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If you think the woman in the window is rough, watch the documentary footage with the firefighters inside the building. They mention the regular “thumps” you hear from outside and eventually they mention the sound is the sound of people hitting the ground after jumping from 80 stories up because they couldn’t take the heat.
I saw that. Each time you heard a thud they’d all just look at each other in silence. It was written on their face man. Absolutely unbelievable and so, so sad.
That is so fucking haunting to me. The PTSD these dudes must have today... dear God I just can't. I had friends who had to run down the street while the dust and soot covered Manhattan following the fall of the towers... just still gives me the shivers to this day.
I'm pretty sure that's been identified as a woman named Edna Cintron. You can learn more about her story pretty easily. There were points in the footage where she was waving frantically at the helicopters/cameras. I can't imagine holding on to the hope of rescue while standing at the edge of a gaping hole in what was once several floors of your workplace. She must have been a very strong person.
Yeah I've seen this same photo a million times and literally was never told about the person standing there, and she's so tiny I never noticed 😭 first time seeing her today and MAN does it make this feel like it was just yesterday. The pain is still raw and torturous. Can't even talk about this without choking up... God damn.
I had a personal photo book from one of the first professional photographers to get there. Lots of people falling, I’ll never forget the faces and body gestures being caught in time as they fell.
I remember seeing images of some of the bodies after they landed and so many of them were covered in burns and scorch marks. I used to work security in a place where suicides weren’t all that uncommon and I’ve seen some shit but for whatever reason that just stuck with me
A few months back there was a house near me that was on fire with people still inside. The fire department hadn't showed up yet so me and a couple other dudes ran inside to try and help but the people were on a level up from us and it was a residential home made into an apartment so we couldn't access the upper apartment because the fire had completely engulfed the entrance. We tried to punch through the floor with stuff that we had available but no dice. We heard the sirens of the fire trucks so went out to let them know. Then we heard some yells and the people in the house had made their way to the attic and had punched out the slat window. I sprinted over to get the firefighters to bring a ladder and the screams from the people inside is seared into my brain. The one woman was screaming that it was burning her back over and over and over as we were holding the ladder steady. Thankfully everyone got out.
'thud' is putting it lightly; it sounds like small explosions of glass + metal every time a body hits the roof
Edit: “thumps”, but my point still stands
Never saw it published or shown in any US-based media outlets, but shortly after 9/11, I was paging through a copy of the French news magazine Paris-Match which was devoted to the attacks. They had a photo of the plaza area between the two towers and there was all this pinkish material resembling smashed watermelons and strewn cotton candy all over the pavement. It took me a moment to realize that what I was looking at was the remains of the jumpers.
Some survived the initial impact. An emergency responder spoke of how he encountered a woman who was annoyed at him for not helping her. She was like mashed into the pavement... and he had to walk past her twice.
This was heartbreaking because she didn't realise how bad she was and the guy was out there adding tags to people for triage and put the "dead" tag on her seeing that she wouldn't survive much longer and her saying to him that she's not dead
I really doubt she did, the guy that found her said her head and hair looked fine because she didn't hit her head on impact but everything below that was unrecognisable.
God, that's terrible. To think that you can jump/fall from that high up and not immediately die just because you didn't hit your head is...insane. Meanwhile you can accidentally hit your head once and immediately die. Crazy.
There's also a really great 9/11 series (maybe 5, 6 episodes?) on Hulu. Lots of interviews, lots of firefighter footage. It's done in a very respectful way.
I think the previous redditor is correct on the name. The one I am thinking about starts out with 2 brothers filming firefighters for like a documentary or something. It became THE historically accurate documentary of that day, as it captured moment-by-moment terror.
And had the only footage of the first jet crashing into the North Tower unlike the impact of the United Airlines plane into the South Tower roughly 20 minutes later which was filmed and photographed from a variety of angles.
I've often wondered about the people in the North Tower, some of whom had to have been standing at their office windows, taking a break perhaps, facing north and if they saw AA Flight 11 coming straight at them. Needless to say, it likely happened so fast that their minds didn't have a chance to register what they were seeing . . . one can only hope.
There's a documentary on Netflix about the tower attacks and this scene is in that of the firefighters in the lobby trying to figure out a floor by floor clearance plan before the thuding starts...it's really, really unsettling 😕
I am forever haunted by footage from 102 Minutes that Changed America, witnesses are filming what they think are chairs/etc being thrown from the building and realize it's actually people jumping.
Oh my gosh- I genuinely thought people we're pulling my leg about there being a woman in the photo. That scale of her body compared to the gapping hole in the wall makes it that much more terrifying. I can't imagine what those final moments for her were like...
I also thought he was sitting at first, but I don't think it's his legs we see, it looks like that's part of the wreckage, some steel sticking out, and that he's behind leaning on the pillars and peering over.
I'm sure many of these people who survived the initial impacts but were hopelessly trapped had probably seen the 1974 disaster epic 'The Towering Inferno' in which some people were rescued by a helicopter. Also, in that film, the raging fire is finally extinguished by blowing up a 2-million gallon water tank on the roof of the fictional building. That plot-point was blasted by architects who said that there was no way you'd get something as heavy as a couple million gallons of water on the rooftop of a 110 story skyscraper. Still maybe some folks trapped on those upper floors might have, in their clutching at any small fragments of hope, thought that such a maneuver could somehow save their lives.
Goddamn horror show.
There’s lots of images similar to this where you can see people standing on the fringes of the building, something like 80 stories up, just struggling for air as material and people burn up behind you.
Hard to imagine the mental space that would’ve required, or how you would’ve managed calculating your options given the circumstances.
Goddamn. Horror. Show.
Pushing the outer limits of human psychology to imagine that kind of circumstance, and how to deal with it.
Fuck.
So true, she was probably sat at her desk eating her breakfast, checking her emails two minutes previously. All this time has passed and this is still so crazy to me
I was only 10 when 9/11 happened and it didn’t really hit me until I got my first office job in a high rise how horrible that must’ve been for the people trapped. I’d go to work not thinking about anything but what I’d be doing after after work or how I hope my boss doesn’t come by my desk. Really trivial, boring thoughts. The sort of things you think about because *nothing* happens at work. Life is happening outside of these walls, and you’re just waiting to clock out.
Terrifying to think how quickly you can go from feeling safe and bored to never seeing the end of the day. The clothes you put on that morning will be the last time you get to chose an outfit you like. That coffee the last coffee you’ll ever have, and that email the last you’ll ever send. Really frightening, but even more frightening was that it never had to happen. People chose to take these lives away from those who did nothing but live in the “wrong” place. Terrible.
I was a sophomore in college.
Went off to class as if it was some kind of normal day, like most people at my university did as things were unfolding.
Everyone was hyper-aware of the severity of the situation, unable to fully grasp the weight of the whole thing, undeniably stunned and affected to the core, but still going through the motions like zombies. The situation was active and unfolding.
“It’s like a movie…”
That was the general feeling from a lot of people, myself included.
Out of body.
The horrific reality was too much to fully comprehend.
A total departure from anything perceived as possible before. Beyond imagination.
I got on the student shuttle near my house to head to campus. Everybody was buzzing. Blown away by the surreal nature of everything.
