How many people were saved on September 11th? New life. Escaped from the South Tower a few minutes before the collision

14 years ago, on September 11, terrorists flew two airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York. This disaster claimed the lives of almost three thousand people and probably changed both US policy and the course of our history. But when we think about it, we don’t think about politics, but involuntarily glance out the window, thinking: what will I do if my office now shakes from the impact, a fire breaks out and water gushes from broken pipes?

That's why we've collected the stories of five people who survived the very center of hell. They are still tormented by nightmares and a sense of guilt towards those who survived, although they have nothing to blame themselves for.

Fred Eichler

Fred, a 54-year-old insurance agent, reported to his office on the 83rd floor of the North Tower at 8:15 a.m. on September 11, 2001. At 8:40 Fred went to the restroom, but on the way he met four colleagues and they stopped to chat. Dazed, they watched out the window as the plane flew towards their building. At 8.46 he crashed into a skyscraper, destroying everything in his path. The shock wave scattered Fred and his colleagues across the floor. After regaining consciousness, the man called 911 and then called home to talk to his wife, daughters and parents. He was sure that he would never see them again.

Fred walked into the meeting room and was joined by three strangers.

One of them, a lawyer named Jonathan Judd, 37, sobbed: “My wife just had a baby. I'll never see them again." Fred hugged him and said, "We'll get through this."

The floor was gradually filled with smoke, and streams of water from broken pipes rushed through the corridors and staircases. Those gathered stuffed wet rugs and towels into the crack under the door, trying to stop the smoke. After consulting, they decided not to open the windows, fearing that the air would fan the flames.

At 9.02 and 54 seconds the second blow was heard: the plane crashed into the neighboring South Tower. Fred and his group decided to try to get out on the fire escape. But when they got to the door, the lights in the building went out. They returned to the meeting room and hid under the tables. They were lucky. Just one floor above, the smoke and heat were so intense that people were suffocating or thrown out of windows

At 9:30 Fred saw the light of a flashlight. A firefighter reached their floor. He saved the people he found, but died himself. The fireman led the survivors to the stairs and advised them to turn right on the 78th floor and go down another one. On the 20th floor they heard another impact sound. The entire building shook, a gust of wind filled the air with ash that grated on the teeth. It was the South Tower that collapsed. North began to tremble. Elevators fell into openings, stairs swayed. When Fred reached the first floor, the only way out was through the broken glass. On the street, he asked someone for a phone and dialed his wife's number. She screamed into the phone: “Run, run, run!” The firefighters and police shouted the same thing. A few minutes later the North Tower collapsed.

Janice Brooks

Janice Brooks, 42, a personal assistant, was resting after a 20-minute run along the promenade. She was sitting at her desk on the 84th floor of the South Tower when she heard a strange, hollow sound. Outside the office window, papers were flying in all directions. Someone shouted: “Run!” Janice decided to first ask permission from her boss, who had left for London. Another colleague answered the phone, having already heard the news on TV.

Janice said, "Rob, there's something going on here, but we're okay and we're going to get out."
The man yelled back: “Is something going on!? *** hell, Janice, a plane crashed into you. You f*** are from there!

Janice rushed down the stairs with the others. They had descended 12 floors when a message came over the loudspeaker that the tower was stable and everyone should return to their seats. Janice began to get up and fell behind her colleagues. When she finally reached the door, the building was rocked by a shock that destroyed floors 78 to 84. Torn apart aluminum panels and steel furniture were scattered in all directions like hot shrapnel. When Janice and the people gathered with her on the landing were able to open the door, bloody victims fell out to meet them. One woman’s hand was cut off, a man’s chest was covered in glass shards, another woman, with a bloody face, repeated that she couldn’t see anything.

It was impossible to go down: the fire escape had collapsed. In the smoke, the survivors miraculously found the door to another, the only surviving staircase. Janice had long since kicked off her high-heeled shoes and felt the fragments of Coca-Cola bottles from the exploded machine digging into her feet. It was only in the first floor foyer, strewn with bodies and debris, that she more or less realized what had happened. The policeman took her and the others outside and said: “Just don’t look up. Bow your head and run.”

Frank Razzano

On the morning of September 11, the famous American lawyer Frank Razzano was sleeping in his room on the 19th floor of the Marriott Hotel, one of the 10 buildings destroyed by the collapse of the Twin Towers. He woke up from the sound of the first blow, saw papers flying outside the window and returned to bed. A few minutes later a second blow was heard. The plane crashed into the South Tower, which Frank's windows overlooked. Razzano turned on the TV and heard the news. He still thought that there was nothing to worry about, because all the problems were 60 floors above. The firefighters will arrive and everything will be okay.

Frank took a shower, got dressed, packed his things and suddenly felt as if the hotel was being shelled by heavy artillery: the South Tower began to fall apart. Through the window, the lawyer saw mountains of concrete and steel falling from the sky, as if in slow motion. He ran to the opposite side of the room and pressed himself against the wall.

