New 9/11 documentary finds hope in the horror - Ars Technica

Overview

New 9/11 documentary finds hope in the horrorvar abtest_2167334 = new ABTest(2167334, 'click');

Survivors reconnect with those who saved them in National Geographic’s 9/11: Reunited.

Details

September 11, 2001, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in American history. As the 25th anniversary approaches, National Geographic, in collaboration with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, is marking the occasion with a new documentary miniseries: 9/11: Reunited. The three-episode series revisits the personal stories of several survivors of the terrorist attacks, with a twist: It reunites people whose paths crossed at that time to celebrate the bonds they formed 25 years ago.

Director Julian Jones was a producer on Nat Geo’s Emmy-winning 2021 documentary miniseries 9/11: One Day in America. The experience inspired him to return to direct 9/11: Reunited. “What emerged for me [while making the 2021 documentary] was a sense of people showing up for each other, a selflessness and everyday heroism,” Jones told Ars. As the 25th anniversary of the attacks approached, he and National Geographic decided to commemorate the milestone with a documentary series focused on that aspect.

“We wanted to bring people together to offer gratitude to each other, to answer unanswered questions, to talk about things that maybe they weren’t ready to talk about until now, and also to remember their fallen comrades or friends,” said Jones. “After 25 years, who do they want to meet? What questions have they got? I think we also wanted to tell the story of what many in the 9/11 community call 9/12, that’s the rest of your lives—the journey, and in many cases, the psychological and physical struggles.”

“The challenge was not to impose a story onto anything,” said Jones. “It was to let the story emerge organically in a way that would feel meaningful to our participants. Our job was to really listen to our participants and be guided by what they wanted.”

Jones and his team had vast amounts of archival footage at their disposal, and selecting which footage to use—and how much of the often gruesome details to include—proved to be a delicate balance. There is no footage of the desperate people jumping to their deaths from the burning North Tower, for instance.

“You can’t sanitize history,” said Jones. “You can’t sanitize what happened. But at the same time, you have to be sensitive. The horrible images we all remember of people falling or jumping—those people are someone’s husband, wife, child, or parent, and we have a duty to be sensitive to that. We tried to choose archival material that reflected the experiences our participants were having at that moment.”

Among those featured in 9/11: Reunited are John Paczkowski, George Phoenix, and Jan Demczur. Paczkowski worked on the 67th floor of the North Tower; Phoenix worked on the 74th floor. They had just entered the elevator to get to work that morning when Demczur, a janitor, jumped in at the last minute with his gear. The first plane hit the North Tower as the elevator approached the 65th floor; the car plummeted 15 floors before the emergency brake kicked in.

Trapped in the elevator with smoke pouring in, they managed to pry open the doors only to be faced with a wall. Undaunted, Demczur used his squeegee blade to carve a hole in the plaster so the men could kick through the wall to escape—a process Demczur re-enacts for the series. They ended up in the 50th-floor men’s room and managed to evacuate down the stairwell with other survivors before the North Tower collapsed.

Debbie St. John was taking the subway to work that morning, unaware that the North Tower had been hit. She disembarked to find police officers directing passengers to the street exits. She was walking down the street when the second plane hit the South Tower. So was Stefan Herlacher, a bond trader who worked nearby. He spotted a large piece of wreckage falling toward him and thought he would be hit; the wreckage hit St. John instead.

Herlacher braved the falling debris and panicked people running through the streets to help her and was horrified to find the fragment had cut through her back. He waved down a passing ambulance driver who transported St. John to a hospital. She was the first 9/11 patient admitted and the last to be discharged 18 months later after 50 surgeries. St. John spent years working on her rehabilitation, marrying her fiancé, and having children, but she never forgot the man who saved her life.

“I remember speaking to Debbie on the phone and she said, ‘I’d love to meet Stefan,’” Jones recalled. “I asked, ‘Well, what would you like to do?’ And she said, ‘I want to take him horseback riding.’ Because she had such terrible injuries and couldn’t walk. She just said, ‘I want to show him how far I’ve come thanks to him.’ So we did that.”

