Pat’s September 11th, 2001 NY1 News Diary

I’m moderating a September 11th panel discussion tonight at the Paley Center. We’ve assembled a group of 8 NY1 journalists to tell the stories of how they covered the events of the day 10 years ago. As I prepare for that event, I pulled up the minute-by-minute recap of my day, which I wrote late on the night of September 11, 2001. It’s reprinted here in its entirety.

It was hardly an ordinary day to begin with.  It was primary election day in New York.  I arrived as usual – at 4 AM—at my job at NY1, the 24-hour local news channel in New York City.  Polls open at 6 AM in New York City to allow people an opportunity to vote early, so our station had more crews than usual on the streets covering the voting.

The day changed dramatically at about 8:50 AM, when we got word from our assignment desk that there was a fire at the top of the World Trade Center.  To put that into perspective – reports of a fire in a building of that size aren’t entirely unusual.  It can be a cigarette in a garbage bin or a faulty electrical transformer.  But within a minute, we had a camera pointed toward the building, and it was clear that this truly was a disaster.

The next 8 hours is something of a blur to me.  Reporters, producers, writers and managers scrambled behind me as I described what I was seeing on the screen.  Within a few minutes we received phone calls from viewers who saw and heard the first plane crash.  I did live interviews with several of them as we moved our own reporters and live trucks into the area.  As I interviewed the witnesses we continued to look at a wide shot of the burning north tower.

There were two truly frightening moments of the day for me.  One happened as I watched the impact of the second plane, live, describing it to the viewers.  I had no warning.  And the focus was on the north tower.  But suddenly there was this explosion on the other tower.  It made no sense to me, because the towers are so far apart that the fire on one tower should have had little effect on the other.

Within 3 or 4 minutes – the cause of the second explosion was made clear to me by another viewer who called to point out he saw a tiny plane on our screen just before the explosion.  I, speaking to our director in the control room as I was speaking to the viewers, asked that the videotape be rewound and digitally enhanced.  Within about 90 seconds it was there for everyone to see.  An unmistakable image of a plane approaching the south tower from the northwest, flying past the first tower and striking the second.

I’d not uttered words to the effect of terrorism up until that moment.  But in as responsible a way as possible, I had to raise that question for our viewers.  It was beyond coincidence.  The flight path was too deliberate.

From there – one event after another.  The President made comments while appearing at a school in Florida.  He called it an “apparent” terrorist attack.

Minutes later – word of the third plane striking the Pentagon.  Word that New Yorks airports had been closed.  The tunnels and bridges in an out of the city – closed.

Then word of other precautions – like diverting any incoming international flights from New York to Canada.  Subways shut down.  People being evacuated.

Which leads me to the second moment that shook me personally.  And the moment that was far more disturbing than the first.  I was doing a live interview with our reporter Kristen Shaughnessy, who had made her way to within a couple of blocks of the towers.  As I spoke to her on the phone, we watched the live pictures of the two high-rise fires from several angles.  It was as we spoke that the south tower began to collapse.  Kristen described the collapse for a few seconds.  Then she realized the danger, told me she was going to run.  And did.

 

It was more than 10 minutes before I learned that she’d made it to safety.  That was the longest 10 minutes of the morning. 

Clearly we knew at that point that there would be little to stop the second tower from falling.  Thoughts turned to the firefighters and policemen who were inside the south tower as it fell.  Thoughts turned to the people who were in or near the north tower, wondering if they could get out.  Our crews pulled to a safer distance—- I could only hope that everyone we’d sent there made it out.

It’s a frantic scene in a television newsroom as something like this is happening.  Live pictures from several sources.  Accounts from witnesses.  Briefings with reporters.  Wire services providing updates.  My job to try to make sense of it and deliver a responsible account of what happened.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani called – again, we spoke live on NY1.  I’ve never recalled a time when he was short of words.  He wanted to send a message to New Yorkers in the area near the World Trade Center that they should walk north to try to get out of the area.  I tried to help the mayor to make it clear that he wasn’t asking for a hurried evacuation.  He wanted people to calmly leave the area to make more room for emergency equipment.  But his tone was urgent.  He was composed – but not as confident as he usually is.  I soon learned why.  He told me he’d been trapped himself for a short time and he’d only just found their way to safety at a temporary command post.  I asked for information about the rescue effort.  I asked how many people might be hurt.  He had no answer.  No one did.

Morning turned into afternoon.  We moved more reporters into the area.  Got more information from Washington.  Learned of a plane crashing near Pittsburgh.

Then the questions:  what warning was there after these planes were hijacked?  Who were the hijackers?  Again – my conclusion – but I couldn’t imagine that any pilot would agree – gun to his head or not – to steer his plane into the World Trade Center.  So I wondered whether the hijackers were at the controls?  How would they have been trained to fly a 767?  Some of these thoughts made it onto TV – as questions to reporters and terrorism experts and city officials.  Some of these thoughts I kept to myself.

I wondered about the towers themselves.  How much more horrible this could have been if the towers had toppled instead of collapsing upon themselves.  It hardly makes sense to refer to “good fortune” in a case like this.  But if those towers were going to collapse, there was no better way for it to happen.

I’m at home now.  Told to get some sleep so I can resume another long shift at the anchor desk tomorrow.  It’s only now that I’m actually having time to reflect on this horror.  By tomorrow, we’ll know more about what happened.  We’ll have questions about why this happened.  How it happened.  We’ll have stories from families who’ve lost loved ones.  We’ll send our thoughts and prayers to them.  We’ll fall into a more predictable pattern of coverage for this type of story.  We’ll have more answers.  More planning.  More reporters.  More information.  But it won’t be an “ordinary” news day again for a long time.

As written September 11, 2001 by Pat Kiernan. The Paley Center discussion “9/11: Bearing Witness” can be seen on NY1 News on Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 7 pm.

A recap of my day 10 years ago as prepared by CTV News Channel in Canada:

 


 

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