Only two thoughts remained in his mind: he would not see his daughter’s wedding and how nice it would be for his death to be quick and painless.

Suddenly the roar stopped. Razzano looked out into the corridor and shouted: “Is anyone alive?” Someone replied: “Come here.” The firefighter directed Razzano to the stairs. While falling, the tower broke the hotel in the middle, but the far staircase remained intact. Razzano followed it to the third floor, and there, together with a group of people, climbed through a gap in the wall to the second floor. A few minutes later, the North Tower collapsed and buried the remains of the hotel. Only the southern edge of several lower floors remained intact. That's where Razzano was. But then he and his companions could not breathe. The air seemed to consist of nothing but dirt and dust. People coughed, fell to the ground and suffocated. Still, the dust settled, and people managed to find another crack in the wall and, with the help of a carpet, descend to the mountain of rubble. There, the police helped Razzano get to the doctors - he received a skull injury (Razzano never remembered where exactly).

Pascal Bazzeli

Pascal Bazzeli with his family

Pascal, a 43-year-old design engineer, was in the North Tower elevator when the first shock was heard. The elevator stopped on the 44th floor, and Pascal saw people panicking, but decided to go up to his office on the 64th floor. He called his pregnant wife and asked her to turn on the TV and find out what was going on. When she told him what was happening, Buzzelli and his colleagues surrounded the office television and saw the plane fly into a nearby tower. They rushed to the stairs and managed to go down to the 22nd floor when the building began to fall.

Buzzelli turned out to be an incredibly lucky man - curled up in a ball, he rolled down the rubble 15 floors down like a surfer on a huge wave or like an action hero and, most amazingly, survived.

On the way down, Bazzeli lost consciousness and came to his senses three hours later in the ruins of the seventh floor. The flight from such a height only cost him a broken leg. All his colleagues died. Pascal for a long time did not dare to tell anyone about his fantastic luck, but there were witnesses to his flight.

Ron DiFrancesco

Ron DiFrancesco (second from right) with family

At the time of the first collision, the 37-year-old broker was on the 84th floor of his office in the South Tower. He saw smoke and went to the fire exit. At this time, the second plane crashed into the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors. DiFrancesco was slammed into the wall by the shock wave, but remained conscious and rushed down the fire escape. On the way, he met a group of people who told him that it was better to run upstairs, because a fire was breaking out below. While they were arguing, a cry for help was heard. DiFrancesco and his colleague ran towards the sound, but Ron began to choke on the smoke and was forced to turn.

Ron went up the stairs again in search of clean air, but the doors on the next landing were blocked. Difrancesco went back down. He reached the landing area and lay on the floor among other gasping people. Panic began to seize him.

Someone's voice told him to get up and move on. Ron covered his head with his hands, broke through the wall of fire and ran down the stairs. DiFrancesco is considered last person, who managed to get out of the South Tower before it collapsed. And, most likely, he is one of only four people who were able to get out of the collision zone at all.

Finally, Ron reached the first floor, where a guard directed him to the exit. As Ron approached the door, there was a monstrous noise - it was a building falling. The man turned around and saw a red-hot wall of fire rushing towards him. Two days later, he woke up in hospital with burns all over his body, cuts to his head and a broken spine.

Text: Elizaveta Ponomareva

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September 11 will mark 15 years since the largest terrorist attack in world history. On an autumn day in 2001, two passenger planes hijacked by terrorists rammed the World Trade Center towers, a third plane was sent to the Pentagon building, and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania. Almost 3 thousand people died.

Among the victims of a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks were Americans, Canadians, British, French, Japanese, Chinese - people different ages and nationalities, including 25 immigrants from the former USSR.

Some miraculously managed to escape. Two of the surviving Russians, Andrei Tkach and Alexander Skibitsky, shared their stories.

Andrey Tkach, a native of Novosibirsk, lives in the USA

“At 8:45 I was at work, on the 72nd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I had just grabbed some coffee and was about to sit down to write my report. Even before it shook, I heard some strange whistle - then, remembering, I realized that it was the noise from an airplane engine approaching the tower. And immediately after that the whole building literally moved several meters, no one could stay on their feet, everyone fell. The first thought is an earthquake. We froze, not understanding what was happening. I went to the window, and for some reason papers and some burning garbage were falling from the sky. There is no smoke or fire visible, and it is completely unclear what is happening. What to do next - too.

We called the Rescue Service. They said: you need to stay in your places and wait for instructions. My colleague Duck Keenan, the longest-serving employee of our firm, said then: the main thing is not to panic, because in the 1993 terrorist attack, many more people died not from the explosion, but because they were trampled by the crowd rushing to the exit . And now you need to behave calmly and act in an organized manner.