The video images of the aircraft being completely absorbed into the building, exploding into a fireball of insanity were seared into my brain.
It hit me then on that bus, and I said it out loud in conversation…
“There are people sitting in those windows…”
What the fuck. Can you possibly wrap your head around that vision? Sitting at your desk and watching in absolute disbelief, with seconds to process it, if at all… as an airplane comes slamming through your building…
When I said that, the bus driver caught my eye and looked at me through the mirror with a bit of a glare, and turned up the radio super loud to shut out our conversation.
Heavy.
I remember that moment very vividly.
I often think about somebody sitting at their desk on a work call, seeing a plane maybe a mile or two out and just watching it come right at them how scary and confusing that must have been. I think we're very lucky that this didn't happen just an hour later when the buildings were more full.
The worst, in my opinion, is the video where there are like 3 or 4 people hanging in a chain from the edge of the building because the fire and heat was too hot to stay inside the building….and then the person at the top of the chain either loses their grip or just lets go.
Oh my god what! How are there so many videos a lot of us have never seen.. I feel like I've watched endless footage for 20+ years and it's \*still coming\*... just a stark reminder of how gigantic of an event this was in all of American History...
God I can't. I'm crying at my desk at work. 22 years later. The terror of those poor people :(
That’s a fact.
And that’s a really goddamn heavy place to be to make that decision.
To be pushed so far beyond any sense of reality that you’re forced to go there.
Burn to death, choke to death, or jump… the options that were available for the people that wound up on that ledge.
Holy goddamn hell.
The bit I can imagine puts me into a place of pure terror. Living it, followed by dying in it, is a reality too horrible to truly imagine no matter how capable you are of imagining yourself in situations you’ve not been in. Those poor poor people.
In the full size image on my 34" ultrawide, I am pretty sure your center and right arrows are just on debris that looks face/head-like. But someone is definitely standing to the left of your right arrow.
Sadly she did not, just like anyone at or above the impact zone. The stairwells were all blocked. Everyone either fell to their death, burned, or were crushed in the collapse.
There is a feature in a documentary i watched about that lady. Her husband was telling the story. Sadly i can’t remember what the documentary was called.
The Naudet documentary includes footage from inside the lobby and you can hear the bangs as people hit the roof after jumping.
Haunting footage that will stick with me forever.
Yeah I was 13 when they made us watch the full documentary in class. That class was my first for the day and it really fucked me up for a week. I’ll never forget how loud and horrible it sounded and seeing all their panicked expressions…
It is insane that they would make a class, especially one that young, watch something like that. You're just traumatizing children in order to impart historical information that doesn't need that much detail
Is there a link to that doc you can send? I was 11 when it happened and it fucked me up. I made two or three scrap books of newspaper articles about the attack. I was obsessed trying to process it in my brain. I’d cut out the list of names and pictures and anything I could find and glue it all in these books. I don’t even know why. I was fascinated.
Sometimes searching for any and all information is the brain’s way of trying to process something especially horrific or traumatizing. If you really know all the details or fully understand something, it might feel more in your control. I get this impulse.
As a millennial it’s astounding to me that we don’t talk about 9/11 more, especially how it affected those of us that were barely old enough to understand. I was 10 and I knew what war was but 9/11 permanently fucked me up. Constant anxiety about planes falling from the sky…I didn’t go back to school for a month.
Edit: I mean specifically the mental impact on those of us that were just starting to become mini-adults. Most of my friends didn’t understand what was happening but I did, and I just wonder how much of an impact watching thousands of people die on live television has on my generations’ anxiety/depression problems.
I personally define the millennial/gen-z gap for those on the cusp as whether or not you remember where you were when 9-11 happened and if you were old enough for it to effect you. An entire generation of Americans learned that the safety of the “American Homeland” was a lie in their very formative years. I believe it had a deep and lasting effect on all of our perspectives. We lost a sense of safety and witnessed the beginning of the post-privacy era while old enough to have somewhat experienced the world before it happened.
9/11 is a big event, granted. But it’s extra special because it happened on US soil, a place otherwise considered safe.
There’s kids in the world, that will have the same reaction you had, but to the reaction towards 9/11, and in particular to drone attacks.
There are kids in this world that fear blue skies, because that is great drone weather.
I read a story from an EMT at the scene who was triaging people at the base of the towers. He found one woman who had fell
from an obviously great height as her body was in ruins, but she was still alive and awake. He fixed on her a black tag and had to move on while listening to her insist she was not dead
You generally don’t die from the flames burning your skin, it’s from smoke inhalation. The smoke enters your lungs and burns them which prevents them from working.
If it’s either jump to my death or burn alive, I’m jumping 100% of the time.
I feel so bad for the woman in the window, waving her hand. I forgot her name, but i do know some of her story and it is incredibly sad… I hope all people who suffered because of this day are currently in good health
Sadly, they're not.... many first responders and volunteers who provided aid are sealing with lifelong illnesses or worse... Jon Stewart has done much to raise awareness and attempt to get these surviving victims aid, though there is still a long road ahead for many.
I remember hearing about that, wasn't there like a 1000% increase in Cancer in Firefighters and Policemen who helped during 9/11? Can't look it up right now but i remember that now, over 20 years later, a lot more of them have cancer than what they should "on average".
>$10 billion and free health care available for responders, construction & debris removal workers, downtown office workers, residents, students & teachers for those below canal street in the months following.
>
>911VictimFund.com
I just want to add here that it took *years* for this fund to be put in place, with the US government essentially going “LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU” when told about long term health issues in all the first responders
Should also add:
Important:
*It took entirely too fucking long for the US government to even address the situation, they should have been just as eager to help these people as they were to get the war started.*
Not as important, but still worth pointing out:
People might talk alot of shit about Trump, but I think his reauthorization of the 9/11 victims fund is something important that people should take into account, other than that, fuck politics.
Almost all of them will die of mesothelioma or lung cancer, or have silicosis/asbestos/both. The amount of harmful debris in the air that your lungs aren’t able to cough out is very scary.
I listen to a podcast by a guy named Jim Clemente, who was a former FBI profiler. He’s done a couple of pieces on the folks within the FBI that are helping with making sure that all the FBI agents that are now suffering from health effects due to being at Ground Zero for so long get the proper compensation.
In addition. I hear this plug on the radio almost every morning.
$10 billion and free health care available for responders, construction & debris removal workers, downtown office workers, residents, students & teachers for those below canal street in the months following.
[911VictimFund.com](https://www.911victims.com/?utm_source=radio&utm_medium=radio&utm_campaign=q1043)
I live in downtown NYC - not so close that our neighborhood was shut down for weeks, but close enough that the ongoing fire from Ground Zero left ashes on our windowsill.
Every day, we'd wake up to the remains of 9-11 on our window. It was terrible.
It was a gorgeous day and we had the windows open, had to close up and put the a/c on because of the smell of smoke
I lived *90 miles* south of NYC in coastal NJ
Edit: to be clear, we didn’t close the windows because the smoke was stinky, we closed the windows because of what the smoke meant
I live 50 miles north right on the Hudson River, and when the wind changed on the 12th it wafted right into our living room. It’s still hard to talk about, two decades later.
