Transcript of Facing Ground Zero: A Dateline Special

I heard a loud noise, and I heard a woman scream.

9/11 as you've never seen it.

What was it?

It sounded like a missile, and then it was like an explosion. Glass flew everywhere.

7 survivors and the moments they can never forget.

I had my hand out, and I cupped it. It was filled with sand.

The entire top of the building—

The thick smoke, it just engulfed me.

I saw a woman that somehow her clothes had been burned onto her body.

Oh my God! Oh my God! John, you all right to go back?

I'll go back.

Yeah.

You guys going back?

Yes.

It was like looking into the gates of hell.

Our cameras found them on 9/11.

This is a terrorist attack. Jesus, in America?

Tonight, they take us back to that day.

I was so confused.

You could see first responders walking out of the cloud. They had to know that their comrades had been caught in that.

Why me?

Why did I survive?

I was haunted.

It'll never leave my mind.

Facing Ground Zero. Good evening from Ground Zero on this, the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I'm Lester Holt. The scale of it was incomprehensible. The deadliest terrorist attack in history, with nearly 3,000 people killed. And yet, for those who lived through it, the day unfolded right here as a series of harrowing moments and split-second, often self-sacrificing decisions. Tonight, in footage we uncovered in our NBC News archive, some never before seen and some difficult to watch, you'll meet ordinary people pulled into chaos by chance. who worked with others by choice in a fight for survival.

It is Tuesday, the 11th day of September. Let's find out about that Election Day forecast.

Actually, it's looking pretty good.

No excuse.

In 2001, I was a cameraman at WNBC.

Mostly clear sky.

That day, I found myself on an assignment In Lower Manhattan, I had a polling place on a small assignment, a normal assignment, because it was voting day.

Thank you.

So on my way back to the car to pack up, I heard a loud noise, and I heard a woman scream. I turned to where she was looking, and I saw, I saw a hole in the North Tower, a slit. I thought it was a helicopter that had smashed into the building. We didn't have cell phones back then. We had radios. So I called the station and I said, you know, there's a hole in the building. And he said, shoot it.

Well, 9/11 was— it was a great morning, to be honest with you. Boy, you are— you're standing in front of my desk as always.

We used to banter a lot. I remember vividly, she said, good morning, Muyiwa. And I said, wait a minute. Suddenly this morning you said good morning. You are being nice. I said, why? And then she said, don't start with me. You know, it's too early in the morning. I'm not gonna do that with you. And then, boom.

And when I heard that, I was, like, kind of stunned.

And I felt myself sway. I'm on the 82nd floor. You don't sway on the 82nd floor. One of my coworkers came in screaming, saying, fire! Fire! The elevator's on fire!

I know if I'm going to cover this thing, that the zone is likely going to be frozen by the police, and I need to get in there and get as much as I can. I put on a battery belt, I put the camera on, and I started rolling.

And as I went down rolling, I saw people in the elevator.

I saw a woman get into a car with somebody and just bury her face in her hands. She was in tears. I saw people consoling each other. Then I saw a guy. He was trying to explain to me—

Did you see how that happened?

What had happened? No.

I heard—

you know what I heard? He was very detailed. He was intense.

What'd you hear?

I heard, uh, before— before that happened—

What was it?

How'd it happen? It sounded like a missile. It sounded like a— like a rocket. Like a plane, like a— like a— do you understand the sound before it hits something? Like a shh, and it just like— and then impact, and then it was like an explosion.

I decided that I had to walk down nearer to where the first responders were staging to help injured people. As I walked down, sirens started coming— fire trucks, police cars, Park Department police, all hands-on-deck type thing. I saw a woman that somehow her clothes The symbols that had been burned onto her body had melted. And I don't, I don't know if that happened on the street or where in the building that had happened, but she was being tended to. I was honestly trying to figure out what to be afraid of. Is something going to come off the building and fall on me? I was afraid. There was fear, you know. There was fear.

I went back to my desk, gathered my belongings, and I said, Mujawad, we gotta go. He said, okay, let's go. And we went down the first staircase we came to.

Inside that staircase, there was water. You know, water was just flowing. I presume it was some fire sprinkler that went off. There was this sense of urgency, but panic? No.