And then my wife got through to someone and said: on CNN they say that a plane crashed into us. I immediately said: “We have to go down.” They objected to me that it was better to wait for instructions. The same Dak said that if we go, then go to the roof, because last time people were evacuated from there by helicopters. They started arguing about whether to leave or not, and where. We decided to find out from the Rescue Service. I couldn’t dial for a long time - there was no connection or it was busy. And when they finally got through, they ordered us to stay put.

And then I saw how flying past our windows men's suit. I’ll be honest: at first I didn’t understand who came up with the idea of throwing the suit down and why. And then suddenly I realized that it was a man. I decided to give up on everything and leave. The rest were left to wait for instructions or rescuers.

When I went out into the corridor, there was already smoke there. The stairs were also covered with it, it was dark and very hot, almost unbearably hot. Several dozen people were descending from above, but so far only a few. Some were wounded, with burns - the rest helped them and encouraged them. We walked down slowly, because with each floor we passed, more people arrived: they appeared from the side exits, we had to stop and let a new batch pass. There were especially many people on the stairs when the general evacuation was finally announced. Some doors were warped and jammed, we helped open them.

It was impossible to overtake those walking - the stairs were very narrow, you couldn’t warm up. Because of the smoke and dust, it became more difficult to breathe - people were coughing and suffocating. I really regretted that, like a complete idiot, I had not thought to wet my clothes in advance to cover my mouth and nose, but now it was too late, there was nowhere to get water. He covered his face with a scarf. Then for the first time the idea occurred to me that a person’s life is measured not by the years lived, but by the number of breaths taken. I wondered how many more breaths I could take before I died.

Somewhere in the middle of the path we met the first firefighters going up. They walked in full gear and carried equipment. There seemed to be an infinite number of them. Due to the oncoming flow, the stairs became even more crowded. When they got up, water from fire extinguishers began to pour on us from above.

I don’t know if it was my imagination or not, but gradually the building began to crack and sway. Some kind of animal fear appeared, he pushed, said: “Run!” If it weren’t for the crowd blocking the way, I would have run, but there was no such opportunity. We descended more and more slowly, and the fear became stronger. When we were almost at the bottom, it shook again so much that many were thrown off their feet. A terrible stream of hot dusty smoke suddenly hit us in the face. I didn't understand what happened. Then I found out that it was because the South Tower collapsed.

As soon as we reached the exit from this vertical hell and the opportunity to escape appeared, I ran. Human bodies fell nearby. When they hit the ground, people split like watermelons. A man running a few meters in front of me was crushed by a falling concrete block, only blood sprayed out. Then I didn’t really see what was around me, I rushed without looking back, like never before in my life.

When I was already about five hundred meters away, I was suddenly lifted into the air and carried above the ground. It was the North Tower that collapsed, but I didn’t know about it at the time. Having fallen, he flew head over heels. When I got up, I couldn’t figure out where to run next for about ten seconds. Everything around was reminiscent of a black and white film about nuclear winter. Dust and ash are billowing, there is a thick layer of dust and concrete chips everywhere, papers and debris are swirling in the air. A little further down the street lies a fire truck turned upside down. And for some reason her wheels are spinning in the air.

A numbness came over me. I remember: I stood and, without looking away, looked at these wheels. I don't know how long I stood there. Then a man came up to me, touched me on the shoulder and asked if I was okay. Then I finally came to my senses, shook off the dust and went. I don't remember how I got to the Brooklyn Bridge. There were already thousands of people there - the metro was not working, everyone was walking. The crowd was huge, but it was very quiet. Everyone was in a depressed mood: after 9/11, New York stopped smiling for a while. Fighter planes whizzed overhead in the sky.

In Brooklyn, a car stopped next to me and the driver offered to take me home. I wanted to pay the fare, but he categorically refused. He said that he had already taken several people and was going to transport those who managed to get out of Manhattan unharmed until the evening. Along the way we saw the first American flags hanging from balconies and windows. Then there were a lot of these flags.

The smoke over Manhattan remained for four more days, until rain fell on September 15, and the smell of burning remained in the city until the spring, until the last of the debris was removed.”

Alexander Skibitsky, a native of Krasnoyarsk, lives in Canada

“September 11, 2001 was a beautiful day - it was Indian summer, which in the States for some reason is called Indian summer. I was in a corresponding, elated mood: over the weekend, my wife and I were going to leave our son with a nanny and relax for the first time in a long time - give up on the Hudson. I remember that I even hummed to myself when I started the computer. My desk in the office on the 65th floor of the South Tower was next to the window, and I loved that on a clear day you could even see the curvature of the horizon. Before getting down to business, out of habit, I went to the window, stood, admired the view, and drank coffee.

I didn’t see the plane that crashed into the North Tower, nor did I see the explosion - our office windows faced the other side. But we all felt the explosion: it shook. No one really understood what happened.

As soon as it became known that the North Tower was on fire, everyone immediately grabbed their phones and started calling their relatives. They said that everything was fine with them, that they were not injured. And I had one thought: “I’ll call you later, but now I need to make sure that everything is really fine with me.” I immediately decided that I needed to get out as quickly as possible, otherwise you never know. What if the North Tower collapses on ours or something else happens.