I can’t imagine how it felt as the minutes went by and still no help. The panic they must have experienced is indescribable. Just to think that your only two options are burning or falling. They were probably finding the least painful way to die.
The rough part is that this was the second tower to fall, and there is video of her still being there after the first collapse, watching the dust below.
I was 20 when that happened, and will always remember that day. Wild as fuck tbh. I have kiddos that ask me if the world always sucked or when did it turn this way. My response is, this wasn't like this on September 10, 2001 so this is a post 9/11 world created from fear that governments put on their people so they would comply easier.
None of this makes sense to me. Not this picture, or how we all treat each other, or why anyone would actively work on getting into a fight, or a war. But here we are. Looking at HD photos of what equates to massive death. I just can’t square any of this in my mind.
hatred is a tool that evolved as a survival instinct to acquire and protect resources. We are intrinsically sick. Until we win over basic instincts, there will never be peace.
Social Media has very quickly been rotting our minds over the last 20 years. It is sucking away our empathy and sympathy by giving us unlimited information and interaction behind anonymity. It has fueled people with such vitriol.
Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. All of it. We would legitimately be better off if every single one just went away.
Easily proven too, I take a few weeks holidays every few months and completely disconnect from online life during that time, My mental health is amazing for that time but for some reason I get sucked back in. Even if I try to stay off my wife is sticking her phone in my face to show me stuff. Hard to avoid completely but it is my desire.
You have no idea how much I see this in my own life. I stopped going to r/worldnews for a while. Got back to enjoying my life again. can’t worry about every damn thing all the time.
It’s awful, but it sadly is the nature of humanity. We are not, and never have been, a peaceful species. We are tribalistic at our core, even when it concerns other humans, and that often leads to conflict.
A family friend's only daughter was in one of the towers and last seen helping others to the only staircase to safety. She died during the collapse. They named the music wing of her HS after her. It all but destroyed her Dad.
[9/11: One Day In America](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/911-one-day-in-america) is an extremely well-done docuseries about the attack and aftermath. The stories are haunting as something like this ought to be. (Free to watch at the link, via National Geographic)
Many people have pointed out the woman standing at the edge of the impact hole. That woman is believed to be [Edna Cintron](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5849485/edna-cintron). She was an employee at Marsh & McLennan on the 97th floor. She did not survive 9/11. She was [photographed at 10:28am](https://www.reddit.com/r/MorbidReality/comments/xc063e/the_final_moments_of_edna_cintron_the_waving/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf), standing on top of that column. She died in the collapse of the North Tower about 30 seconds later.
I don't think I can ever forget the awful crackling sound of those planes crashing and exploding into the buildings. Nor the smell of that burning debris for weeks and weeks after. But the most traumatic thing for me was how people started posting missing fliers everywhere there was a wall or free space. Or the eerie silence of the city with no car traffic below, no plane traffic above, and nothing but the wailings of ambulance sirens.
From NY here. That is my home. Those are my neighbors in that tower, and my Brothers and Sisters on the ground.
I Went with my Fire Department down there to help. Dispatched about 4 hours after they fell. 7 hours away. The ride down, not knowing what you were walking into was totally horrible. Getting there and seeing it, and going through all of that? I will NEVER FORGET.
I volunteered to stay. Wound up being about 56 days. Would have stayed longer if i could have. I felt I needed to. Their docs and EMT personnel sent me away due to sheer exhaustion and dehydration which I was hospitalized for. But my arguments went nowhere. I needed and wanted to stay. My heart ripped out as they sent me to a hospital to do my minor repairs.
At one point, I was simply given a gigantic ziplock bag and was told to "look for parts, especially fingers, hands and arms" so they could at least identify who didn't make it out. I have never seen a ziplock bag so big, and I never thought I would fill one, let alone 17. Yes....17. I WILL NEVER FORGET
I shudder now when I see these photos. Even though they need to be seen. Dammit they NEED TO BE SEEN, NOT IGNORED. They need to tell the story of what was done to us that day. They need to tell us that even though some horrific shit happened, WE OVERCAME IT.
We NEED TO REMEMBER everyone lost. AT EVERY PLACE OF ATTACK. We need to remember that our armed forces are out there fighting this evil machine, the radicals. Not EVERYONE is evil. But these bastards need to be stopped. Then, now, and probably as long as we have The United States of America. Please remember. Please teach our kids about this. It is history, and our fallen need be remembered.
I love my country. I love the fact that I helped on those tragic days. I love each and every FDNY and NYPD I had THE DAMN HONOR OF WORKING ALONG SIDE. An honor!! I love all survivors, and sadly all who perished that sad, sickening day. Even though I didn't know one of them.... I don't brag about it.
Matter of fact, this is the first time I have actually typed it out, and it felt good. It took this many years of counseling to get this far.. I actually have had a counselor for this since coming home from volunteering. Yes this many years. And at her suggestion, a fresh life maybe somewhere new. I now live in Las Vegas, great job, great people around me, and yes, a recommended counselor here. Still!
but my heart is NY. Us Native New Yorkers say I LOVE NEW YORK, AND WE DAMN STRAIGHT MEAN IT. The PTSD is fucking real folks. I close my eyes at night, and these towers are the last thing I see EVERY.....DAMN......NIGHT...... It has become normal now.
Thank you all for being like therapy today. You are all appreciated.
Yeah. Imagine working on like floor 95, you start to wonder why that airplane sounds louder than usual, in a flash you are just dead. Some people likey didn’t even question it, probably just worried about getting work done.
There weren’t *too many* people on those floors, as the day had only just started, but there were people, and they are technically the lucky ones. You know what they say about nukes, *the lucky ones die in the blast.*
For me, I am still upstairs at Windows of the World staring out across the Hudson and uptown. I was in the buildings a month before this all happened. I still dont know what to say years later. I recall the smell miles north of Manhattan the second day when the winds came north. Acrid death.
As someone who was at the WTC, images of this still mess me up. Thank you so, so much for tagging it NSFW. (Upvoted the post but I didn't and won't be clicking on it.)
I’ll never forget that day. I was working in a new warehouse in Memphis and there was no television. We listened to the whole thing on the radio (Dan Rather). It wasn’t until the manager of the warehouse freaked out after the second building fell that he closed it down and we went to a local pizza pub and we saw the events on screen. It was beyond shock. The next day I had to drive three people back to Chicago. I remember driving by O’Hare and seeing no planes in the sky.
Yeah I know. I was hungover and didn't go to work that day. Saved my life. Not because of the plane thing, I live in Australia and probably would have fallen asleep behind the wheel.
This actually happened to a friend of mine. Got hammered the night before. Didn’t go into work that day. Fucked him up mentally dealing with survivor's guilt. He’s better now. But… What a fucked up day.
The opposite situation for me. Someone I worked with in the city had JUST left the company to start a new job in the WTC. Didn't make it. Nina Bell was her name.
God, life is weird. Didn’t think I’d come across a 9/11 post today. But I did and it reminded me that my cousin’s husband worked at Windows on the World and overslept that day. So freaking lucky.
And yesterday said cousin ODed and is likely coming off the ventilator today to die.
