty boat,
which I know by contour and colors to be a police boat.
And I'm like... like...
(IMITATES FANFARE) ...like... (IMITATES BOAT MOTOR)
This, like, little gnat is headed toward this wall of black.
And I was like, "Oh my God."
My name is Tim Ivory. I was chief engineer
on fireboat John J. Harvey on September 11th.
That plume of smoke and dust was really kind of cutting off Lower Manhattan.
And people were sort of not knowing
what to do with themselves,
and they didn't want to be there anymore.
My name is Jessica Dulong.
I'm chief engineer, retired, of fireboat John J. Harvey,
and author of Dust to Deliverance:
Untold Stories From the Maritime Evacuation
on September 11th.
Most people were told to go north,
and a lot of people could go north,
depending on where you were.
But there was a whole bunch of people stuck at the tip
of Manhattan, and there was no way off
except for over the water.
When the towers came down and that dust plume
was coming towards them,
these people were jumping in the water.
HUNTLEY GILL: I'm Huntley Gill. And I was captain of this boat,
John J. Harvey, on 9/11.
We are on John J. Harvey, a 1931 fireboat, retired.
We bought the boat in 1999,
and she'd been retired since 1995.
The boat was up and running. It was in reasonably
good condition. One of the owners of the boat
had called down to the marine division.
We said to them, "Guys, we have one of your boats."
He was on the phone with a dispatcher
who made the executive call to say, "Yeah, by all means,
get the boat there." And they said,
"Well, you know, at this point, we have no idea what's going on.
Just go down there and see what can happen."
And that's-- that's what we did.
My name is Rich Naruszewicz. I was captain
on a high-speed ferry, Finest, on September 11th, 2001.
Our route was from Highlands, New Jersey, to Manhattan.
On that day, we were carrying commuters.
So I immediately made an announcement over the PA system
that I was the captain,
you're under my jurisdiction while you're on this ferry,
I'm held responsible for your safety.
We're not going to pier-- East 34th Street,
we're going to Pier 11,
and we're gonna pick up anybody and everybody
who wants to evacuate.
(OVER LOUDSPEAKER) Do you need help? Do you need help?
They didn't know what hit 'em. They didn't know what happened.
They just knew that they had to get out.
They thought it was an apocalypse.
SPIKE: People were scared, right?
People were terrified, because there really was
no way to know what was happening next.
A call comes over the radio for all available boats
to start evacuating people from lower Manhattan.
Come on, guys. Everybody come in and get your ass up here now!
We're gonna go in, we're gonna figure it out,
you're gonna organize between each other.
The whole thing about inventing, you know, knowing
with what's called "local knowledge" in the mariners,
what boat of what size can go to what place.
We were tied up there and there were literally boats
lined up everywhere, sistered up alongside us,
all around us. It was almost every kind of boat
-you can imagine. -We went in there,
and it was sheer pandemonium. It was crazy.
There were people just rushing to get on the ferry.
Started going south. And we wound up in a location
where there was a fear of gas, a gas explosion.
And so they made us get on these, um, boats.
Ferries and all kinds are just pulling up and taking us off.
They saved our lives. If it wasn't for that boat
and yelling at us, like, "Get on the f-ing boat,"
I would have been on that pile looking for Brian.
We loaded as many of these people
as we could safely. I know that we overloaded.
SPIKE: How many people was that, you think? Estimate.
Over 700.
The first trip, 763 people to be exact.
We're only allowed just over 300,
but I wasn't stopping them. Whoever wanted to be evacuated
and taken to safety, we took them.
EVACUEE: Save the women and children first.
Women left their high heels behind.
(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
All along the fence, there were high heels.
-It was bizarre. -The waterfront was lined
with shoes, hundreds, if not more.
I just assumed people kicked them off so they could run.
You saw lots of high heels, things like that.
You had ferries who were trying to nose in,
which ferries don't do very well, to stem the tide.
