Buzz
The tale of 9/11 has been shared countless times, with its harrowing figures now firmly ingrained in history. Nearly 3,000 lives lost. Four planes hijacked. Two towers brought down. A section of the Pentagon—home to the defense nerve center of the world's most powerful nation—badly damaged. A Pennsylvania field scarred forever.
The visuals of that day remain etched in memory. Explosions, collapses, frantic running, anguished screams, terror, and sorrow. Yet, the sun dipped below the horizon and rose once more, ushering in a new day of frantic activity, chaos, and, eerily, a haunting quiet. These are ten key moments from September 12, 2001.
10. The Pile: The Wasteland of Ground Zero
The collapse of the Twin Towers—by far the tallest structures ever to fall—resulted in a staggering 1.8 million tons of debris spread over nearly 15 acres (6 hectares). By the time the major cleanup was finished in May 2002, over 108,000 truckloads of rubble had been hauled away from the site.
On September 12, the scene was beyond comprehension. A twisted, smoldering mountain of metal, several stories tall, with gaping voids that plunged into unknown depths, lay before rescue teams. A thick blanket of dust—an unsettling blend of ash, pulverized plaster, furniture, and, tragically, human remains—filled every crack and crevice, making the already unrecognizable even harder to discern.
The media dubbed the site "Ground Zero." Rescue workers, however, chose a more straightforward name: The Pile. And on September 12, The Pile posed an unimaginable dilemma. Less than 24 hours after the towers fell, it was presumed that survivors were trapped in the unstable rubble. How could they be rescued without risking more lives among the already incalculable death toll?
Meanwhile, civilians in Lower Manhattan had a different, yet equally haunting name for the wreckage of the WTC. Those living in the city's towering apartment buildings or working in nearby skyscrapers had a grotesque bird's-eye view of the devastation. A scene too horrific for words was reduced to stark, chilling simplicity: The Pit.
9. "The Cones Are Bodies"
Given the sheer scope of the 9/11 tragedy, the dead came in all forms. Before the towers even fell, bodies were scattered across the plaza, victims of the hijacked planes, those who leaped or were thrown from upper floors, and many who perished in the infernos caused by fireballs that surged down the elevator shafts. Among the most tragic was Danny Suhr, the first firefighter to lose his life that day when a falling body struck him.
As the desperate (and, tragically, almost entirely unsuccessful) rescue efforts continued into September 12, those scouring the debris for possible survivors adopted a grim method to both prevent redundant searches and identify the deceased for the coroner's team: They marked bodies with orange cones, the same ones used to block off traffic during construction.
Body parts were scattered everywhere. Human remains were discovered on nearby skyscrapers, in the graveyard of a church across the street, and lodged in scaffolding on surrounding buildings. One piece of a body was found almost a quarter of a mile away from Ground Zero. In total, nearly 22,000 body parts would eventually be recovered—more than seven times the number of people who died.
However, none of this was known on September 12. Focused on finding survivors in the chaotic, dust-covered wasteland, rescue teams used makeshift markers to signal that certain areas had already been searched.
8. The Wall of the Missing
Near the wreckage of the World Trade Center, a few families whose loved ones were still unaccounted for began taping missing persons flyers to a nearby building. Hundreds of others soon followed, turning the site into a gathering place for desperate family members seeking news and journalists chasing human interest stories.
Soon, well-wishers and kind-hearted strangers gathered at the wall, leaving floral tributes and candles, offering water and food to devastated family members. While this wasn't the only location where missing persons flyers were displayed—indeed, around 90,000 were posted on walls, lampposts, subway stations, and phone booths across New York City—it became an unofficial center of support as emergency responders searched the nearby ruins for any signs of life.
In retrospect, the futility of it all is heartbreaking. Often, those who posted flyers clung to one of three hopes: that their loved ones were still alive beneath the rubble, were unconscious or unidentifiable at a nearby hospital, or were aimlessly wandering the streets of Manhattan in a traumatized stupor.
Ultimately, very few of the faces on those flyers would ever be seen alive. The WTC attacks were, in many ways, a zero-sum tragedy: Those who were rescued before the collapse survived—and rarely with serious injuries—while those who weren't trapped perished.
Today, a wall of photographs honoring all WTC victims is displayed at the September 11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan.
7. Abandoned Vehicles
In parking lots at commuter rail stations and bus park-and-ride areas across Long Island and northern New Jersey, cars gradually vanished as their owners returned for them, typically after enduring significant delays leaving Manhattan. Sadly, not all the vehicles left; many belonged to individuals who perished in the Twin Towers.