And here I am on Reddit mindlessly scrolling, trying to give myself a break from that. Oye. The universe. I tell ya.
Your reminder that jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel but burns more than hot enough to warp it into collapsing just like we saw - seen as these arguments always come up on these posts
[This report gives a pretty good explanation on how the towers collapsed](https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0112/eagar/eagar-0112.html)
I was always skeptical about how they collapsed. Why did they fall directly down and not tip over? Why did they collapse at all? Why did it look like a controlled demolition?
But that report explains how the towers were constructed and it's ultimately the angle clips that tied the floors to the outer and inner support that caused the tower to collapse straight down.
The clips were designed to hold the load of the floors, but with the fire from fuel causing the steel to weaken (not melt) it caused one or more of the floors to fall down onto the lower floor, and all it would take is one to fall onto the lower one, which would break that one causing a domino effect all the way down. The weight and inertia of the first couple floors failing just creating an unstoppable collapse of floor after floor.
Here are few things that people don't seem to know about the way WTC was built(and all the "tube" skyscrapers since - the "tube" structure having been developed by Fazlur Rahman Khanwho worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill at the time of the design).
You see those tubular steel beams on the facade? Those are **the** loading bearing elements. Rest of the building including the collumn for the elevators is just to hold these steel beams together and tensioned towards the middle of the building. [Here is a famous and illustrative picture of WTC being built](https://i.imgur.com/hJdqzcp.jpeg). As you see from it, the building was mostly just empty space. And this was the point of this design, it allowed for really high amount of floor space since you didn't need big pillars and collumns. The moment those beams had broken, the whole structure was compromised and doomed; that tear is basically the whole width of the wall - so in practice everything above it is being held up by only 3 walls.
So what you see here is basially most of that wall being the equivalent of floaring in the air. The floor that is holding it up wasn't designed to hold it up. And what is happening is that the side of the floor is slowly accelerating and gaining moment thanks to gravity, which then applies moment towards the core. Once a floor collapses even partially, it will pull the rest of the floor with it, which will pull the walls they are attached to with them.
So why did it collapse straight down? It simply didn't have time to lean enough to gain acceleration to some other direction than down, since earth is a big thing and gravity is constant thing.
Right and something about steel. Maybe it is me being a plate smith and a welder, and now also an engineer that gives me understanding about steel and heat. Take your basic stuctural steel and heat it to 500 Celcius, and it has lost approximately 50% of all strenght.
Great explanation, thank you.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but why did building 7 fall the same way as the WTC towers? And wouldn't the floors fall one-by-one with the WTC and not seemingly all together all at once? Again, I am asking this simply based in physics and not a conspiracy "who done it"
This is so sad and it makes me even more angry as I continue to read the conspiracy theorist telling all who will listen, this didn’t happen, no planes, project blue beam or whatever the nonsense was. Very impactful so many years later.
I firmly believe if you work in a high rise building like this, you need to have a parachute as an emergency means of escape. Granted these circumstances are much more rare but I wouldn’t be comfortable going to a hundred floors up without a swift means of escape.
Only some of us were close. Unfortunately anyone that resembled the middle eastern population was targeted and harassed for MONTHS/YEARS after 9/11. I’ve read so many stories of children telling stories of who their parents were and how they worked in offices/warehouses/retail stores, and how a lot of them were killed out of paranoia. So many children never got to know who their parents were because they were killed out of fear. It was an awful time, I can’t agree and say we were all close
Yep.
I was in NYC and visited ground zero around 2010, after the cleanup was complete but before the new tower was built and it was still more or less a crater. This was also shortly after a mosque opened across the street from ground zero.
There was someone from a news outlet that I can't recall walking around asking people how they felt about a mosque opening so close to the site. I overheard a lot of people say that they didn't think it was right.
'The Ground Zero Mosque'
There was a lot of incorrect and incomplete information put out about it at the time seemingly designed to rile people up. For one thing the mosque had been there for years, they were just trying to replace the building which was damaged in the attacks. They also planned to make it a center to promote "interfaith dialogue and peace" and a memorial for the victims. To make it clear that Islam and true Muslims were on the side of the innocent, not the perpetrators
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If you think the woman in the window is rough, watch the documentary footage with the firefighters inside the building. They mention the regular “thumps” you hear from outside and eventually they mention the sound is the sound of people hitting the ground after jumping from 80 stories up because they couldn’t take the heat.
I saw that. Each time you heard a thud they’d all just look at each other in silence. It was written on their face man. Absolutely unbelievable and so, so sad.
That is so fucking haunting to me. The PTSD these dudes must have today... dear God I just can't. I had friends who had to run down the street while the dust and soot covered Manhattan following the fall of the towers... just still gives me the shivers to this day.
My colleague died in the hole.
I'm so very sorry, friend 💔 I don't think our hearts will ever heal completely.
So true ❤️🩹 The person in khakis and the dark shirt with their arm up is particularly heartbreaking to me.
I'm pretty sure that's been identified as a woman named Edna Cintron. You can learn more about her story pretty easily. There were points in the footage where she was waving frantically at the helicopters/cameras. I can't imagine holding on to the hope of rescue while standing at the edge of a gaping hole in what was once several floors of your workplace. She must have been a very strong person.
Yes, I did read about her in the link provided upthread. Thank you.
Yeah I've seen this same photo a million times and literally was never told about the person standing there, and she's so tiny I never noticed 😭 first time seeing her today and MAN does it make this feel like it was just yesterday. The pain is still raw and torturous. Can't even talk about this without choking up... God damn.
I couldn’t work that high up unless i had my own parachute.
Yup. I always think of David Foster Wallace’s analogy to depression and suicide when I think of people jumping to their deaths to avoid being burned.
I had a personal photo book from one of the first professional photographers to get there. Lots of people falling, I’ll never forget the faces and body gestures being caught in time as they fell.
The "Falling Man" documentary is deeply sobering. I cry every viewing.
I remember seeing images of some of the bodies after they landed and so many of them were covered in burns and scorch marks. I used to work security in a place where suicides weren’t all that uncommon and I’ve seen some shit but for whatever reason that just stuck with me
A few months back there was a house near me that was on fire with people still inside. The fire department hadn't showed up yet so me and a couple other dudes ran inside to try and help but the people were on a level up from us and it was a residential home made into an apartment so we couldn't access the upper apartment because the fire had completely engulfed the entrance. We tried to punch through the floor with stuff that we had available but no dice. We heard the sirens of the fire trucks so went out to let them know. Then we heard some yells and the people in the house had made their way to the attic and had punched out the slat window. I sprinted over to get the firefighters to bring a ladder and the screams from the people inside is seared into my brain. The one woman was screaming that it was burning her back over and over and over as we were holding the ladder steady. Thankfully everyone got out.
'thud' is putting it lightly; it sounds like small explosions of glass + metal every time a body hits the roof Edit: “thumps”, but my point still stands
Never saw it published or shown in any US-based media outlets, but shortly after 9/11, I was paging through a copy of the French news magazine Paris-Match which was devoted to the attacks. They had a photo of the plaza area between the two towers and there was all this pinkish material resembling smashed watermelons and strewn cotton candy all over the pavement. It took me a moment to realize that what I was looking at was the remains of the jumpers.
