News & Terrorism

Reporting From Ground Zero

Reporters covering the initial moments of the World Trade Center attacks quickly found themselves part of a larger story and at risk for their own lives.

By Bryan Moffett for November 2001 Communicator

While the events unfolded in the early hours of September 11, 2001, and thousands of people were fleeing New York's World Trade Center, many local journalists were doing the opposite: heading directly to the source of the story.

Most found that even getting close to the attack scene was a near-insurmountable task. Tim Scheld, national correspondent for ABC News Radio, lives across the river in New Jersey. After hearing about the attack, he spent all morning trying to drive into the city to report, only to find streets and bridges barricaded. Eventually he returned home to get his bicycle, drove into the Bronx, and rode the bike in from there, stopping along the way to conduct interviews. Joe Collum, investigative reporter for WWOR-TV across the Hudson River in Secaucus, NJ, paid $1,000 to a yachtsman to get his crew across the river.

However, most journalists who spent hours trying to find their way to the story that morning found something else when they finally got there: the horror and enormity made you wish you were somewhere--anywhere--else.

Out of Contact, In Danger

New York 1 reporter Kristen Shaughnessy was on the scene even before the first tower collapsed. "I was on [with the newsroom] from 9:53 to 9:59 a.m.," Shaughnessy says. "[Tower 2] started coming down while I was on the phone. I thought I was far enough away, but within seconds it was there. The FBI agents were all running, and looked scared. One grabbed my arm and said 'Run, or you'll die!' When you see the FBI looking scared, you know it's serious."

"For several hours after that we had no idea what had happened to her," says news director Peter Landis.

After that harrowing experience, Shaughnessy spent much of the day searching for her crew. "I don't even know when Tower 1 came down," she recalls. "I remember feeling it through the ground, though." Eventually Shaughnessy found a NY1 crew near City Hall, and was able to do live phoners around noon, until city officials asked them to move to a safer location. She returned safely to the studio and went live on the air around 3 p.m.

AP Radio reporter Robyn Walensky also headed downtown when she first heard the news. Walensky was headed to the financial district that morning anyway, and made it down to the Bowery, 15 or so blocks north of the World Trade Center, before she was stopped

She had trouble finding a way to relay her stories both to AP and to WFSB-TV in Hartford, CT. Eventually she found a working pay phone, but there were hundreds of people in line. Walensky showed her AP mic flag, and the people let her jump the line. "While I'm on the phone," she remembers, "people started screaming at the top of their lungs, 'Oh my God, oh my God!' And I turned and looked and the tower was just gone."

About an hour after the second tower fell, Walensky was on Lafayette Street in lower Manhattan compiling reports on the mass exodus of New Yorkers out of the area. "People on foot, on bicycles, people without shoes, people with bandanas tied around their mouths, covered from head to toe in plaster," she remembers. "It was a massive evacuation on foot, thousands of New Yorkers, and the thing that struck me most was no one was saying a word."

The only sound aside from the movement of stunned people was one woman, Jean Marra, who was sobbing uncontrollably. Walensky went over to her to see if she was okay, and to get her story. "She said to me, 'my husband works in the Port Authority on the 68th floor [in the north tower], and I know he's alive cause he just called me and he's coming right now.'"

Moments later, Charles Marra came through the crowd. "He looked like the man from the moon," Walensky says. "His hair was just shampooed in plaster. He was covered head to toe in plaster and dust, and when he ran up to her, people all around us applauded. It was the only good story I covered that day."

Allison Gilbert, investigative producer for WNBC-TV, reported live that afternoon, too, except it was from a hospital bed.

Gilbert heard the news from home, and rushed out the door, literally catching the last train into the city. "I got off the train and was running downtown as the first one collapsed," Gilbert says. She tried to phone the newsroom to say she was safe, but couldn't get cell service, and all the pay phones she found were occupied--a common theme for reporters covering the initial tragedy. She started going into restaurants looking for an open line, but all the phones were busy or in use.

Gilbert was actually heading toward ground zero in her bid to find an open phone line, against the tide of people leaving the scene. "It got more and more desolate as I got closer," she says. "Somehow I had entered the area in a way that bypassed any barricades. What was really eerie about that was here I am coming from my house [in normal clothes], and around me all I see are firefighters, rescue workers and people in chemical protection suits. And thick, dirty ash covering everything. I was thinking, 'This looks like Pompeii.'"

Gilbert finally found a phone and was able to contact her newsroom. She tried to call her husband, at a meeting two blocks from the towers, but couldn't reach him. After conferring with the newsroom, she headed toward West Street, a few blocks from the remaining tower--the location where she covered the last Trade Center bombing.