The lights were still on, and people were still walking down. You know, calmly down the stairs like it was a fire drill. There was nothing to alert me to say that something horrible happened.

I worked for the Port Authority Police Department of New York and New Jersey. I was commanding officer of the Western Zone, which included the World Trade Center. My task was to set up an incident command center in the lobby of Building 1. The North Tower, coordinating with the various responding Port Authority Police units, FDNY units, and the NYPD. We had units going up into the towers to start the evacuation process and to gather information. We got reports from the fire department that it was an inferno. They had units up there battling it, but they couldn't get a hold of it.

The fire department, first responders, and the police, they were on it, and that was reassuring. There was a guy behind me, and I turned to him with the camera rolling, and I asked him, you know, what did you see? What did you see?

I ran out to the window, and I look out, and I see smoke. The next thing I saw, I mean, you got to look at it, the bottom elevator, the glass just— flames exploded out the front of the World Trade Center. Glass flew everywhere.

And the second plane came in and hit. And I turned, and I got the fireball and the explosion. That was— that was terrifying. And it was then that everybody knew, absolutely knew, this was not an accident.

The second plane hit When I responded to the World Trade Center in 2001, our primary goal was to see if anybody made it to the roof. It was also to advise headquarters of the situation so that we could get the resources up there that we needed. I would carry a camera all the time. It took a couple of shots real quick. The streams of smoke coming from the building were from people using furniture, whatever they could get to try and break those windows. People were trying to get air or get out. While we were up there, we had no idea a second plane was en route. Nothing came over the police radio. Nothing came over the FAA radio. And then it hit.

Oh, another one just hit! A very large plane just flew directly over my building, and there's been another collision.

The fireball was huge. That plane punched right through the building, and we knew there's no way that 2 planes could have hit. 2 separate towers on the same day. It could not be a coincidence.

We could feel the impact and hear it. It was an explosion up there. At that point, we knew there was a terroristic event, that it wasn't by accident a plane hit. We knew that we had to evacuate these people. The fire was out of control. I moved our command center over to Building Number 5. We had Port Authority Police, Fire Department, New York City Police units, EMTs were looking to help this exodus of people coming down through the towers. I'm not going to say stampede, but they were running out of the building at that point.

I'd covered riots before, had my van shot at, but this was as near to war coverage as I'd ever come. And that's when the level, I think, of panic went up. Come across the street from the building! People started talking about, how can I get out of here?

A second airplane, a 727, just rammed into the building. Where do I go?

Do I go home?

I know Joe.

Yo, I'm gonna get out of the city, yo. I ain't staying here.

Look, look at the second building.

We were counting down. 37th floor, 35th floor. The building It shook, but we didn't know what it was.

I'm just going down one step at a time, and there was water on the stairs, and I kind of slipped. I was done. I was tired. I couldn't step no more. And I told Mujtaba, I was too tired to go. So he grabbed my hand and he pulled me. He says, Dorothy, we gotta go.

The staircase was Packed. I would look up and I would see something like a spiral filled with people going as far as your eyes can see. While we were going downstairs, firefighters were going up. Occasionally I would pat one of them on the back and say, you know, you guys are doing a heroic job. They, they just seemed very somber. The expression on their faces really haunted me for a long time. That was haunting.

So, yeah.

The aircraft was fully loaded with fuel. That fuel went throughout that whole floor and totally engulfed the building from one end to the other. I didn't realize until I got the pictures back that there was actually a guy on the outside of the building. If I would have realized that, I would have called in the larger helicopter to try and do something, but I didn't realize it at the time.

I had the camera kind of cradled in my arm, shooting up. You could see debris and papers falling from the building. In the midst of that debris, you saw an object that moved faster. It didn't flutter in the air. And then another moved faster and passed all the debris. Somebody said, those are people. And when they landed, the sound was, you know, it's not something that you forget.

It was just loud bangs.

We didn't know what it was. I was able to look up and actually witness people jumping out of the building. It was traumatic. It was traumatic, and it'll just never leave my mind.

There was a woman near me, and she was crying and screaming at the same time. You know, why don't they do something? Why don't they put something underneath them to try to catch them?

Somebody jumped in front of the building.

One of the officers said, if you can't handle it, go inside. Just go inside.