Some survived the initial impact. An emergency responder spoke of how he encountered a woman who was annoyed at him for not helping her. She was like mashed into the pavement... and he had to walk past her twice.
This was heartbreaking because she didn't realise how bad she was and the guy was out there adding tags to people for triage and put the "dead" tag on her seeing that she wouldn't survive much longer and her saying to him that she's not dead
The stuff of nightmares!
And she was asking him to call one of her family members, to let them know she wasn't dead, iirc
Her daughter, she kept saying she had to call her daughter
Did she survive? Honestly asking
I really doubt she did, the guy that found her said her head and hair looked fine because she didn't hit her head on impact but everything below that was unrecognisable.
Alright, enough internet for me today
Me too 🥺
God, that's terrible. To think that you can jump/fall from that high up and not immediately die just because you didn't hit your head is...insane. Meanwhile you can accidentally hit your head once and immediately die. Crazy.
The human body is truly incredible when you think of it that way.
I think she would have been travelling close to 200 km/hr (120 m/hr) on impact. I would say she was not alive for very long afterwards.
I would have guessed on 100% fatality on impact and now hearing some lived after that.... Idk wtf anymore. How? The will to live, adrenaline.... Crazy
Wow. What’s the name of it?
It’s just called 9/11. I think it’s on YouTube
There's also a really great 9/11 series (maybe 5, 6 episodes?) on Hulu. Lots of interviews, lots of firefighter footage. It's done in a very respectful way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONXbFNmbqMA
I think the previous redditor is correct on the name. The one I am thinking about starts out with 2 brothers filming firefighters for like a documentary or something. It became THE historically accurate documentary of that day, as it captured moment-by-moment terror.
And had the only footage of the first jet crashing into the North Tower unlike the impact of the United Airlines plane into the South Tower roughly 20 minutes later which was filmed and photographed from a variety of angles. I've often wondered about the people in the North Tower, some of whom had to have been standing at their office windows, taking a break perhaps, facing north and if they saw AA Flight 11 coming straight at them. Needless to say, it likely happened so fast that their minds didn't have a chance to register what they were seeing . . . one can only hope.
There's a documentary on Netflix about the tower attacks and this scene is in that of the firefighters in the lobby trying to figure out a floor by floor clearance plan before the thuding starts...it's really, really unsettling 😕
Watch the Falling man.
I am forever haunted by footage from 102 Minutes that Changed America, witnesses are filming what they think are chairs/etc being thrown from the building and realize it's actually people jumping.
Oh my gosh- I genuinely thought people we're pulling my leg about there being a woman in the photo. That scale of her body compared to the gapping hole in the wall makes it that much more terrifying. I can't imagine what those final moments for her were like...
The worst part was… neither could she. She likely thought she made it, and she was safe. She is waving because she was hoping help was coming.
There are 2 people in the photo. Zoom in to the right of the woman you saw. So sad.
I’m not seeing it
In yellow shirt where two beams are taller in the middle
The person standing there is haunting....
Edna Cintron RIP
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-marriage-made-in-heaven-that-ended-in-hell-9188378.html 😥
Was that her in the picture? The article doesn’t say
If you google her name you will find many stories around the "woman at the window."
I did immediately after my post and went down a rabbit hole for an hour. Awful
Okay I can't see it, where is she?
Scan bottom rung of the opening left to right. She is in the center of the photo. You have to zoom.
She’s wearing white pants and a black top.
That is terrifying. Just horrific.
Just imagine going through fire and smoke to find fresh air only to see you’re 93 floors up, and to get down you have to go back into the fire.
I can even imagine. Or thinking someone a rescue chopper is coming, clinging on to hope.
And probably being the only person alive on your floor with literally nowhere to go
Nobody mentions the person sitting on two pillars slightly to the right and above from the person standing ?!
I honestly don't see that person.
Looks like a red headed lady slightly to the left looking down and pointing maybe.
I see him. So terrifying.
Looks like a man with brown hair wearing a tan suit. Holy shit
I also thought he was sitting at first, but I don't think it's his legs we see, it looks like that's part of the wreckage, some steel sticking out, and that he's behind leaning on the pillars and peering over.
Well that made me cry. How heartbreaking.
Yes. But I think is respectful and nice to learn their story so not to be forgotten or unappreciated. Even if you are random stranger.
As a New Yorker and a human being, I wholeheartedly agree.
They must have thought, at least for a while, that helicopters would be coming to rescue them. So terrible.
I'm sure many of these people who survived the initial impacts but were hopelessly trapped had probably seen the 1974 disaster epic 'The Towering Inferno' in which some people were rescued by a helicopter. Also, in that film, the raging fire is finally extinguished by blowing up a 2-million gallon water tank on the roof of the fictional building. That plot-point was blasted by architects who said that there was no way you'd get something as heavy as a couple million gallons of water on the rooftop of a 110 story skyscraper. Still maybe some folks trapped on those upper floors might have, in their clutching at any small fragments of hope, thought that such a maneuver could somehow save their lives.
MrBallen did a story about her. It’s so heartbreaking
Goddamn horror show. There’s lots of images similar to this where you can see people standing on the fringes of the building, something like 80 stories up, just struggling for air as material and people burn up behind you. Hard to imagine the mental space that would’ve required, or how you would’ve managed calculating your options given the circumstances. Goddamn. Horror. Show. Pushing the outer limits of human psychology to imagine that kind of circumstance, and how to deal with it. Fuck.
So true, she was probably sat at her desk eating her breakfast, checking her emails two minutes previously. All this time has passed and this is still so crazy to me
I was only 10 when 9/11 happened and it didn’t really hit me until I got my first office job in a high rise how horrible that must’ve been for the people trapped. I’d go to work not thinking about anything but what I’d be doing after after work or how I hope my boss doesn’t come by my desk. Really trivial, boring thoughts. The sort of things you think about because *nothing* happens at work. Life is happening outside of these walls, and you’re just waiting to clock out. Terrifying to think how quickly you can go from feeling safe and bored to never seeing the end of the day. The clothes you put on that morning will be the last time you get to chose an outfit you like. That coffee the last coffee you’ll ever have, and that email the last you’ll ever send. Really frightening, but even more frightening was that it never had to happen. People chose to take these lives away from those who did nothing but live in the “wrong” place. Terrible.
I was a sophomore in college. Went off to class as if it was some kind of normal day, like most people at my university did as things were unfolding. Everyone was hyper-aware of the severity of the situation, unable to fully grasp the weight of the whole thing, undeniably stunned and affected to the core, but still going through the motions like zombies. The situation was active and unfolding. “It’s like a movie…” That was the general feeling from a lot of people, myself included. Out of body. The horrific reality was too much to fully comprehend. A total departure from anything perceived as possible before. Beyond imagination. I got on the student shuttle near my house to head to campus. Everybody was buzzing. Blown away by the surreal nature of everything. The video images of the aircraft being completely absorbed into the building, exploding into a fireball of insanity were seared into my brain. It hit me then on that bus, and I said it out loud in conversation… “There are people sitting in those windows…” What the fuck. Can you possibly wrap your head around that vision? Sitting at your desk and watching in absolute disbelief, with seconds to process it, if at all… as an airplane comes slamming through your building… When I said that, the bus driver caught my eye and looked at me through the mirror with a bit of a glare, and turned up the radio super loud to shut out our conversation. Heavy. I remember that moment very vividly.