The New York City metro area is vast—by far the largest in the United States—with commuters traveling from over an hour away from all directions to reach offices in Lower Manhattan. In the aftermath, families of victims came to collect their vehicles from local transportation hubs—a grim logistical necessity following the sudden deaths.
However, at larger commuter spots, not all vehicles were claimed immediately. One such place was a sprawling bus park-and-ride lot in East Rutherford, NJ, next to Giants Stadium, home of the NFL's New York Giants and Jets.
John Mara, the CEO of the Giants and son of the team's owner, recalls trying to rationalize the haunting sight of unattended cars in the days after the attacks. Mara hoped these cars belonged to people who had managed to return home by other means on 9/11—since bridges and tunnels had been shut down—and simply hadn't yet come back for their vehicles. Unfortunately, in most cases, the worst possible scenario had occurred.
“To drive past that every day, to see those cars and know those people had perished, that was just a gut-wrenching scene,” Mara recalls.
6. Verboten Photo: The Falling Man
On September 12, the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call ran a long, narrow photo buried on page 28. Only a handful of other papers ran the shot, which was snapped by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Richard Drew.
A jarringly minimalistic departure from the images of billowing smoke and ferocious fireballs, the photo depicts an adult male amid the steel-slatted backdrop of the North Tower. He is completely vertical, head over feet, as he descends. The scene evokes an uncomfortable faux peacefulness; in reality, the man was plummeting in a violent, flailing spin.
“I have eight or nine frames of this gentleman falling, and the camera just happened to cycle in that time when he was completely vertical,” Drew said later.
Arguably the most unsettling image from 9/11, it captured a horrific and hopeless choice: to burn alive or leap to certain death from a quarter mile high. Nearly 200 others made the same tragic decision that day. The photo, later known as "The Falling Man," sparked such controversy—many considered it exploitative—that it largely vanished for years, prompting Drew to call it "the most famous photo no one has seen."
In 2006, a documentary titled "9/11: The Falling Man" explored the uproar surrounding the photo. The film also revealed the likely identity of the man: Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old audio technician at Windows on the World restaurant. A key clue was an orange T-shirt visible in one of Drew's photographs.
5. Lights Out in the City That Never Sleeps
The 9/11 attacks caused the most profound disruption in New York City's long history—greater than the yellow fever outbreaks, Civil War draft riots, Great Depression, or even World War II. Nothing had ever changed the city overnight like 9/11, nor would anything again until the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the first time since World War I, the New York Stock Exchange remained closed for four full business days. The attack occurred early enough on September 11 that the exchange didn't open that day, and it stayed shut until the following Monday.
The deepest darkness descended six miles north of Wall Street. In Times Square, Broadway's shining lights were dimmed, with no performances scheduled—except for those affected by performer or personnel strikes—for the first time since World War II. The theaters had no shows on 9/11, remained dark the following day, and began to reopen by September 13.
Professional sports also faced disruption. The NFL called off all games the weekend after 9/11, rescheduling them for the end of the season and pushing back the playoffs. Major League Baseball postponed games for a week, halting Barry Bonds's pursuit of the single-season home run record and shifting the World Series into November. This year's series featured a dramatic Derek Jeter homer past midnight on Halloween for the first time.
4. Rerouting NYC's Lifeblood: The Subway System
The collapse of the Twin Towers severely damaged several crucial tunnels in the nation's largest and most intricate subway system. One of the stations directly beneath the WTC, Cortlandt Street, was completely destroyed, and when the tunnel was reopened a week later, passengers on trains passing through were left in shock at the extent of the damage.
In the vicinity, a New Jersey commuter rail station called the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson River) was completely obliterated during the collapse, requiring a years-long rerouting. Notably, many PATH passengers were among the first to evacuate the North Tower, the first to be struck—including the author of this list.
Despite the devastation, just one day after the attacks, most of the city's subway lines resumed operations, though many stations in the largely evacuated Lower Manhattan were skipped. An exception was the Lexington Avenue line—the 4, 5, and 6 trains, also called the Green Line—which resumed service linking East Midtown to Wall Street the day after 9/11. This already crowded line would soon face overwhelming demand, reaching what many referred to as ‘crush capacity’ until its sister routes were up and running again.