Go inside. Go inside.

I thought about their families on the other side. How they would try to manage that. Some people would think it was suicide, and that there was no way that was suicide. Somebody was trying to save themselves from an inferno. There was no way to help those people. There was no answer for that. Both towers had been hit. I called into the station and they told me, there's a live truck down there, meet them.

Don't let me forget this.

Walter will be there.

And then as soon as we start the interview, pan up and just keep a shot on the building.

Walter Perez was one of the morning reporters at WNBC.

I'm ready when you are.

And we started this live shot. He was recapping what had happened, what he knew.

Okay, 2 blocks away from where the whole thing happened, and this entire area has been cordoned off and people that have been working in nearby buildings have been told to evacuate. That's what this mass exodus is to my left-hand side.

Since the fire was getting very large, the Port Authority commanders decided to send Newark Airport officers to help in the evacuation. We train in aircraft fires, whether it be an engine fire or, God forbid, a crash. We wound up actually going 2 blocks away from the World Trade. I parked in front of a building that was probably 40 stories tall. I figured the vehicle would be protected. It was like raining papers. Full sheets of paper were raining down constantly from the towers. They were still standing and burning very, very rapidly. We were told, you guys from Newark Airport, you're the next group to go in as soon as we get air-breathing equipment. We were going to be dispatched into the North Tower. We were putting on our aircraft bunker gear, which is a silver suit that protects us from very hot fires. It was sort of like going to war, but, but in New York City.

I work for the Fire Department of New York. I was an EMT. I was a rookie. I was 9 months on the job. That day, Ronnie Coyne was my partner. Ronnie was funny. He just never wanted to, like, leave the job, and he just loved it so much. He said, okay, dispatch is going to send us down to the World Trade Center. We were actually really close. We were only, like, a few hundred feet away.

I'm going to start the interviews and then pan up.

Walter was on the air live. He actually interviewed a couple of people.

To my right, we have 2 witnesses. And Marna, you work across the street. Tell me exactly what you saw on the street.

I saw, um, there's maybe about 30 or 40 people, uh, covered with bandages and blood. It looks like a lot of them were either on the floor of one of the exchanges. There's actually— oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!

We're not sure exactly what happened, but there was another explosion on the far side of one of the buildings from where we're standing.

I remember something that felt like a deep rumble and roar.

We're not sure if that was another explosion or if that was advanced debris.

But I don't think it ever occurred to us that it was the building coming down.

We were almost at the lobby when suddenly we heard a large boom, and our building started shaking.

I thought the building I was in was falling. So this gush of wind, like, shh, and it looked like the people was tumbleweeds, like they was flying past the door because of the pressure of what was going on.

At one point, it got so dark we cannot see each other. I held my hand out and then I cupped it. It was filled with sand. Inside me, I was praying, God, please save me from this. And I heard deafening—

And I remember just praying, please, Lord, don't let it hurt me. I remember saying that really loud so he could hear me.

I like to describe it as 1,000 freight trains coming down. It was like a roar in the dust. The dust, everything was dusty and you couldn't see.

To be honest, I was like a deer in the headlights, and we were breathing that in. I wish I had put my jacket over my face so I could breathe, but it was too late. I could hear little pieces of cement hitting my jacket. I, I knew that I had to get some fresh air.

At this point, as you can tell, there's absolute pandemonium in this area because of what had just happened. Exactly what, I can't confirm.

We were trying to make sense of it.

I'm sorry, I'm ignoring you. I'm scared shitless.

Walter was trying to make sense of it. We were trying to impose reason on, on these scenes, and it was breaking all the rules.

There is a massive plume of smoke coming in our direction, and the police are telling us to move immediately.

Shut it off, let's go.

Okay, we're being told to shut off. We'll get back in contact as quickly as possible.

It was just thick black smoke, so we really couldn't see too far ahead of us, and we just saw people coming out of the smoke, just kind of walking towards us. We were like, come to our ambulance, let's clean you up, you know, you need oxygen. And just more and more people just started coming out of the dust, so we were just loading people into the back of our ambulance just to get them out of that. thick smoke so that they could breathe, you know.