Of course, I could not even imagine that another plane would soon crash into our tower. No one imagined that the neighboring tower was attacked on purpose; everyone decided it was an accident. I remember they were still surprised at what kind of idiot you had to be to crash into a skyscraper with such excellent visibility as it is today.

They announced over the loudspeaker that there was no threat to us and that evacuation was not required. You need to stay put so as not to interfere with the police and firefighters working around the North Tower. The boss decided to play it safe and ordered, just in case, to start packing documentation and computers. My Bangladeshi friend Wally and I talked on the sidelines and decided: no matter what they say, we need to get out.

We took the high-speed elevator downstairs. There, security blocked the flow of people and announced: everyone should immediately return to their jobs; the South Tower was not in danger. The disciplined Americans turned back and began to take the elevators upstairs, and Wally and I slipped out. Having gone down, I tried to call my wife to say that I was alive, but the mobile connection no longer worked.

Below, everything was littered with broken glass and concrete, and the wreckage of the plane was burning. We were forced to literally step over them. The sirens of fire trucks and ambulances roared around, and helicopters circled in the sky. When we had moved to a safe distance, as it seemed to us, we stopped to see what was happening. Smoke was pouring out of the North Tower - I had never seen smoke so black before. We managed to see how, above the line of fire, people were climbing out and somehow holding on, grabbing onto the columns. Several people were seen jumping or falling out of windows. One couple fell, holding hands to the last.

And then we heard the sound of a low-flying plane - it looked like an underground train was approaching us at great speed. And immediately after that there was an explosion. We looked over and saw that our tower, the South one, was burning. A literally ball of fire shot up above her. I mentally crossed myself: “It’s good that I got out.” And some man standing next to me exhaled: “This is war.” And then I realized that he was right.

All hell broke loose all around. People ran out of the towers in crowds, covered in soot and dust, bloodied. They fell from the tops of the towers and crashed to the ground. Some of the fallen bodies were on fire, and attempts were made to extinguish them. The police tried to organize the evacuation, calm and order the crowd, but they were not very successful.

Relatives of many were already waiting behind the cordon line, having rushed to Manhattan after seeing the news of the attack. I still remember how one guy’s wife and two children literally jumped on him to hug him. All together they fell to the ground, lay there and laughed with happiness. Those who had not yet waited for their relatives prayed. The women were crying.

The south tower, which collapsed first, collapsed so quickly that for some time the smoke preserved its outline. You see: she was no longer there, but there was smoke in this place. The crowd around us barely had time to exhale in one voice, “Oh, my God!” before it was all over. A huge wave of smoke, ash and dust fell on us. This shaft looked exactly like the special effects in the movies, but it was all real. It was hard to believe it, I couldn’t help but feel like it was all a dream, a decoration, this doesn’t happen in real life.

When the dust settled, it seemed to me that everything around seemed to be covered with snow. Like a house of cards, overturned cars lie one on top of the other. The windows of the houses are broken. Pieces of some kind of garbage and sheets of paper are flying in the air. It was impossible to make out who was around you - everyone was covered with such a thick layer of dust. It seemed to me that the same thick layer of dust was now inside us. My lungs were completely clogged - I then thought that I would never be able to breathe normally again, I would never get rid of this dust.

A man standing not far from us was wounded by a piece of debris. I approached the policeman and said: “There’s a wounded man there.” He turns to me - and on top of the layer of dust on his face there are grooves from tears. For some reason, it was this picture that stuck with me the most. Wally and I helped the wounded man get to the nearest ambulance.

I also remember how some elderly woman rushed along the street, rushing to every passerby, asking with despair and hope in her voice: “Frankie?” I tried to wipe the dust off my faces to see if it was him or not. People only shook their heads negatively in response - no one could speak. I still don’t know who this Frankie was to her - son, husband, brother?

We were lucky to get a taxi. Along the way, the taxi driver stopped two more times and picked up walking people covered in ashes. He even put a man in the front seat, something New York taxi drivers usually never do. Only in the taxi did I truly believe that I was alive. We thought then that not thousands, but tens of thousands of people died in the World Trade Center towers. It sounds cynical, but it was very lucky that there were much fewer victims.”

Exactly ten years have passed since the tragic day for the United States - four attacks organized by suicide bombers from the Al-Qaeda organization. Nineteen militants hijacked four passenger airliners. Two of these airliners were directed by the hijackers into the World Trade Center towers in New York, causing both towers to collapse within a few hours. The third plane was sent to the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Passengers and crew of the fourth airliner attempted to take control of the plane, causing the plane to crash into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In total, about three thousand people died as a result of terrorist attacks.

Let's remember how it was.

1. A plane approaches the World Trade Center building moments before the attack on the second tower, September 11, 2001. Two skyscrapers, each with 110 floors, collapsed, burying people beneath them.