I mean, it was just chaos down here.
The Winter Garden was completely shattered,
the glass of the Winter Garden was shattered.
The World Financial Center building on the corner there.
I remember the slice, it was just a steel beam
that had just sliced off the corner.
We get down to what they call South Cove,
which is a little spot along the, uh, the waterfront.
We start maneuvering in,
and the first problem is we have nothing to tie to.
There's a three- or four-knot current in the river.
If we're gonna get people on the boat, we need to be tied up.
So a gal that was with us, Pam Hepburn, said,
"Well, we tie to the trees." I said, "Okay."
So we start climbing up and we're running lines
across the walkway, tying to these trees.
And this woman from the Parks Department
walks up and says, "You can't do that."
SPIKE: Wait a minute, wait, wait.
September 11th, both towers coming down,
-and what'd she say to you? -"You can't do that."
-SPIKE: What'd you say? -"Call a cop."
(SPIKE LAUGHS)
At that point, the waterfront had been designed
for passive view, not for engaging with the water.
And so people trying to get over the railings
had to climb these railings, but the railing is faced inland.
So people had to, like, climb over this curve and then jump down.
There were also women with babies in strollers
who needed to get off the island.
So what we did is we told them to drop the babies to us.
-We were catching the babies. -Some parents thinking
about throwing their kid down to you.
And you gotta understand, there's a six-foot tide swing
in New York City.
And going up to that bulkhead, there's at least
another six feet of, you know, above you,
if you're at high tide.
If you're at low tide, it's 12 feet.
You're talking about people talking about
dropping their kids down to a fireman on a deck.
SPIKE: Hold up, hold up, hold up.
They was throwing the babies to you,
and you guys had to catch the babies?
Yes, sir.
SPIKE: How many feet you think was the throw?
Uh, it was about maybe 12 feet. We were catching the babies.
We had-- We had, uh, some of the commuters helping us.
SPIKE: So everybody had to be Willie Mays
not to drop a baby, right?
Well, we did what we did. We didn't drop any of them.
The shortest distance between the western border
of Manhattan is to New Jersey. And so you could make that trip
really quickly, back and forth, back and forth.
So I said, "Get on the boat. We're going to New Jersey."
"We don't want to go to New Jersey."
(SPIKE LAUGHS)
Well, this isn't the fucking subway. (LAUGHS)
Fine. Stay here. I don't care.
SPIKE: So those were New Yorkers
saying they didn't wanna go to New Jersey, huh?
Listen, I'm a New Jersey boy. I get insulted easy.
As soon as the last person was off, we went back
and got another load of maimed people.
SPIKE: So did you have any injured people on your boats?
Yeah. We had quite a few, quite a few.
So we're there with two priests
on the dock in Highlands, New Jersey.
I said, "Need to take those two priests with us."
Just in case we had to give anybody last rites.
-SPIKE: What happened to Brian? -So, we're on police boats
taking us across. And I'm like,
"I can't believe we left him there. We gotta go back."
We were upset. We don't leave a man down.
And the whole time-- whole time, he was on the boat with us.
And I look and there he is. There he is,
staggering on the dock.
I'm like, "It's him. There's no doubt. It's Brian."
I go over, I grab him, sat him down,
and I'm checking him out. And I could see in the back
of his head, there was a hole I could put my thumb into.
There were triage centers set up all along Jersey City.
The EMTs and EMS workers could triage who needed
what kind of care and when.
SPIKE: How many trips did you make?
-Uh, nine. -SPIKE: Nine?
Nine round trips, and I lost count at over 4,000 people
that we rescued just on my boat going back.
JESSICA: It really looks like it's at least 400,000,
if not 500,000 people, who were moved by boat that day.
-SPIKE: 500,000 people? -JESSICA: Yeah.
Nearly half a million people were transported
off the island by boat.
Okay, let's go. Just remain calm!
(COUGHING)
All the way to the back, please. All the way to the back.