"I was doing my job--interviewing folks, looking for my crew, taking notes," Gilbert says. "I started picking debris up off the ground; mostly papers, looking for clues, looking for evidence for the story. Everything was covered in soot and grime. As I was doing that I heard someone yell, 'Get out of here! Get out of here!' Then I heard the second tower falling. A horrendous rumbling, growling, thunderous sound. The scariest part for me was thinking the building was going to fall like a tree. I literally ran out of my shoes; I was barefoot. I was running over debris and rocks, but I didn't even feel it."

The cloud of smoke and debris engulfed Gilbert. "It was so scary. I didn't know if I was ever going to see the sky again."

She heard the crackle from a rescue worker's radio, and headed in that direction. She and the worker eventually found each other by sound alone. "I was breathing too fast, breathing too much [dirty] air in," she says. "He helped me, even though he could hardly breathe himself. I just can't thank him enough."

After the smoke cleared enough to see, someone--perhaps the rescue worker--helped Gilbert to a makeshift aid station. "They hosed me off in the back of an alley. There was a police officer; I never knew her name, but she was exceptional. She was hacking, coughing, and in bad shape herself, but she was helping me, telling me to cough as much as I could and to vomit if I could, to clear out the ash and soot."

Gilbert was still having difficulty breathing, so she was taken to another triage aid station and put on oxygen. There she was hustled onto an ambulance with three injured firefighters and taken to Bellevue Hospital Center. When Gilbert was finally able to get on the phone with the newsroom, she did a live report from her hospital bed. "It actually felt good," she says. "It felt good to do the work. I was on the air for a five- or six-minute interview, and told everything that happened…People who heard me on the air, and I'm not just talking about colleagues, said I sounded extraordinarily calm and focused. And I think it was because that after the whirlwind I'd been through, just being in a hospital, being away from the scene--being able to do my job--it made me feel secure. It made me feel better."

Getting Too Close

WABC-TV reporter N.J. Burkett and his photographer, Marty Glembotzky, arrived at the scene shortly after the second plane hit. The duo was one of the few full crews able to get stand-ups from ground zero, and their footage has been seen nationwide.

"It was total chaos trying to drive through midtown Manhattan," Burkett recalls. "We made the trip, about 85 blocks, in 22 minutes. We were literally careening through the streets in our unmarked Ford Explorer--driving around cars, through intersections, following emergency vehicles in. We got to within one block of the Trade Center."

The team parked near 7 World Trade Center, and grabbed their news equipment, but left most of their personal belongings in the truck. The truck was destroyed when the building collapsed on top of it, and has yet to be found in the rubble.

Burkett and Glembotzky set up shop in front of the American Express building, directly across the street from the towers. "We were standing at the police/fire department command post--where the whole rescue and firefighting operation was being staged," Burkett says. He recalls huge pieces of wreckage coming down from above. "If you stood at the base of the towers you had a good chance of being hit," he says. "We discovered that pretty quickly and moved back."

The pair set up for a stand-up. "I sort of ad-libbed," Burkett recalls. "I did one take, as I gestured to the building. Marty panned up to the buildings and then panned back down to me, and I finished the first take. He asked if I wanted to do another, and I said sure. We got halfway through the second take, and the whole half of the south tower just blew."

Glembotzky had just panned up to the burning tower when it started to collapse. "I held the shot," he remembers. "And in the viewpiece, I sort of became aware that N.J. had run out of the way. I opened my left eye, and noticed firefighters running past me, and when I took my eye off the lens I saw everyone running. At that point I figured I should probably be running, too."

Burkett and Glembotzky ran into the atrium of a building. They escaped out the other side, and Burkett began looking for a phone. They eventually found a construction trailer with a working phone line, and were able to contact their newsroom and find out where the nearest satellite truck was located.

"I did an interview with a woman at the construction tower," Burkett remembers. "When I finished the interview with her, we were approached by a few paramedics who told us we had to get out of there because the second tower was going to come down. The minute they said that, I heard a loud rumble, and I turned around to see the second tower collapse. I ran about 25 yards down the street, saw an open parking garage and yelled for Marty, who had remained at the trailer shooting the second collapse. He turned and he ran, and I would say he got there just in time."

The pair made their way to the satellite truck, where Glembotzky cut together a piece from their dramatic footage. It aired shortly afterward.

Since the attacks, Burkett has gained some perspective on the enormity of the event and how close he and his photographer came to being victims. "Many of the people in that first scene with me did not survive," he says. "It's really painful for me to watch now--to see that tape over and over again. It's gotten to the point where I can barely watch it. I think it's finally sinking in. I was probably in denial the first few weeks about how close I came."

Glembotzky agrees. "It wasn't until a few days later when we recoiled," he says. "We realized just how lucky we are to be alive. It's made me realize there needs to be a moment of reflection before rushing into a story; time to consider what we're dealing with."