Cmdr. Craig Powell was working at the Pentagon when the third plane hit, as was Lt. Col. Marilyn Wills. Wills had been in a meeting and recalled a fireball flying past and singeing her bangs. Trapped in the burning wreckage, Wills led a group of survivors down the corridor, crawling, because she knew there was a window there. The window was bomb-proof and initially wouldn’t open, but Wills and her commanding officer kicked until it popped open. They were on the second floor, so Powell and others on the ground below formed a fireman’s catch as people jumped, one by one.

It was Powell who caught Wills, one of the last to jump to safety. He initially thought Wills was dead when he passed her off to a teammate for CPR. “In that situation, giving a person CPR [on site], I didn’t hold out much hope,” Powell told Ars, although he later learned she had lived. As for her second-story jump, “That takes a lot of courage,” he added, since it was the equivalent of a fourth-story jump from a regular building. He remembers being in considerable pain the following day—“catching all those people is not easy on your body, and I was inside the room when the ceiling came down”—as well as needing a shower. “I stunk, and it wasn’t BO,” he said. “When the shit hits the fan, so to speak, your body dumps all these endorphins; it’s literally the smell of fear.”

Powell admitted to some apprehension about reuniting with Wills, mostly because of the cameras, but Wills took control of the situation and helped him through it. “I wanted to participate to close the loop,” said Powell. Despite his experiences with active combat, the events of 9/11 hit differently. “It was an attack on American soil,” he said. “It really hit close to home and made me very concerned about the safety of my family.” He was diagnosed with leukemia in 2015, related to his rescue work at the Pentagon that day, but the treatment worked, and he was able to walk his daughter down the aisle for her wedding. “My greatest appreciation is that my kids are alive and I got to watch them grow up,” he said.

Kevin Shea had just joined the FDNY’s Ladder 35 unit, and his shift was ending when the first tower was hit. He volunteered to stay on, and his supervisor agreed, but there was no room for him on the trucks. Shea planned to find his own way to the site and meet up with the team there. But when he reached the staging area, he couldn’t find Ladder 35. His crewmates were filmed walking into the South Tower several minutes before it collapsed—the last time any were seen alive. Shea was standing just outside when the tower collapsed. It’s the last thing he remembers.

Paramedic Al Kim was working triage in the South Tower Marriott lobby and survived the collapse. He recalled hearing beeping alarms sounding in the wreckage—motion sensors worn by all the firefighters that trigger alarms when the wearer stops moving for a prolonged time. Kim started combing through the wreckage looking for survivors when he came across an unconscious and badly injured Shea, and he salvaged medical supplies from one of the burning ambulances to stabilize the firefighter.

When the North Tower started to buckle, he moved Shea to the safety of an underground parking garage nearby, leaving him in the care of another physician who had taken shelter there. Kim never saw Shea after that—until they were reunited for the documentary—and found no other survivors. Shea spent several weeks in the hospital. He had broken his neck in three places and credits Kim’s on-site care not just with saving his life, but with preventing him from becoming quadriplegic.

Bill Spade of FDNY Rescue 5 on Staten Island was on site helping evacuate people from the North Tower when he met John D’Allara of NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit coming down the stairs. They ended up chatting for about 25 minutes about their respective wives and sons; Spade recalled that it was almost as if they were writing their own obituaries. Then everything went eerily quiet, and an evacuation order came through due to fears that the North Tower might collapse. D’Allara was hurrying others through the exit door when it fell. Spade curled up in a ball under falling debris, having lost sight of D’Allara, who was later confirmed dead.

Spade was only one of two Rescue 5 members to survive, but he never forgot D’Allara and contacted his widow, Carol D’Allara, a few years later. But D’Allara’s sons were still too young. Spade, who volunteers at the 9/11 museum in Manhattan, thought the 25th anniversary was the right time to reconnect with the family and let the sons know their father “was thinking of them right to the very end.” D’Allara saved 20 lives that day; his son Nicholas also joined the NYPD and even carries his father’s old badge.

