If you were alive and you’re like me, you’ll never forget the moment the planes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. Even from across the country, the images were horrifying, and this single event was the last time this country came together as a people. As we approach the 25th anniversary of this tragic event, filmmaker Rory Duffy transports us back to New York City, to the epicenter, in his documentary short, Memories From Ground Zero.
Brad Hores isn’t even supposed to be near a firehouse that morning. The FDNY firefighter with Engine 298, Ladder 127, is on medical leave, still nursing an injury from another fire. The morning of September 11th, 2001, starts out about as good as any morning gets. He’s on his way to a medical appointment when he spots a trail of smoke rising over lower Manhattan. Still on the phone with his wife, he watches the second plane hit the other tower.
Meanwhile, across the river in Greenwich Village, CBS journalist Tom Flynn hears what sounds like a pop from his apartment. A news bulletin breaks in on a neighbor’s radio: a plane just hit the World Trade Center. Within minutes, Tom is on his bike with a notebook and a pen, headed straight downtown to see for himself. When Tom reaches Chamber Street just as the second plane hits, he talks a Merrill Lynch employee named Eddie Remy into filming for him on the spot — “You’re now working for CBS News, pal.” During an interview with a fire captain about how you even fight a blaze eighty floors up, he watches people jump from the windows above him. Then the tower next to him starts to lean.
Brad Hores reflects on 9/11 in Memories From Ground Zero.
“Brad Hores isn’t even supposed to be near a firehouse that morning.”
Tom stands on Liberty Street with a crew of EMTs when it comes down, and they scream at him to run before the block behind him disappears into black dust. A few streets over, Brad is breathing in something he says he’ll never forget — the smell of a hundred and ten stories of desks, computers, and glass, pulverized into ash across the ground.
Because of the nature of the story, Memories From Ground Zero was a tough watch for me personally. It served as a reminder of what happened that day at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a lonely field in Pennsylvania. While the film features the eyewitness testimony of Brad Hores and Tom Flynn, filmmaker Duffy takes us through the entire morning, spotlighting the heroes along the way and telling the forgotten stories of the people who put their lives on the line for others — the unlikely heroes born from that moment.
Running just over 30 minutes, Memories From Ground Zero makes for a great educational and historical piece about the most tragic event on U.S. soil in the last century.
For screening information, visit the Memories From Ground Zero official website.
"…the last time this country came together as a people."