Glembotzky says no one in the newsroom was prepared for the sheer emotional impact of being so close to a tragedy of this magnitude. WABC management brought in grief counselors and began rotating crews, but not for several days after the attack, when news teams had been working nearly non-stop from the scene. "To the news directors out there--think about the human toll and the impact on the crews," he says. "We lost a touch of innocence with this story."

Moving Forward

John Montone, morning street reporter for 1010 WINS-AM, also felt that huge emotional toll. He was on New York's Upper East Side covering one of the candidates in the primaries that morning. "I was just wrapping up, putting some final pieces in the can," he recalls. "I was finally getting my morning coffee, when I got paged and the editor told me a plane had hit the World Trade Center."

Montone got into his Ford Explorer and started making his way south. As soon as he turned on the radio, he heard WINS report that the plane was probably a large passenger jet. "At that point," he says, "I started ignoring the rules of the road, driving on the wrong side of the street, etc. I probably got to the scene by about 9:20 a.m. I followed an EMS vehicle and dumped my Explorer about a block and a half away from the Trade Center. As I was running toward the towers, people were running in the opposite direction, and I spent some time getting some interviews."

Montone, like everyone else, found his cell phone out of service. He ran up Broadway looking for a phone that worked, to contact his news desk. "I got into a store called, ironically, The Record Explosion," he recalls. The clerk recognized his mic block, and immediately offered the phone to Montone. He did a few live reports on the air from the store, and then made his way down to the base of the towers. "I stood right between them, looking up," Montone says. "I stared up at the fires, and I just couldn't believe it. Eventually a doorman pulled on my shoulder and said I was a little too close."

That doorman probably saved Montone's life. He moved a block or so away with some other bystanders and began recording interviews with eyewitnesses. "At one point, as I'm interviewing a woman who was in tears, someone else screamed, 'It's coming down, the tower is falling!'"

Like Gilbert, Montone says his first fear was that the tower would fall like a tree. "As I turned, in my mind's eye I kind of pictured it, as you would expect, toppling over," he says. "But that's when I saw what [everyone else] saw, the kind of implosion. I won't even say I ran. The crowd almost carried me. My tape recorder went flying. It just came at us. Before you could even think, 'Oh, my God!' You felt it. You felt the force of it. I remember feeling stuff hitting me."

Montone and the crowd made their way through the smoke and falling debris into the lobby of a building. The crowd surged through the lobby, trying to make it to the other side of the building and out into safety. Through all this, Montone says he doesn't recall feeling panicked--at least until the crowd he was traveling with was met by another panicked crowd coming from the opposite side, screaming, "You can't get out that way!"

"Gradually we got out the other side of the building," he says. "And you're initially just so happy to get out of that situation, but then you walk out into what I referred to on the air as 'nuclear winter.' There was no sun. It was dark. The debris kept raining down, and it was impossible to breathe."

Montone made his way to a Burger King a block or so east of the attack site. "A worker there was waving people in. Those workers just turned into lifesavers. Immediately they were giving us water, towels, helping us wipe off ash and debris. We were choking, coughing." Shortly afterward, Montone ran into a friend, who gave him access to a phone line. He was able to get on the air a few times to report live. "I didn't write anything," Montone says. "I tried after the second [report] to write copy, but I couldn't collect my thoughts. People have told me I sounded like I was in shock. I know people have told me I broke down at one point."

As of three weeks after the event, Montone still had not listened to his live reports from that morning, and he says he has no urge to do so.

"Maybe some day, when this is long gone," he says. "But for now, I don't want anything to bring me back there. I mean, I've gone back physically to do my job, and I've looked at the block where I was. But I don't want to hear how I sounded that day."

After making the reports, Montone and his friend made their way back to find his car. It was in decent shape, although literally covered in debris. "It was an amazing thing," he recalls. "When I got out of that area, crossed Canal Street and into Chinatown, I had at least four inches of debris on my truck. And in Chinatown, people are walking around as if nothing happened. People were looking at my car like it was a novelty. They were scooping debris off it.

"All the way up to the station I kept thinking two things. I kept thinking, 'Christ, I just saw so many people die.' And then I just kept thinking, 'We lose. We lose.' I was as gloom-and-doom as anybody in the world at that point, thinking immediately about the larger implications. I cried when I met my news director at the station."

Weeks later, Montone has a somewhat more positive outlook.

"I got an e-mail from a listener, thanking me," Montone says. "He told me, 'I thought I was going to die [that morning], and I thought the world was going to end. Then I met you, and we walked for a few blocks that morning. You made me laugh and made me think it was worth living another day.' I didn't remember the meeting at all, and had he not e-mailed me, I never would have. And [after that], I said to myself, 'Maybe we don't lose.' That email has done a lot in the past few days to lift my spirits."

--Bryan Moffett is managing editor of Communicator.