It was still dark. It was still windy until after a while it started coming down. I heard a voice, is anybody alive? I said, yes, I can hear you. And then the voice said, okay, look for So I was heading toward him. I was holding Daphne's hand. So we were going, we were going. The ceiling of the lobby had collapsed. So we were picking our steps in order to just get to where we'd be able to go outside. Myself and Daphne were probably the last person that came out.

We came out. Oh, it's like a ghost town. Very eerie, very, very eerie to me.

Another firefighter, he took us to the ambulance and he gave us water. I couldn't get the water to my mouth. I started going like this. And Daphne then held my hand. She helped me train it on my mouth, and then I drank some. A few minutes after that, I stabilized a little bit.

When I first came out, I was so tired. I remember laying on this wall. I was exhausted.

I'm tired.

I had no more energy.

The first thing I did was I found a fire truck that had a little bit of trickle water coming out of it. I washed my face. Peter Kuhn was my partner. You all right, Pete?

Yeah.

We worked together for 20 years, so friend and colleague. We stayed together the whole time, and we just started to get our breath. The whole south wall of Building Number 1 collapsed. We ran into reporters that wanted to know what happened.

Where were you guys when it happened?

At our command post, the Port Authority command post.

Yeah?

Right on Vesey and West Street. The whole— about a 20-story section just came crumbling down. Into the street? Into the street.

And all the debris is what you see.

Okay.

I was amazed that I was able to speak, because my lungs were filled with that smoke. We weren't quite sure exactly what happened, and they asked us, was anyone injured?

Any idea if we lost a life up there?

How bad?

There is. I got here 20 minutes ago from Newark Airport.

I really don't have any count, but there were a lot of people up there.

9 o'clock in the morning. Everyone's at work at 9 o'clock. The towers were filled with people. We were going to head back down there and see what we could do to help the walking wounded or whatever we could do. I know it's a strong building and the outside walls are holding up that building, but I wouldn't put it past that thing coming down.

John, you all right to go back?

I'll go back, yeah.

You guys going back?

Yes.

Tough job.

Dangerous.

That it is.

You worried about that other tower?

Personally, I am.

But you're going back anyway.

I got fellow officers that might be trapped. I'm not trying to be a hero, but I think if you were in this position, you'd do the same thing.

Good luck.

I would only hope that you would.

Good luck.

Get a shot of him walking away?

We couldn't, uh, just stay back and not do something. It was a 2 or 3 block walk, and looking at the North Tower from my vantage point was like looking into the gates of hell. The wind was feeding the fire right into that, that hole, that impact point. It was horrific.

Make a hole! Mr. Moss, we gotta go! I know we gotta be emergency, right?

Who get out?

I'm scared as you are. It's the officer I care about.

They were doing their duty.

Back up! We got an officer down!

Particularly the officers and the firefighters up in the towers. They knew what the danger was. You could hear it in their voices, the urgency. They were working hard to get the people down the stairwells. Some people stayed on scene to help some disabled people. We heard that over the radio. They would start mentioning names. This officer went upstairs because he thought he could get up higher in a different stairwell. Nobody said, you know, I'm out of here, this is too dangerous. They all stayed at their posts. I knew a lot of them over the course of my 27-year career. I did recognize their voices, and, and also I knew that they were up there.

We were still just treating people that were just coming to us, and Ronnie, my partner, said, I'm gonna go and see if I could find anybody else in the towers, so stay here. I was kind of nervous. I was like, you're leaving me? But, um, yeah, he says, I'll be back. I'm just gonna go see if I can find anybody else. You're just kind of like on autopilot. Just so much is going on, like, you're just You don't really think. After some time had passed, I was heading down towards the tower to see if I could find him, and everybody just started running the other way.

Oh my God!

They were saying, the second tower is coming down, the second tower is coming down. I couldn't go any further because the thick smoke, it just engulfed me.

After the first tower had fallen and we finally got out, I decided to go back in to see if I could find some more survivors. I saw an arm sticking out of the rubble. It was a bloody arm, and there was fire down there also, so there was a raging fire. Myself and a firefighter, and I believe an FBI agent, were able to dig him out and carry him quite a ways back to that building. Across the street, there was a firefighter who yelled to us, watch out, the next building is coming down!

