Those involved in the tragic attacks remember the day that changed their lives, sharing their stories in this report produced by ITV News’ Washington Producer Joshua Brooks
It’s been 25 years since the attacks on September 11, 2001.
A day that showed us the very worst of humanity, but also the very best.
ITV News has spoken to three people who were there.
Janice Brooks worked on the 84th floor of the South Tower. She was in the building when the second plane hit.
Heather ‘Lucky’ Penney was a fighter pilot. She was sent on a suicide mission to intercept Flight 93, which was heading towards Washington DC.
George Campbell worked in the New York City Fire Department. He was a first responder on 9/11.
These are their stories.
Janice’s Story
“All I could see was darkness and flames”
Janice Brooks had just started her new job in the World Trade Center at Euro Brokers – she had been in New York for just 19 days.
Her office was on the 84th floor of the South Tower.
She had been evacuating when the second plane hit the tower.
“Suddenly, this loud bang, bang, bang. The lights went off; there was dust and dirt in the air.”
With the help of others, Janice opened the door she had just come through – the stairs were now gone. “All I could see was darkness and flames.”
She remembered the noise of a woman screaming. “A horror film scream that seemed to go on forever and lives in my head for free.”
While she was descending, she looked down at her feet – she was walking in the bloody footprints of the woman in front of her. “I could feel a scream kind of building up.”
Shortly after she reached her apartment, the towers collapsed. Janice described a noise like the “gates of hell”, and her windows blacked out by the thick cloud of dust.
“I remember sitting on the sofa, pulling my knees up to me, and crying: ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die – and all by myself’.”
Janice lost 61 Euro Brokers colleagues on 9/11.
They were among the 2,977 people who died that day.
She believes that the anniversary can help keep the memory of those colleagues alive.
“It’s about keeping the day alive in people’s memory, but more importantly, keeping my friends alive, telling their story.
“I hope people can take a minute to not only think about my friends, but about everyone that died on September 11.
“And if I can be really indulgent, if I can ask that you also spare a thought for the survivors, because even after all these years, we are still struggling.
“We still struggle.”
Heather’s Story
“We knew that this would be a suicide mission”
Heather ‘Lucky’ Penney was positioned at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside of Washington.
She had seen what was happening in New York on the news channels.
“We knew from those images that our nation was under attack.
“It was clear that those flight paths were premeditated, deliberate, and designed to hurt and terrorise America.”
Shortly after seeing these images, a third plane hit the Pentagon.
It was then that Vice President Dick Cheney authorised the fighter pilots at Andrews to launch.
United Airlines Flight 93, which was flying towards DC, had been identified as the fourth hijacked plane.
Heather’s mission was to take this plane out of the sky before it reached the US capital.
“We knew what the target would be; it would be an airliner full of innocent Americans.
“But we didn’t have any live missiles, we had no real weapons on board.
“So, we knew that this would be a suicide mission.”
She was flying her F-16 fighter jet alongside her flight lead, Colonel Marc Sasseville.
“He would fly his jet into the cockpit to take out the terrorists in the flight controls, and then I would ram my jet into the tail of the aircraft.”
What Heather did not know is that as they were flying, the passengers aboard the flight had retaken control of the cockpit from the hijackers.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Forty passengers and crew were killed.
“We did not know that 93 had crashed. We did not know that the passengers had already done the job.
“Those passengers were placed in a position where they had to make a choice that they never should have been faced with, but thank God they did.”
George’s Story
“People were coming out of that cloud like zombies”
George Campbell, a New York City Firefighter, was off duty when the planes hit the World Trade Center.
Immediately, he went to his firehouse.
George and his team commandeered a city bus and went around nearby firehouses collecting other first responders.
He watched as the North Tower collapsed in the distance. “The cloud came at us.”
As they approached Ground Zero, the scene they were met with was unimaginable:
“People were coming out of that cloud, evacuating, like zombies, covered in white because of the dust.
“It looked like a movie.
“All we wanted to do was get on that pile… I don’t know if you can compute the fact that a couple thousand people just died.”
In total, 343 firefighters from 75 firehouses across the city were killed in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.
Many of these were people George knew.
Eight he called “close friends.”
George spent ten months digging what became known as ‘the pile’.
Firefighters worked on clearing and recovering bodies from the 1.5 million tons of debris.
“Life pretty much became work, coming to the pile to dig, then going to funerals, for weeks and months.”
One day there were 17 firefighter funerals.
Normally when a New York City firefighter dies in the line of duty, the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) and colleagues from across the country turn out in massive numbers, sometimes up to 6,000.
But because there were so many funerals, and so much work to be done at Ground Zero, George told us that at some of the funerals there were only three firefighters.
“It was heartbreaking.
“You always want to give the families the send-off that their loved one deserved, but we couldn’t do that.”
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