3. United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston crashed into the south side of the South Tower (WTC 2) at 9:03 a.m. on September 11th. The terrorist attack killed 2,800 people.

4. Bush's Chief of Staff Andy Card briefs the President on what happened at the World Trade Center during Bush's visit to primary school Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, September 11, 2001.

5. Burning World Trade Center towers behind the Empire State Building in New York, September 11, 2001.

6. The man who fell from the window of the north tower of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attack.

7. The South Tower of the World Trade Center, left, begins to collapse after the attacks on September 11, 2001. The second tower collapsed much faster than the first, as it received more serious damage, experts say.

8. Fleeing eyewitnesses of the disaster. Fourth from left is Charlie Ross.

9. People are rushing to leave the area of the terrorist attack in panic.

11. Covered from head to toe in dust, Marcy Borders, one of the eyewitnesses of the disaster.

12. Dominic Guadanoli helps a woman injured during a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers.

13. The Statue of Liberty in thick clouds of smoke rising from the collapsed towers of the World Trade Center, September 15, 2001.

14. Edward Fine, one of the eyewitnesses of the disaster. He was on the 78th floor of the World Trade Center during the suicide attack.

15. A firefighter calls for help from ten other colleagues during rescue efforts at the ruins of the World Trade Center on September 14, 2001.

16. Rescuers provide assistance to a wounded woman.

17. Survivors of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers make their way among the ruins, dust and debris on Fulton Street.

18. Julia McDermott, center, is one of those lucky enough to survive the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center buildings.

19. American flag on the ruins of the World Trade Center. It should be noted that one of the consequences of the terrorist attack was an unprecedented intensification of patriotic sentiments in society, and the flag, which had largely lost its popularity during political conflicts, the Vietnam War, and anti-American protests in European countries, again became a symbol of the nation.

20. An injured firefighter screams in pain after being wounded during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

21. People leave the scene of the disaster in panic.

22. A man with a fire extinguisher on the ruins of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.

23. Firefighters at the ruins of the World Trade Center.

24. Brooklyn police officers George Johnson, left, Dan McWilliams, center, and Billy Eisengrein, right, raise a flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

September 11, 2016 marks 15 years since the terrorist attacks, unprecedented in world history, were committed in the United States. The tragedy claimed the lives of almost three thousand people.

19 terrorists are Egyptian citizens, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Lebanon - hijacked 4 passenger airliners. Two planes were sent into the skyscrapers of the World Trade Center in New York, the third airliner crashed into the Pentagon building. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania - its passengers and crew tried to take control of the airliner from terrorists.

The victims of the terrorist attacks were 2,977 people from 92 countries: 246 passengers and crew members of aircraft, 2,606 people in New York, in the World Trade Center buildings and on the ground (of which 341 firefighters and 2 paramedics of the New York Fire Department, 60 police officers and 8 employees "ambulance"), 125 people - in the Pentagon building.

The attacks caused the 110-story twin towers to collapse. Work to clear the World Trade Center site lasted more than eight months. Burning and smoldering in the rubble at the site of the collapsed Twin Towers continued for 99 days before the fire was completely extinguished.

Chronicle of the 9/11 tragedy

The moment the first plane collides with a shopping center skyscraper. Video: Youtube

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Video: Youtube

Passersby on the streets of New York point to the World Trade Center complex. September 11, 2001
People look out of the windows of the North Tower. September 11, 2001
The President of the United States is introduced to schoolchildren, after which George W. Bush begins to read to them the book “The Pet Goat.” At this moment, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card approaches him and reports: “The second plane crashed into the second tower. America is under attack." September 11, 2001
People watch the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers. September 11, 2001
Rescuers carry a mortally wounded man from the destroyed World Trade Center building. September 11, 2001
Burning World Trade Center towers. September 11, 2001
A helicopter circles the burning Pentagon after one of the hijacked planes crashes into the building. September 11, 2001
A group of firefighters among the rubble of the World Trade Center complex. September 11, 2001
A helicopter circles near one of the World Trade Center towers. September 11, 2001
In the background is the smoldering World Trade Center building. September 11, 2001
Medical staff at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York await victims. September 11, 2001
A firefighter stands among the rubble at the foot of the destroyed World Trade Center complex. September 11, 2001
Damaged wing of the Pentagon. September 11, 2001
A fireman calls for help at the ruins of the World Trade Center. September 11, 2001
Firefighters clear the rubble of the World Trade Center. September 11, 2001
Car wrecks near the World Trade Center complex. September 11, 2001
US President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at the Presidential Control Center in emergency situations in Washington, September 11, 2001
US President George W. Bush speaks at the wreckage of the World Trade Center. September 14, 2001

Survivor Stories

Fred Eichler

On September 11, 2001, 54-year-old insurance agent Fred Eichler walked into his office on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center North Tower at 8:15 a.m. At 8:40 Fred went to the restroom, but on the way he met four colleagues and they stopped to chat. Through the window they saw a plane flying towards their building. At 8.46 the airliner crashed into a skyscraper, destroying everything in its path. The shock wave threw Fred and his colleagues several tens of meters away. After regaining consciousness, the man called 911 and then called home to talk to his wife, daughters and parents. He was sure that he would never see them again.