Perhaps the most well-known story—depicted in Oliver Stone’s 2006 film, World Trade Center—is the rescue of Port Authority Police sergeant John Mc Loughlin. Mc Loughlin and colleagues William Jimeno and Dominick Pezzulo were on the main concourse between the two towers when the South Tower collapsed, trapping them in the rubble 30 feet underground. Pezzulo was attempting to lift debris off his comrades when the North Tower collapsed 30 minutes later and he was buried by falling debris. Mc Loughlin was buried up to his elbows, slowly being crushed under the weight, and recalled hearing Pezzulo take his last breath—but not before firing a single shot into the air to alert any rescuers to their location.

Meanwhile, above ground, Scott Fox had joined the rescue effort, despite having retired nine months earlier from Rescue 5, as the FDNY formed makeshift companies out of surviving firefighters. So did John Busching of the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit. They risked their lives navigating increasingly unstable debris to help dig out first Jimeno (after 13 hours), then Mc Loughlin (after 22 hours)—a small victory in the midst of tragedy.

Mc Loughlin was gravely injured and spent six weeks in an induced coma, underwent 27 surgeries during his three weeks in the hospital, and then went through rehabilitation. He still walks with a slight limp. But thanks to Fox, Busching, and several others, “I got to see my kids grow up and meet my grandchildren. How do I thank you for that?”

These are harrowing stories, and it almost seems cruel to ask the survivors to relive that trauma yet again. Per Jones, it helped that there were pre-existing relationships with many of the survivors because of the earlier documentary, which helped establish trust.

“It’s a big deal to ask someone to share the story of the worst day of their lives,” said Jones. “It is emotional, and it is hard for them, but I was astonished by the bravery of the people who participated. They wanted so badly to meet the person who saved them, or the person they saved. In those fleeting moments, amidst all that chaos and horror, these incredible bonds were formed that can never be broken. Many survivors also have a real sense of gratitude and of a duty to keep telling their stories, to remember that day and all the people who didn’t survive.”

Fair warning: 9/11: Reunited is an undeniably powerful documentary series—how could it not be, given the subject matter?—and exquisitely well done. But it’s not an easy watch, and for many who lived through that day, even 25 years might feel a bit too soon to relive those painful memories. (As a former New Yorker who had just moved to DC four months before the attacks, I couldn’t bear to watch more than one episode at a time, and felt pretty wrecked by the end. But nonetheless, I’m glad I persevered.)

“It’s a tough watch, and it is emotional,” said Jones. “But I hope what comes out of the series is a sense that, out of all this tragedy, this was a day when people turned up for each other. There was a human instinct to help each other regardless of what you look like or believe in. People just wanted to help. Personally, I found that incredibly moving.”

9/11: Reunited premieres August 21 on National Geographic. It will be available for streaming on Disney+ and Hulu the following day.

Credit: National Geographic

1.          FCC abolishes gigabit speed goal, suggesting it is unfair to slower technologies
   

2.          NASA calls off mission to rescue Swift gamma-ray observatory
   

3.          m RNA cancer vaccine succeeded in Phase 3 melanoma trial, Moderna and Merck say
   

4.          Satellite operators are in panic mode due to a worsening launch crisis
   

5.          The floodgates are open after another Chinese company lands a reusable rocket
   

Ars Technica has been separating the signal from the noise for over 25 years. With our unique combination of technical savvy and wide-ranging interest in the technological arts and sciences, Ars is the trusted source in a sea of information. After all, you don’t need to know everything, only what’s important.

Key Takeaways

• New 9/11 documentary finds hope in the horrorvar abtest_2167334 = new ABTest(2167334, 'click');

• Survivors reconnect with those who saved them in National Geographic’s 9/11: Reunited

• September 11, 2001, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in American history

• Director Julian Jones was a producer on Nat Geo’s Emmy-winning 2021 documentary miniseries 9/11: One Day in America

• “We wanted to bring people together to offer gratitude to each other, to answer unanswered questions, to talk about things that maybe they weren’t ready to talk about until now, and also to remember their fallen comrades or friends,” said Jones