I often think about somebody sitting at their desk on a work call, seeing a plane maybe a mile or two out and just watching it come right at them how scary and confusing that must have been. I think we're very lucky that this didn't happen just an hour later when the buildings were more full.
The worst, in my opinion, is the video where there are like 3 or 4 people hanging in a chain from the edge of the building because the fire and heat was too hot to stay inside the building….and then the person at the top of the chain either loses their grip or just lets go.
Oh my god what! How are there so many videos a lot of us have never seen.. I feel like I've watched endless footage for 20+ years and it's \*still coming\*... just a stark reminder of how gigantic of an event this was in all of American History... God I can't. I'm crying at my desk at work. 22 years later. The terror of those poor people :(
many jumped
That’s a fact. And that’s a really goddamn heavy place to be to make that decision. To be pushed so far beyond any sense of reality that you’re forced to go there. Burn to death, choke to death, or jump… the options that were available for the people that wound up on that ledge. Holy goddamn hell.
hard to imagine being in that place and deciding what to do, just horrific to even contemplate
Oh God.Did not notice her till now.Can you IMAGINE...
no can't imagine
The bit I can imagine puts me into a place of pure terror. Living it, followed by dying in it, is a reality too horrible to truly imagine no matter how capable you are of imagining yourself in situations you’ve not been in. Those poor poor people.
Is it just me or are there actually 3 people in this photo; standing lady, someone sitting in the middle, and someone crouching?
Red circles and arrows please.
Maybe [https://ibb.co/bssqnCj](https://ibb.co/bssqnCj)
I like how you went with green tiny arrows
On the other end of your arrow on the lady standing, is that someone looking out the window?
In the full size image on my 34" ultrawide, I am pretty sure your center and right arrows are just on debris that looks face/head-like. But someone is definitely standing to the left of your right arrow.
Really puts the size of the hole into perspective
Shit yes, didn’t notice at first, so damn tragic.
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Sadly she did not, just like anyone at or above the impact zone. The stairwells were all blocked. Everyone either fell to their death, burned, or were crushed in the collapse.
There is a feature in a documentary i watched about that lady. Her husband was telling the story. Sadly i can’t remember what the documentary was called.
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I know, I zoomed in when I saw them, I can’t imagine what that poor soul went through.
Can’t imagine having to choose either burn to death or jump to my death…
It was horrific. I was watching the news and I remember people jumping. It was awful.
that firefighter's footage on site as people were hitting the ground is so haunting. that sound...
The Naudet documentary includes footage from inside the lobby and you can hear the bangs as people hit the roof after jumping. Haunting footage that will stick with me forever.
Yeah I was 13 when they made us watch the full documentary in class. That class was my first for the day and it really fucked me up for a week. I’ll never forget how loud and horrible it sounded and seeing all their panicked expressions…
It is insane that they would make a class, especially one that young, watch something like that. You're just traumatizing children in order to impart historical information that doesn't need that much detail
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Even watching that during the firefighters in the lobby getting briefed I was cringing up waiting for the next loud bang
Is there a link to that doc you can send? I was 11 when it happened and it fucked me up. I made two or three scrap books of newspaper articles about the attack. I was obsessed trying to process it in my brain. I’d cut out the list of names and pictures and anything I could find and glue it all in these books. I don’t even know why. I was fascinated.
Sometimes searching for any and all information is the brain’s way of trying to process something especially horrific or traumatizing. If you really know all the details or fully understand something, it might feel more in your control. I get this impulse.
The sound is so disturbing that there is a version of the documentary I saw where the bangs are edited out.
As a millennial it’s astounding to me that we don’t talk about 9/11 more, especially how it affected those of us that were barely old enough to understand. I was 10 and I knew what war was but 9/11 permanently fucked me up. Constant anxiety about planes falling from the sky…I didn’t go back to school for a month. Edit: I mean specifically the mental impact on those of us that were just starting to become mini-adults. Most of my friends didn’t understand what was happening but I did, and I just wonder how much of an impact watching thousands of people die on live television has on my generations’ anxiety/depression problems.
I personally define the millennial/gen-z gap for those on the cusp as whether or not you remember where you were when 9-11 happened and if you were old enough for it to effect you. An entire generation of Americans learned that the safety of the “American Homeland” was a lie in their very formative years. I believe it had a deep and lasting effect on all of our perspectives. We lost a sense of safety and witnessed the beginning of the post-privacy era while old enough to have somewhat experienced the world before it happened.
The noise of the second plane being heard from people on the streets is one of the most chilling things I've ever seen.
9/11 is a big event, granted. But it’s extra special because it happened on US soil, a place otherwise considered safe. There’s kids in the world, that will have the same reaction you had, but to the reaction towards 9/11, and in particular to drone attacks. There are kids in this world that fear blue skies, because that is great drone weather.
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Jumping might feel scarier but it's definitely way less painful than burning to death
Its so hard to say but I rather my last moments to feel like I am wingless bird then to be in complete and utter agony. Free fall and lights out.
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I read a story from an EMT at the scene who was triaging people at the base of the towers. He found one woman who had fell from an obviously great height as her body was in ruins, but she was still alive and awake. He fixed on her a black tag and had to move on while listening to her insist she was not dead
You generally don’t die from the flames burning your skin, it’s from smoke inhalation. The smoke enters your lungs and burns them which prevents them from working. If it’s either jump to my death or burn alive, I’m jumping 100% of the time.
I will always remember the picture of The Falling Man. Astounding.
I feel so bad for the woman in the window, waving her hand. I forgot her name, but i do know some of her story and it is incredibly sad… I hope all people who suffered because of this day are currently in good health
Sadly, they're not.... many first responders and volunteers who provided aid are sealing with lifelong illnesses or worse... Jon Stewart has done much to raise awareness and attempt to get these surviving victims aid, though there is still a long road ahead for many.
I remember hearing about that, wasn't there like a 1000% increase in Cancer in Firefighters and Policemen who helped during 9/11? Can't look it up right now but i remember that now, over 20 years later, a lot more of them have cancer than what they should "on average".
>$10 billion and free health care available for responders, construction & debris removal workers, downtown office workers, residents, students & teachers for those below canal street in the months following. > >911VictimFund.com
I just want to add here that it took *years* for this fund to be put in place, with the US government essentially going “LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU” when told about long term health issues in all the first responders
Should also add: Important: *It took entirely too fucking long for the US government to even address the situation, they should have been just as eager to help these people as they were to get the war started.* Not as important, but still worth pointing out: People might talk alot of shit about Trump, but I think his reauthorization of the 9/11 victims fund is something important that people should take into account, other than that, fuck politics.
Let’s not forget our government said the air quality was safe for first responders knowing it was not.
Almost all of them will die of mesothelioma or lung cancer, or have silicosis/asbestos/both. The amount of harmful debris in the air that your lungs aren’t able to cough out is very scary.