Fred walked into the meeting room and was joined by three strangers. The floor was gradually filled with smoke, and streams of water from broken pipes rushed through the corridors and staircases. Those gathered stuffed wet rugs and towels into the crack under the door, trying to stop the smoke. After consulting, they decided not to open the windows, fearing that the air would fan the flames.

At 9.02 there was a second blow: the plane crashed into the neighboring South Tower. Fred and the others decided to try the fire escape. But when they got to the door, the lights in the building went out. They returned to the meeting room and hid under the tables.

At 9:30 Fred saw the light of a flashlight. A firefighter reached their floor. He was able to save the people he found, but he himself died. The rescuer led the survivors to the stairs and advised them to go to another staircase on the 78th floor and go down it. On the 20th floor they heard another impact sound. The whole building shook: it was the South Tower that collapsed. The northern one began to tremble - elevators fell into shafts, stairs swayed. When Fred got outside, he asked someone for a phone and dialed his wife's number. She screamed into the phone: “Run, run, run!” The firefighters and police shouted the same thing. A few minutes later the North Tower collapsed.

Michael Wright

Michael Wright, 30, was on the 81st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the plane crashed into the building.

At that moment, Michael was in the men's room, where they were just installing a sign asking for the cleanliness of the room. The building shook. When Wright looked out of the toilet into the corridor, he saw fire and heard a woman screaming - his colleague Alicia could not get out of the burning women's toilet. The men broke down the door and were able to pull the woman out.

There was a huge crack in the floor of the corridor, the hall near the elevator was completely destroyed, there was smoke everywhere. Michael began to lead his colleagues to the stairs, people descended as if during a fire drill - in two rows.

“What helped me stay calm on the stairs was the thought of the unreality of what was happening; it seemed like the building couldn’t collapse. Once we had climbed a few floors, we relaxed a little. We knew something bad had happened, but once the fire was thirty floors above, it wasn’t as much of a concern,” Wright recalls. According to him, people passed some floors quickly, others within 10 minutes.

On the 40th floor, Michael and his colleagues met firefighters who advised them to continue going down, assuring them that it was safe there. Having descended below the level of the 20th floor, Wright found himself on the site of the South Tower and realized the seriousness of what was happening: there were corpses everywhere, dozens of bodies.

When the building began to collapse, Wright and his colleagues were at the escalator at one of the exits from the building. A cloud of debris and dust rose, and the air seemed to turn black. Michael tore off his shirt and covered her nose and mouth. Seeing no direction, he crawled, trying to find a way out.

Michael was lucky - he came across a fireman who was able to take him out through the surviving bookstore building.

Reaching the phone, Michael called his wife Jenny.

“I said, ‘Jenny, it’s me.’ There was a groan on the other end of the phone. I said: “I’m alive.” I'm alive. I love you. I love you". We cried and cried. Then the connection was lost,” says Michael Wright.

Frank Razzano

On the morning of September 11, the famous American lawyer Frank Razzano was sleeping in his room on the 19th floor of the Marriott Hotel, located at the foot of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He woke up from the sound of the first blow, saw papers flying outside the window and returned to bed. A few minutes later a second blow was heard. The plane crashed into the South Tower, which Frank's windows overlooked. Razzano turned on the TV and heard the news. He still thought that there was nothing to worry about, because all the problems were 60 floors above. The firefighters will arrive and everything will be okay.

That's where Razzano was. There was nothing to breathe: the air seemed to consist of nothing but dirt and dust. People still managed to find an opening in the destroyed wall of the building, and with the help of a carpet they went down to the mountain of rubble. There, the police helped Razzano get to the doctors.

Pascal Bazzeli

43-year-old design engineer Pascal Bazzeli was in the elevator of the North Tower when the first blow was heard. The elevator stopped on the 44th floor, and Pascal saw people panicking, but decided to go up to his office on the 64th floor. He called his pregnant wife and asked her to turn on the TV and find out what was going on. When she told him what was happening, Buzzelli and his colleagues surrounded the office television and saw the plane fly into a nearby tower. They rushed to the stairs and managed to go down to the 22nd floor when the building began to fall.

Bazzeli turned out to be an incredibly lucky man - curled up in a ball, he rolled down the rubble 15 floors down, like a surfer on a huge wave and, most amazingly, survived with a broken leg. All his colleagues died.

On the way down, Bazzeli lost consciousness and came to his senses three hours later in the ruins of the seventh floor.

Ron DiFrancesco

On the morning of September 11, 37-year-old broker Ron DiFrancesco was working in his office on the 84th floor of the South Tower. At this time, a plane crashed into the North Tower. Seeing the smoke, DiFrancesco decided to get out of the building and left the office. A few minutes after he left, the plane also crashed into the South Tower, between the 77th and 85th floors.