All the telephone lines are jammed up as people are trying to communicate.

We were a couple blocks away. On the air, live.

They're trying to move the media to a safe area so we can do proper reporting and let everybody know exactly what's going on. For now, back to you.

And it began to collapse. The debris and the dust, everything started cascading north.

Just a moment ago, the entire top of the building collapsed.

One guy, he was, he was, he was immensely frustrated. He was a firefighter. He threw his ax down, threw his helmet down, and you could see how frustrated they were.

You can see the plume of smoke is coming in our direction. Let's get out of here, Ralph. We're gonna leave because the smoke is coming right at us.

As the debris was coming towards us, I ducked behind the truck with the camera still live, and I held my shot as the debris came I wanted to stay alive as long as I could. I had to box up my emotions and document this rather than standing on the street and screaming.

I was almost right on top of it. I pretty much got a sequence of the North Tower going down. It was devastating for the people on the ground because the plumes of smoke and dust that were going through the streets.

The firemen said, run, run!

And this bellow of smoke was behind The dust, the wind, the whole thing caught up with us. Suddenly it was very dark again.

And I remember us running, and then somehow our hands broke loose. And I remember seeing this billowy smoke coming at me, and I remember praying.

We were caught out in the open— myself, the firefighters, and then this unconscious man. Who we just extracted.

Holy shit! Jesus!

I was never so scared in my life. I mean, I thought I was, I was dead. Of course, your first instinct at that point in time is to save yourself. I was at the World Trade Center police desk when the first tower collapsed.

Tell me what happened, sir.

Well, we were carrying an injured person out, myself and about 4 firemen, and unfortunately that's when Building 2 collapsed.

Describe what happened at the moment of impact.

It just rained building, okay? And I happened to dive underneath an ESU vehicle. I was buried alive for 15 minutes until I scrambled out.

How did you get out when you were under the truck?

Took me 15, 20 minutes of digging out, okay? I'm not sure what happened to the other people, the other firemen who were with me. We were back in there trying to bring people out. We knew the second one was about to come down, but we were lifting one person, and when it came down, we all just ran for our lives. The firefighters, the civilian that we extracted from Building Number 4, the FBI agent, I never found out what happened to them.

I was scared because, like, I was new, and plus I don't know where my partner is, you know. So I'm thinking something bad happened to him. Then I'm thinking, how do I get around? What do I do? Where do I go? You got a lot of people, you know, tugging at you, help me, help me. Somebody said, come help this firefighter, he has a broken leg. And then when I went to go to my ambulance to get it, it was gone. And I actually ran into Roger, a paramedic that I knew. We linked up because he had lost his partner as well, and I had lost my partner. And he said, hey, you know, I have an ambulance, let's just work together and see what we can do. So we just kind of drove up as close to, you know, the Twin Towers as we could, and somehow we ended up in, like, the rubble of it all. We had supplies, and whoever, you know, needed help— mostly firefighters, you know, looking for survivors— if they needed any help, they would just come to our ambulance.

You could see Firefighters and first responders walking out of the cloud covered in the powder and the debris. They had to know that their comrades had been caught in that, and they didn't have any kind of recourse. There was nothing that they could do. All we could do is, is to observe it. When I captured what I thought I could, and I wanted to take stuff back to the building, I realized that my friend, my colleague, was on the 104th floor, a man named Bill Steckman. Back then, he would capture my signal. The voice was so nurturing. And he was so kind. Um, he didn't make it. He didn't make it.

I was inside the building. No, well, with all that smoke, I couldn't see anything. I was in the midst of all that smoke. Any message to your family? Just let them know I'm okay. Thank God I'm okay, Mom. I'm okay.

First time I felt safe is when I was sitting on the side with the reporters.

My name is Moyiwa Oniboge. I did not know that the tower had collapsed. At the back of my mind, you know, I was thinking, we go back to the office, 82nd floor, I and Daphne will have quite a story to tell the other workers.

Can you even begin to fathom why? Why it happened? Why a plane hit the building? Why a plane was hijacked into this building.

Excuse me?

What we understand is that plane might have been hijacked.

No.

It might be terrorists.

Terrorists, yeah.

This didn't happen by chance. Oh no.

Did you say that?