Nevertheless, New Yorkers saw traveling on the subway in the wake of 9/11 as an act of defiance against terrorism. Despite the vulnerability of a crowded subway system in an open society, it became a symbol of New Yorkers’ resilience and determination. As for the Cortlandt Street station, it wouldn’t reopen until 2018.
3. Fido Finds One
Most people are familiar with the story of John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, two Port Authority Police Officers who were pulled from the debris of the Twin Towers. Their rescue was immortalized in Oliver Stone’s 2006 film World Trade Center. The two officers were found by an army volunteer who braved the rubble in search of survivors.
However, McLoughlin and Jimeno were found on the evening of September 11, making them two of only 18 people saved that day. After September 12, very few survivors were rescued. The last one, Genelle Guzman-McMillan, had been trapped on the 15th floor of the North Tower when it collapsed.
When she regained consciousness, she found herself immobile, her body twisted, and her legs crushed and pinned. Her head was wedged between two columns. She could hear everything but was powerless to speak—not even to cry out for help. She remained in this state for over 24 hours.
It took a total of 27 hours before Guzman-McMillan was discovered by a rescuer. More specifically, a rescue worker with four legs—a German Shepherd named Trakr, one of approximately 300 dogs used to locate survivors and, later, bodies amidst the wreckage. Trakr was involved in what would tragically be the disaster's last rescue.
Guzman-McMillan is still living today. She frequently recounts her story at speaking events and published a book about her experience, *Angel in the Rubble*, in 2014.
2. Grounded: Stranded at Airports Across the Continent
Amidst the rise of hijackings on 9/11, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration instructed the immediate grounding of over 4,500 planes across the nation’s airspace. Tens of thousands of passengers found themselves at airports not listed on their original tickets. There would be no more commercial flights for two full days.
The atmosphere in Little Rock, Arkansas, was entirely typical. Airports transformed into an unusual mix of complete shock and temporary frustration. Would-be travelers stood in terminals, gazing up at the TVs with their necks craned, fully aware that they wouldn’t be going anywhere. Meanwhile, incoming flights brought angry passengers who had no clue what was happening, and once they learned the deadly truth behind their inconvenience, they likely felt foolish and shallow.
With planes grounded and confusion in the air, no one had any place to go once the limited rental cars were quickly taken. Many people found themselves stuck in airport terminals for three or more days, an experience now equivalent to being trapped in a never-ending security line.
The crisis put one little-known place in the spotlight. Gander, a tiny town in northeastern Newfoundland, Canada, with a population of just 11,800, became an unintended hub due to its strategic location. The FAA’s directive to land at the nearest airport turned Gander into a target for nearly 40 planes traveling from Europe to North America along a well-traveled route that makes use of the Earth’s curvature to save time and fuel. Almost 7,000 passengers and crew descended upon Gander, and its exceptional hospitality later inspired the Broadway musical *Come from Away*, a term used in Newfoundland for anyone not from the remote province.
1. History-Making Headlines: September 12 Newspapers
For the third time in its history, on September 12, 2001, the front page of the *New York Times* displayed a massive 96-point, all-caps headline: “U.S. ATTACKED,” with a smaller but equally prominent subheading reading “Hijacked Jets Destroy Twin Towers and Hit Pentagon in Day of Terror.” To put it in context, the previous two uses of this enormous font were on July 21, 1969 (“MEN WALK ON MOON”) and August 9, 1974 (NIXON RESIGNS); it would be used again on November 5, 2008, when America elected its first Black president with the headline “OBAMA.”
Elsewhere, newspapers rushed to cover the unfolding tragedy with the urgency it demanded, while trying to balance respect for the gravity of the situation. The *Washington Post* focused on the critical moment when the world realized this was no simple accident: the second plane nearing the South Tower. The NY *Daily News* ran a similar image with the bold proclamation, “It’s War.” With its headline, “Act of War,” splashed across the intense orange explosion of the second plane’s collision, *USA Today* presented a mix of quotes, some from recognizable sources, others from unnamed ones, all capturing the horror of the situation and the looming death toll that, while still unknown, was undeniably catastrophic.
Across the United States and around the world, variations on the theme of the South Tower fireball paired with the word “war” dominated the front pages—so prevalent that, when viewed together, they almost seem like a journalistic cliché. “A Declaration of War,” declared the *Guardian* (UK). “A Day of Infamy,” announced the *Globe & Mail* (Canada), invoking Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous speech after Pearl Harbor. The *San Francisco Examiner*, however, stood out, though in an unconventional way, with a blunt, one-word headline: “Bastards!”
