Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11

by Mitchell Zuckoff

Despite a long stretch with no response, despite an unprecedented torrent of incoming 9-1-1 calls, Vanessa Barnes refused to disconnect. She was Melissa Doi’s last connection to a world that wasn’t on fire.

They said “I love you” again and again, until Alayne said goodbye. Jack refused to accept it was the end: “Call me when you get down.”

Firefighter-farmer Gerry Nevins of Rescue 1 broke the silence: “We may not live through today.”1 Jay and several others turned to one another and shook hands. “I hope I see you later,” one said. “Great knowing you,” said another.

Among all the pieces, amid all the gruesome human wreckage, one image locked into the minds of several emergency responders who saw it: a girl’s foot, inside a pink sneaker.5 One EMT immediately thought of his own daughter, whose foot was the same size. He looked away, up to the sky to clear his mind, only to see people jumping from the North Tower.

Ed Beyea and Abe Zelmanowitz were close friends12 who worked as computer programmers for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. At forty-two, weighing nearly 300 pounds, Ed had relied on a wheelchair since a diving accident as a young man left him paralyzed. Abe was fifty-five, an Orthodox Jew who lived with his older brother and his family. Both bachelors, Ed and Abe exchanged DVDs, shared meals and musical tastes, and played computer games of chess and golf. Ed couldn’t get down the stairs, and his pal Abe refused to leave him. Abe had already told Ed’s aide to leave because she had children at home. Billy Burke made the pair his responsibility, and so Billy, Ed, and Abe became a trio.

The sounds defied description. In all recorded history, only one other 110-story building had ever collapsed, and that was twenty-nine minutes earlier. Everyone who heard it from the inside took the experience to the grave. Maybe the sound and fury rivaled an Everest avalanche, or a volcanic eruption, or a rocket launch. Or maybe not. Nothing matched being inside five hundred million fiery, falling pounds15 of twisting steel, crumbling concrete, disintegrating office furnishings, shattering glass, and ending lives.

They heard a final transmission: “Tell my wife and kids19 that I love them.”

Not including the hijackers, 2,977 men, women, and children were known to have been killed on the four planes and at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Among the dead were 1,462 people in the North Tower, 630 in the South Tower, 421 emergency responders in New York, 246 passengers and crew members on the planes, and 125 men and women in the Pentagon. No one died on the ground at Shanksville.

Authorities estimated that by the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, more people will have died5 of an illness related to Ground Zero than in the attacks.