Going down, DiFrancesco met a group of people who began to persuade him to go to the roof - they said that the fire below was too strong, and there should be fresh air above.

Ron tried to go up several floors, but all the doors were closed or locked. The panic intensified, it became more and more difficult to breathe, and DiFrancesco finally decided to go down. He reached the pad in the impact zone and lay on the floor among other gasping people. Panic began to seize him. But some voice in his head, Ron claims, ordered him to run downstairs. Covering his face with his hands, he ran to the first floor, where the guard sent him to another exit and, already running out of the door, DiFrancesco heard a deafening roar above - the building began to collapse.

Seeing the explosion, the broker lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital with burns and a broken spine.

Officials said he was the last person to leave the building before the collapse and one of four surviving Americans who worked above the 81st floor but were able to escape.

John McLaughlin, last of those rescued

When the plane crashed into the South Tower, Sergeant John McLaughlin was several miles from the mall, patrolling the bus terminal in Manhattan. Like many, he headed to the towers that day to help the victims.

Arriving at the scene of the tragedy and not yet knowing the extent of the damage to the World Trade Center, McLaughlin assembled a team of four people - three police officers Antonio Rodriguez, Chris Amoroso, Dominic Petzullo, as well as rookie Will Gimeno.

They were on the ground floor connecting the buildings of the World Trade Center complex when the South Tower collapsed. The police were covered in debris.

“At first I thought I died. I didn’t feel anything: I didn’t see, I didn’t smell, I didn’t hear. There was a ringing silence all around,” recalls John McLaughlin.

Officers Amoroso and Rodriguez were killed instantly. McLaughlin and the two remaining members of his team were trapped. Dominic Petzullo managed to free himself from the rubble and tried to save his colleagues when the North Tower collapsed: he was mortally wounded by debris.

McLaughlin and Will Gimeno, lying under the rubble, heard the voices of rescuers and firefighters.

“I heard screams and shouted too, but it was useless. I said then: “I don’t think they will look for us. There's too much going on up there. They’re already busy,” McLaughlin recalls.

He reached for the radio and left a last message for his family, as well as for Will's wife, who was seven months pregnant.

“I think the moment when Will asked to tell his wife to name their unborn daughter Olivia was the worst. I think that’s when we kind of accepted that we were going to die here,” says Sgt.

The men spent more than 10 hours under the rubble before help arrived. Rescuers were able to pull Jimeno out around 11 p.m. Firefighters only reached McLaughlin on the morning of September 12 - he had to wait another 8 hours for rescue.

The sergeant was sent to the hospital, where doctors at first did not believe that he would survive - the injuries were very serious. Doctors put John in a coma for 6 weeks and he underwent about 30 operations, including skin grafts on his legs. After several years of therapy, he was able to return to a normal life.

John McLaughlin was the last person to be pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center that collapsed as a result of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.

Causes and culprits of the tragedy

The al-Qaeda group claimed responsibility for the attack. The large-scale terrorist attack was a consequence of the declared jihad against Jews and Americans, and the reasons were also given American politics support for Israel, aggression against Iraq, as well as the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda accused America of “plundering” the region, oppressing people by supporting totalitarian regimes, and controlling the policies of the legitimate rulers of Arab countries.

The identities of all the suicide bombers were established - they were citizens of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Lebanon. It turned out that the men were in the United States legally, and some were trained in American flight schools. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden admitted in a video message that he directly supervised the actions of 19 terrorists.

On May 2, 2011, in north-west Pakistan, US intelligence agencies identified “terrorist number one”. The operation to kill bin Laden was watched live by US President Barack Obama and his team.

US President Barack Obama and his team are monitoring the progress of the operation to kill Osama bin Laden. Photo: White House press service

In May 2012, the trial of the mastermind and main organizer of the terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was detained in 2003 in Pakistan, began at the Guantanamo Bay base. The verdict is still pending.

The terrorist attack that changed the world

In October 2001, the US and UK began military operation in Afghanistan with the aim of destroying the bases of Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. The operation lasted 13 years - most of the American military and NATO forces left this country only at the end of 2014, but about 8 thousand US Army troops still remain in Afghanistan - to “maintain peace and order.”

9/11 served as a pretext for yet another military conflict. A year after the terrorist attack on the United States, the American government accused Iraq and Saddam Hussein's regime of resuming the development of weapons of mass destruction and collaborating with al-Qaeda. On February 5, 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke at a special meeting of the UN Security Council with his famous report. In his speech, Powell said Iraq was working on biological and chemical weapons programs and had two of the three components necessary to produce nuclear weapons.

In 2004, Powell admitted that the data he released was largely inaccurate and sometimes falsified. But it was too late - on March 20, 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq in violation of the UN Charter, and the war was already in full swing. Saddam Hussein was executed in 2006, but coalition forces left Iraq only in 2011.