I didn't. Did you say terrorists hijacked a plane into the building? No, I couldn't even fathom it.

No, no. I was so confused. I just could not digest that on that beautiful day, that something that awful happened.

There were also attacks in Washington. I'm telling you what the truth is, what's being broadcast right now, because you have Americans who are in the building. This is a terrorist attack. Jesus. In America? I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. To come out to find out a terrorist did this. I can't even be angry. It's senseless. And people died senselessly. You mean to tell me this building fell down senselessly? I don't know what to do. I don't know. All I know, I got up this morning, come to work to do my job.

I was spared. To this very day, I ask myself, how come I never looked back to see what was going on behind me? I never looked back. All that time, I was in there for hours, and I never looked back.

Thank God we are alive, that we got out of it, and my heart goes to the people who were still in the building when it came down. It would take a long time for me to accept that the tower was down. The building was a village. It was a community in its own right. To just say it's down? Come on.

After we were at the rubble for a few hours, we just kind of sat outside in the street just to decompress a little. I guess the shock is just hitting us now, I guess, now that we're away from it all, and we're just kind of thinking back. And it was at this time that I found Ronnie. I gave him the biggest hug. I think it's been like 4 or 5 hours since, you know, I last saw him running into the towers.

You should talk to my partner over here.

He was the one that ran into the collapsing building?

He was the one who was in there when it was falling down.

I couldn't believe that, you know, he was alive. But somehow he made it out and found us.

We got a job to do.

Then the 3 of us started triaging out of the back of the ambulance together. You know, only Ronnie can tell his story. He's not with us anymore. He, uh, he had pneumonia plenty of times after that, that day. And, uh, yeah, I think that's what he finally succumbed to.

If I was there earlier, I might have been inside the building myself. Our commanders made a decision. They didn't want to send anyone down. They sent the fire department back to the site because they knew that they lost too many men already. Officers ran into those buildings to help, and they had no idea the buildings were going to collapse. No one did. We drove back to Newark Airport, and we couldn't believe what happened. Why me? Why did I survive? And these other men that had young families, why did they have to perish?

They were friends. They were colleagues. Port Authority Police lost 37 officers that day. My command, we had 19 officers respond. Out of the 19, at the end of the day, 6 of us were alive. It was an incredible heavy hit.

For years, I had survivor's guilt. All those people, why, why, why me? I remember my sister saying to me, you know, September 11th rolled back around, they did the name-calling.

Scott Walter Cahill. Thomas Joseph—

She said, you know, I could have been down there saying your name. She says, but I'm so blessed that I'm not. Well, you are. He was determined to live. He pulled me down 30 flights of stairs. He would not let go. And I call him my hero, you know, and he laughs about it. You are.

As far as dying, I was not ready to contemplate that. 9/11 was the most impactful thing that happened in my life. Probably it will be as long as I live.

The totality of the whole thing never sunk in until later on. I can't believe that 25 years have gone by. The World Trade Center today, it's in a spot that's a sacred place. It's also a tribute to our country that we rebuilt something to take the place of the World Trade Center.

There's no way around it. It's trauma. I mean, I allow myself to cry if it bugs me and, um, move forward. I'm not bleeding, but I've been imprinted with this This horrible scene, and it still impacts me. In those moments, as horrific as they were, we as people were unified. We were open to helping each other. I hope we can learn those lessons without having something as horrific as that.

When I look back on that day, I think of widows, I think of husbands, I think of children, I think of parents, all the funerals I've been to since that day and how those families were affected by that. And I remember the officers' faces. It was a beautiful day. We were just going about our normal everyday life like anyone else is doing today, and it happened. After 9/11, you heard a lot, never forget, and that's why I'm here today. I'll never forget the faces and of the people who put their lives forth that day.

Here in New York City, 2,753 people perished on 9/11. We also remember the 184 who died at the Pentagon and the 40 passengers aboard United Flight 93 who forced their plane down in Pennsylvania, as well as the many who have died since from 9/11-related illnesses. For those who watched from afar, memories of all those victims will surely linger. So will the resiliency and bravery we witnessed that day, a testament to the best of us in the worst of times. That's all for tonight. I'm Lester Holt. Thank you for joining us. For all of us at NBC News, good night.