SPIKE: And I never ever heard about the evacuation.
And when I read that more people evacuated from the tip
of Manhattan than during Dunkirk in World War II.
I never heard about it.
It never ceases to amaze me how few people know
about the maritime evacuation on September 11th and...
and how few realize that this was a larger, faster,
more involved, with more individual parties,
evacuation than what happened in Dunkirk.
-SPIKE: World War II, Dunkirk? -World War II, Dunkirk.
SPIKE: Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk?
JESSICA: Yes, Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk.
People on boats were not--
they weren't second guessing.
You know, like, the Staten Island Ferry,
imagine that captain. Nobody knows what the hell
is going on down here, right? We don't know
if this is the beginning of more attacks.
And that ferry emptied off passengers and came back.
The ferry captain I spoke with talked about feeling like
he was running a big orange target.
There were mariners who were transporting supplies
and personnel onto the island. There was no hard stop.
SPIKE: How long were you out here?
Uh, we got there roughly, I think around 9:30,
ten o'clock in the morning. And we were there
-until Friday afternoon. -We're now at war.
It's the greatest war attack since 1812,
when the White House was attacked by the British.
TOM BROKAW: This is the most serious attack
on the United States in more than a hundred years.
Not since the War of 1812, and certainly the damage
that we did to ourselves during the Civil War,
has this country suffered this kind of damage
within its interior. Obviously Pearl Harbor,
which triggered World War II was a horrific event as well,
but there has never been an event to match the magnitude
of this one in which everything has been shut down
in terms of air traffic, the national Capitol
has been immobilized, the White House,
State Department, Pentagon has been attacked.
The financial markets have been shut down.
There's an untold loss of life here in Manhattan.
In New York itself, there was no Republican,
Democrat, Black, white, young, old, Christian, Jew.
We had all been attacked.
You felt attacked.
You felt personally, personally attacked.
I think that that was true throughout the country,
that people felt personally like they attacked us.
But I think in New York, that was hyper.
Everyone at this time has 1010 WINS on.
-ANNOUNCER: (OVER RADIO) Breaking news now on 1010 WINS. -RALPH HOWARD: I'm Ralph Howard
with our team of reporters in studio and in the field today.
I put on my radio, 1010 WINS, and just listened to the action.
And everyone has it on at the same time.
So it's a stereo sound of 1010 WINS.
LARRY MULLINS: Also, warnings. Were there any warnings?
Now, nobody from the federal government
-has addressed that so far. -RALPH: Well, actually,
I'll say this, Larry, the White House did address it.
They were asked about it, and they said there was no warning.
-They had no warnings. -LARRY: However, if you remember
just a few days ago, they put out a warning in Japan
and South Korea, warning Americans
that they might be targets of some sort of terrorist act.
There was a warning for this?
-LISTENTER: Yes. -No, I didn't hear that.
RALPH: And you talked about the knives and stuff.
I suppose, if you are about to pull something as evil as this,
that somehow getting around an airport security guard,
and you know what that can be like at an airport,
it might not be so difficult.
It's a really, really negative moment in New York City,
and the wonderful thing about it though,
is that you've never seen a more united,
diverse group of people. We're all living out
that sorrow together. A wonderful moment
in my understanding of New York City and unity
and seeing people together on the street.
If I could describe New York in one word,
I could say, "together."
-(SIRENS WAILING) -(INDISTINCT CLAMOR)
You're gonna go down here. Okay, I know.
-Where do you want to go, dear? -My family.
My name is Reverend Andrea Raynor.
I'm a United Methodist minister who served as a chaplain
to the morgue at ground zero. About noon began the eerie quiet
of just waiting. Waiting, waiting,
waiting for injured who never came.
MOLLY FALCONER: Saint Vincent Hospital basically looks like it is under siege.
Right now, there are hospital beds lined up on the street.
GEORGE PATAKI: Outside, they had gurneys lined up.