These wars became one of the reasons for the radicalization of Islamists in the Middle East. After the destruction of bin Laden, al-Qaeda is limited to the tactics of declarative statements, which, as a rule, are not associated with specific terrorist attacks. But one of the group's branches, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, eventually turned into the terrorist organization Islamic State. It was the Islamic State group that captured parts of Libya, Iraq and Syria and declared occupied lands caliphate. And it is the Islamic State that is responsible for the high-profile terrorist attacks of recent years.

The material was prepared based on open sources

Photo: newspaper website " Big city"

The cloud of dust and ash that blanketed Manhattan after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks contained carcinogens. Many rescuers and survivors fell ill with cancer, and in the coming years the number of patients may increase several times. “Big City” wrote about this on Monday in a text based on materials from the CityLab feature (“This is what we know about cancer and September 11, 14 years later”).

At the end of August, Marcy Borders, who became famous as the “ash woman” from Stan Honda’s photograph for AFP, died of stomach cancer. Borders walked past the photographer, pausing for a moment during the evacuation: a young woman who had recently joined Bank of America was completely covered in ash and dust from the collapsed South Tower of the World Trade Center. Perhaps it was this dust that killed her, like other people who were able to survive the terrorist attack.

According to 2014 data, almost 2.5 thousand people who were injured or participated in rescue efforts fell ill with cancer. Their number will grow rapidly in the coming years, experts are sure.

On September 11, 2001, Manhattan was literally covered in a cloud of dust. It contained particles of asbestos, fiberglass, mercury, benzene and other carcinogenic chemicals. They were breathed by those who survived the terrorist attack, as well as by those who came to save them. The construction of the World Trade Center, according to official estimates, took 300-400 tons of asbestos.

Gradually, people connected in one way or another with the terrorist attack began to get sick. The first reports appeared in 2002: Dr. David Prezant, who worked in the Department fire safety New York, noticed that firefighters involved in the fire were suffering from respiratory diseases. He called it the "WTC cough."

10 years after the terrorist attack, in 2011, compensation began to be paid to the families of those who died from this disease and those who suffer from it. In 2011, in addition to the Victim Compensation Fund that was founded a couple of years after the terrorist attack, the World Trade Center Health Program was also established to help victims recover from the consequences of the terrorist attack.

In 2012, the authorities added about 50 diseases to the list of diseases for which compensation can be obtained. various types cancer, understanding that the gap between exposure (during a terrorist attack) and the manifestation of the disease can be extremely long. Harmful substances released after a terrorist attack can cause, for example, thyroid cancer, prostate cancer and melanoma. Experts at the World Trade Center Health Program believe that the most common types of cancer that affect victims are cancer of the lungs and digestive system.

Asbestos also leads to mesothelioma, but this type of cancer usually appears at least 11 years after exposure to the carcinogen. Sometimes the first symptoms appear several decades after the formation of the tumor. World Trade Center Health Program specialists expect an influx of patients in the next 30 years.

Often people who develop cancer as a result of a terrorist attack do not directly connect the disease with the consequences of the disaster. Therefore, they do not receive assistance from special funds. Residents of New York who were simply next to the Twin Towers are also in the danger zone. They are not considered victims of the terrorist attack. For example, the World Trade Center Health Program is concerned about the health of students in schools adjacent to the World Trade Center.

At the same time, the World Trade Center Health Program assistance program should end in October, and the compensation fund should end in October 2016. If they are not extended, then people who develop cancer after the terrorist attack will not receive help and funding for treatment, and scientists will not receive further research.

Comments (7)

15.09.2015 16:54

Neonatologist

So it is now known that during construction, nuclear charges were planted there at a depth of 70 meters. This was included in the construction plan as a method of dismantling these buildings. Without this, they simply would not have been allowed to be built. It's not for nothing steel structures fell vertically, and the bottom of the pit in place of the buildings is melted granite. That is, a small man-made Chernobyl took place at the command of their powers.

16.09.2015 11:25

passerby

Or maybe the ashen nigra died from a 10-year addiction to cocaine and the consequences it caused?
Why is there not a word about this in the article?
Journalwhores are such journalwhores

16.09.2015 21:40

Chukigek

Well, where are their best aesculapians in the world? Are they also unable to cope with cancer patients, like in Russia? Or do the swindlers in white coats also have low salaries?

17.09.2015 01:54

Dima E

Chukigek “Or do the swindlers in white coats also have little salary?”
not small - there is “health insurance”. They even filmed a “health burial.” It's a terrible thing to get sick in the USA.
In Cuba - in impoverished Cuba, a doctor boasted of how quickly the two of them sewed a man's severed fingers back on. Question - how much does it cost? The answer is free. In the USA, a guy whose saw cut off two fingers was deciding which one to sew on. Because insurance won't pay for 2. There is also a story about the liquidators, what life is like for them.