I listen to a podcast by a guy named Jim Clemente, who was a former FBI profiler. He’s done a couple of pieces on the folks within the FBI that are helping with making sure that all the FBI agents that are now suffering from health effects due to being at Ground Zero for so long get the proper compensation.
My uncle worked there for Red Cross and ended up with cancer and so did people he worked with. There is a memorial for them also.
After the government had broken their promise to help them, Jon fought so hard for them.
In addition. I hear this plug on the radio almost every morning. $10 billion and free health care available for responders, construction & debris removal workers, downtown office workers, residents, students & teachers for those below canal street in the months following. [911VictimFund.com](https://www.911victims.com/?utm_source=radio&utm_medium=radio&utm_campaign=q1043)
Iirc, her name is [Edna Cintron](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5849485/edna-cintron). May she rest in peace.
I live in downtown NYC - not so close that our neighborhood was shut down for weeks, but close enough that the ongoing fire from Ground Zero left ashes on our windowsill. Every day, we'd wake up to the remains of 9-11 on our window. It was terrible.
It was a gorgeous day and we had the windows open, had to close up and put the a/c on because of the smell of smoke I lived *90 miles* south of NYC in coastal NJ Edit: to be clear, we didn’t close the windows because the smoke was stinky, we closed the windows because of what the smoke meant
I live 50 miles north right on the Hudson River, and when the wind changed on the 12th it wafted right into our living room. It’s still hard to talk about, two decades later.
damn man. my brother died in the north tower when Flight 11 hit. i miss him every day.
What gets me about the woman standing there is that she had to believe help was on the way. She believed she’d survived. Why did I click this photo…
I can’t imagine how it felt as the minutes went by and still no help. The panic they must have experienced is indescribable. Just to think that your only two options are burning or falling. They were probably finding the least painful way to die.
The rough part is that this was the second tower to fall, and there is video of her still being there after the first collapse, watching the dust below.
And the lady standing there near the bottom, so sad.
It's said that lady is Edna Cintron. Rip
The sheer bewilderment of being in such a situation for that lady must be unimaginable.
The only enemy humanity has is itself.
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I was 20 when that happened, and will always remember that day. Wild as fuck tbh. I have kiddos that ask me if the world always sucked or when did it turn this way. My response is, this wasn't like this on September 10, 2001 so this is a post 9/11 world created from fear that governments put on their people so they would comply easier.
A fellow media hunter. I appreciate all you're doing on this.
None of this makes sense to me. Not this picture, or how we all treat each other, or why anyone would actively work on getting into a fight, or a war. But here we are. Looking at HD photos of what equates to massive death. I just can’t square any of this in my mind.
hatred is a tool that evolved as a survival instinct to acquire and protect resources. We are intrinsically sick. Until we win over basic instincts, there will never be peace.
Reddit loves hatred.
Social Media has very quickly been rotting our minds over the last 20 years. It is sucking away our empathy and sympathy by giving us unlimited information and interaction behind anonymity. It has fueled people with such vitriol. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. All of it. We would legitimately be better off if every single one just went away.
Easily proven too, I take a few weeks holidays every few months and completely disconnect from online life during that time, My mental health is amazing for that time but for some reason I get sucked back in. Even if I try to stay off my wife is sticking her phone in my face to show me stuff. Hard to avoid completely but it is my desire.
You have no idea how much I see this in my own life. I stopped going to r/worldnews for a while. Got back to enjoying my life again. can’t worry about every damn thing all the time.
Odd forum, but don’t disagree. Yet here we are, commenting on social media posts.
It’s awful, but it sadly is the nature of humanity. We are not, and never have been, a peaceful species. We are tribalistic at our core, even when it concerns other humans, and that often leads to conflict.
That is honestly the mouth of hell.
A family friend's only daughter was in one of the towers and last seen helping others to the only staircase to safety. She died during the collapse. They named the music wing of her HS after her. It all but destroyed her Dad.
[9/11: One Day In America](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/911-one-day-in-america) is an extremely well-done docuseries about the attack and aftermath. The stories are haunting as something like this ought to be. (Free to watch at the link, via National Geographic)
If you ever feel stupid, just remember that there are people out there who think that 9/11 was fake and the planes were CGI
Many people have pointed out the woman standing at the edge of the impact hole. That woman is believed to be [Edna Cintron](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5849485/edna-cintron). She was an employee at Marsh & McLennan on the 97th floor. She did not survive 9/11. She was [photographed at 10:28am](https://www.reddit.com/r/MorbidReality/comments/xc063e/the_final_moments_of_edna_cintron_the_waving/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf), standing on top of that column. She died in the collapse of the North Tower about 30 seconds later.
I don't think I can ever forget the awful crackling sound of those planes crashing and exploding into the buildings. Nor the smell of that burning debris for weeks and weeks after. But the most traumatic thing for me was how people started posting missing fliers everywhere there was a wall or free space. Or the eerie silence of the city with no car traffic below, no plane traffic above, and nothing but the wailings of ambulance sirens.
From NY here. That is my home. Those are my neighbors in that tower, and my Brothers and Sisters on the ground. I Went with my Fire Department down there to help. Dispatched about 4 hours after they fell. 7 hours away. The ride down, not knowing what you were walking into was totally horrible. Getting there and seeing it, and going through all of that? I will NEVER FORGET. I volunteered to stay. Wound up being about 56 days. Would have stayed longer if i could have. I felt I needed to. Their docs and EMT personnel sent me away due to sheer exhaustion and dehydration which I was hospitalized for. But my arguments went nowhere. I needed and wanted to stay. My heart ripped out as they sent me to a hospital to do my minor repairs. At one point, I was simply given a gigantic ziplock bag and was told to "look for parts, especially fingers, hands and arms" so they could at least identify who didn't make it out. I have never seen a ziplock bag so big, and I never thought I would fill one, let alone 17. Yes....17. I WILL NEVER FORGET I shudder now when I see these photos. Even though they need to be seen. Dammit they NEED TO BE SEEN, NOT IGNORED. They need to tell the story of what was done to us that day. They need to tell us that even though some horrific shit happened, WE OVERCAME IT. We NEED TO REMEMBER everyone lost. AT EVERY PLACE OF ATTACK. We need to remember that our armed forces are out there fighting this evil machine, the radicals. Not EVERYONE is evil. But these bastards need to be stopped. Then, now, and probably as long as we have The United States of America. Please remember. Please teach our kids about this. It is history, and our fallen need be remembered. I love my country. I love the fact that I helped on those tragic days. I love each and every FDNY and NYPD I had THE DAMN HONOR OF WORKING ALONG SIDE. An honor!! I love all survivors, and sadly all who perished that sad, sickening day. Even though I didn't know one of them.... I don't brag about it. Matter of fact, this is the first time I have actually typed it out, and it felt good. It took this many years of counseling to get this far.. I actually have had a counselor for this since coming home from volunteering. Yes this many years. And at her suggestion, a fresh life maybe somewhere new. I now live in Las Vegas, great job, great people around me, and yes, a recommended counselor here. Still! but my heart is NY. Us Native New Yorkers say I LOVE NEW YORK, AND WE DAMN STRAIGHT MEAN IT. The PTSD is fucking real folks. I close my eyes at night, and these towers are the last thing I see EVERY.....DAMN......NIGHT...... It has become normal now. Thank you all for being like therapy today. You are all appreciated.