And they had doctors and nurses
all ready for the injured to come from the towers.
Basically, either you got out of the building...
Or you died when the towers came down.
Not that many people who were injured
-and wound up hospitalized. -The firefighters started
-to come back, one by one. -JULES: One by one. Mm-hmm.
GÉDÉON: One by one, they come back from the fire,
and you should have seen their face.
They are livid, they're destroyed.
Most of them are puking on the sidewalk,
in the garbage can. Half of them are hurt,
whether it's on the head, in the eyes,
they can't breathe normally.
I thought you guys were dead.
Not the only one. I thought I was dead.
My name is Waris Ahluwalia.
I'm an artist, actor, designer, and lover.
All I remember is that day, everyone on the streets,
walking around in a state of shock and disbelief.
Not-- Just people on the street, people walking around,
seeing friends and neighbors and...
just no one knowing what was going on.
It was like time had stopped.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
-(HORN BEEPS) -(SIRENS HUM)
We saw all of these pockets of fire.
We saw buildings on fire, cars on fire,
and we just thought to try and see if we could put them out.
Tried to turn on hydrants, no water.
Because when the towers fell down,
they knocked out the water main. So the big trucks
that are supposed to be spitting thousands of gallons of water
a minute, they were going... (SPLUTTERING)
And we're passing ground zero, right?
Up there's a guy named Tom Whyte.
My name is Tom Whyte. I'm a retired captain
of the New York City Fire Department.
I didn't know who these guys were.
All I knew, it was one of our old, retired boats.
And he watches this old New York City fireboat go by.
Asked the pilot, "Radio these guys,
see if they can come in and help."
And captain Tommy Whyte called us on the radio and said,
"Guys, don't waste your time ferrying people, you know,
are you willing to pump water?"
So, the beauty of the fireboat
is an inexhaustible supply of water.
And the boat was capable of pumping
almost as well as it could back in 1931
when it was built.
I said, "Do you have any equipment on board?"
Really, the answer was no.
They-- that boat would have been out of service
for firefighting for many years.
When we were setting up, anybody that was walking
on the street was humping hose back to the boat.
They were pulling hose off of fire trucks
that were damaged from the fallout.
So we just tried to do the best that we could,
so we gathered hose lines from all the engines
and connected them all together
and ran them to the river to put the fires out.
Pretty soon, we're pumping water.
I've got at the time, about seven lines going inland.
All along, we were pumping into bombed-out equipment,
and they were branching off from there, taking care of
whatever surface fires they were dealing with.
It was a few hours later that I got a first chance
to walk inland, that was coming from us.
That and whatever else, I mean, we were the closest water
to the scene.
(DISTANT SIRENS WAILING)
(ALARM RINGING)
(CAR HORN BEEPING)
I think you should leave. Everybody else has gone.
-Nobody up on 23rd? -No.
They evacuated everybody down.
All right. They probably went to the bus. Thanks, Jeff.
OFFICER: Be careful, 'cause they said when the building,
if it does drop, it's gonna come in this direction.
-CAMERAPERSON: Thanks. You be safe too, all right? -OFFICER: Okay.
We're looking for people, we're looking for people,
and at 5:20 in the afternoon, we hear a noise.
(CROWD CLAMORING INDISTINCLTY)
(RUMBLING)
We ran across the West Side Highway
and into a building right across on the other side,
over by the World Financial Center,
and we got out of that.
And none of the people that were with me got injured.
♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
It was really weird. I mean, everything was very quiet.
New York City was so damn quiet.
Down there, there was no birds, there was nothing left.
People had nothing to say.
Before I went down to the World Trade Center,
I mean, the-- Sixth Avenue was just packed with trucks and cars.
By the time I got back up there,
there was nothing.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
This is gonna be the first sunset without the towers.
-SPIKE: You thought that in your mind? -KERWIN DEVONISH: Yeah. Yeah.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