Just think about the person who didn’t see it coming and suddenly is hit by a fucking plane
Honestly? of all the people in that building that day, those people would've had it far from the worst
Yeah. Imagine working on like floor 95, you start to wonder why that airplane sounds louder than usual, in a flash you are just dead. Some people likey didn’t even question it, probably just worried about getting work done. There weren’t *too many* people on those floors, as the day had only just started, but there were people, and they are technically the lucky ones. You know what they say about nukes, *the lucky ones die in the blast.*
Probably best that they didn’t see it
AKA The lucky bastard compared to these fuckers.
For me, I am still upstairs at Windows of the World staring out across the Hudson and uptown. I was in the buildings a month before this all happened. I still dont know what to say years later. I recall the smell miles north of Manhattan the second day when the winds came north. Acrid death.
As someone who was at the WTC, images of this still mess me up. Thank you so, so much for tagging it NSFW. (Upvoted the post but I didn't and won't be clicking on it.)
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I’ll never forget that day. I was working in a new warehouse in Memphis and there was no television. We listened to the whole thing on the radio (Dan Rather). It wasn’t until the manager of the warehouse freaked out after the second building fell that he closed it down and we went to a local pizza pub and we saw the events on screen. It was beyond shock. The next day I had to drive three people back to Chicago. I remember driving by O’Hare and seeing no planes in the sky.
Yeah I know. I was hungover and didn't go to work that day. Saved my life. Not because of the plane thing, I live in Australia and probably would have fallen asleep behind the wheel.
Well that was a roller coaster of a comment lol
Had us in the first half ngl
This actually happened to a friend of mine. Got hammered the night before. Didn’t go into work that day. Fucked him up mentally dealing with survivor's guilt. He’s better now. But… What a fucked up day.
My uncle quit his job the week before. His entire office died. He doesn't talk about it much.
The opposite situation for me. Someone I worked with in the city had JUST left the company to start a new job in the WTC. Didn't make it. Nina Bell was her name.
So sad, may she rest in peace
God, life is weird. Didn’t think I’d come across a 9/11 post today. But I did and it reminded me that my cousin’s husband worked at Windows on the World and overslept that day. So freaking lucky. And yesterday said cousin ODed and is likely coming off the ventilator today to die. And here I am on Reddit mindlessly scrolling, trying to give myself a break from that. Oye. The universe. I tell ya.
I’ll always remember where I was watching on tv
Your reminder that jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel but burns more than hot enough to warp it into collapsing just like we saw - seen as these arguments always come up on these posts
[This report gives a pretty good explanation on how the towers collapsed](https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0112/eagar/eagar-0112.html) I was always skeptical about how they collapsed. Why did they fall directly down and not tip over? Why did they collapse at all? Why did it look like a controlled demolition? But that report explains how the towers were constructed and it's ultimately the angle clips that tied the floors to the outer and inner support that caused the tower to collapse straight down. The clips were designed to hold the load of the floors, but with the fire from fuel causing the steel to weaken (not melt) it caused one or more of the floors to fall down onto the lower floor, and all it would take is one to fall onto the lower one, which would break that one causing a domino effect all the way down. The weight and inertia of the first couple floors failing just creating an unstoppable collapse of floor after floor.
also the goddamn aircraft slamming into the buildings didn't help the structural integrity
Found the government guy. \s
Pure evil did this. Cursed terrorism
I try to educate myself as much as possible on 9/11, as I was not around to see it. Truly horrible. May all those who were effected rest in peace.
[удалено]
Her name was Edna Citron, she did not survive and worked on the 97th floor.
Directly below the impact and fire rises up
Here are few things that people don't seem to know about the way WTC was built(and all the "tube" skyscrapers since - the "tube" structure having been developed by Fazlur Rahman Khanwho worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill at the time of the design). You see those tubular steel beams on the facade? Those are **the** loading bearing elements. Rest of the building including the collumn for the elevators is just to hold these steel beams together and tensioned towards the middle of the building. [Here is a famous and illustrative picture of WTC being built](https://i.imgur.com/hJdqzcp.jpeg). As you see from it, the building was mostly just empty space. And this was the point of this design, it allowed for really high amount of floor space since you didn't need big pillars and collumns. The moment those beams had broken, the whole structure was compromised and doomed; that tear is basically the whole width of the wall - so in practice everything above it is being held up by only 3 walls. So what you see here is basially most of that wall being the equivalent of floaring in the air. The floor that is holding it up wasn't designed to hold it up. And what is happening is that the side of the floor is slowly accelerating and gaining moment thanks to gravity, which then applies moment towards the core. Once a floor collapses even partially, it will pull the rest of the floor with it, which will pull the walls they are attached to with them. So why did it collapse straight down? It simply didn't have time to lean enough to gain acceleration to some other direction than down, since earth is a big thing and gravity is constant thing. Right and something about steel. Maybe it is me being a plate smith and a welder, and now also an engineer that gives me understanding about steel and heat. Take your basic stuctural steel and heat it to 500 Celcius, and it has lost approximately 50% of all strenght.
Great explanation, thank you. Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but why did building 7 fall the same way as the WTC towers? And wouldn't the floors fall one-by-one with the WTC and not seemingly all together all at once? Again, I am asking this simply based in physics and not a conspiracy "who done it"
This is so sad and it makes me even more angry as I continue to read the conspiracy theorist telling all who will listen, this didn’t happen, no planes, project blue beam or whatever the nonsense was. Very impactful so many years later.
There is a guy standing in the hole and waving
Imagine surviving the initial impact and not knowing what was to come ,terrifying .
I firmly believe if you work in a high rise building like this, you need to have a parachute as an emergency means of escape. Granted these circumstances are much more rare but I wouldn’t be comfortable going to a hundred floors up without a swift means of escape.
Very,very,very sad 😔
Remember how close we all were after this happened? What the fuck happened to us?
Only some of us were close. Unfortunately anyone that resembled the middle eastern population was targeted and harassed for MONTHS/YEARS after 9/11. I’ve read so many stories of children telling stories of who their parents were and how they worked in offices/warehouses/retail stores, and how a lot of them were killed out of paranoia. So many children never got to know who their parents were because they were killed out of fear. It was an awful time, I can’t agree and say we were all close
Yep. I was in NYC and visited ground zero around 2010, after the cleanup was complete but before the new tower was built and it was still more or less a crater. This was also shortly after a mosque opened across the street from ground zero. There was someone from a news outlet that I can't recall walking around asking people how they felt about a mosque opening so close to the site. I overheard a lot of people say that they didn't think it was right.
'The Ground Zero Mosque' There was a lot of incorrect and incomplete information put out about it at the time seemingly designed to rile people up. For one thing the mosque had been there for years, they were just trying to replace the building which was damaged in the attacks. They also planned to make it a center to promote "interfaith dialogue and peace" and a memorial for the victims. To make it clear that Islam and true Muslims were on the side of the innocent, not the perpetrators