he videotape is raw.Posted on 01/12/2002 5:21:58 AM PST by sarcasm
he videotape is raw.
It shows the black wedge of an airplane slamming into the north tower of the World Trade Center. It shows commanders in the building's lobby scrambling to figure out how to send scores of firefighters into the burning building.
It captures the radio transmissions ordering everyone down to the lobby after the second plane hits. It shows the gout of dust and rubble as the buildings suddenly collapse. It shows the booted foot of a Fire Department chaplain who is being carried through smoke and the din of screaming. It shows the faces of anxious men only minutes before they die.
A brief clip of the first plane slicing through the north tower was seen by millions in the days after Sept. 11, but what has never been publicly shown is the rest of the 90-minute videotape. It was made by a French filmmaker who happened to be taping a group of firefighters in Lower Manhattan. It is a document of disaster from the inside: the impact, the rush to the emergency, the frenzied effort to establish a command post, the grays and whites and flaming oranges as both towers collapse.
Copies have made the rounds of city firehouses, and fire officials say they plan to use it as an investigative tool. The filmmaker says he wants to turn the tape into a documentary and give it to the families of the dead. It is anyone's guess whether it will one day be seen by the public.
While there are other tapes of ground zero on that day, none come close to capturing the catastrophe at such close range. It is an extraordinary view of history at the moment that it happens. It is so immediate, so vivid, so graphic, so raw that viewers can almost taste the bitter smoke in their throats and feel the grit of concrete on their teeth.
It begins at the corner of Lispenard and Church Streets, where Jules Naudet, the filmmaker making a documentary about the training of a probationary firefighter, is taping Battalion Chief Joe Pfeifer responding to a report of a gas leak under the street. After a meter reading is taken, the roar of a plane is heard.
The camera pans up to follow the path of the plane as it rams the north tower. There are expletives and flames and smoke.
It cuts to Chief Pfeifer in his squad truck, cruising toward the flames. He is on the phone and smoke is dribbling down the facade like water. The sirens have started already. "It's a big one," the driver says.
The next 20 minutes or so are given over to confusion, as Mr. Naudet and his camera rush into the north tower and capture Chief Pfeifer and his superior, Deputy Chief Pete Hayden, setting up a command post. They issue orders to their men and desperately work the telephones. An eerie calm has filled the lobby as firefighters muster and wait to be deployed. Their faces are filled with fear, with the damp anxiety that comes before a job.
The suspense of watching the tape is excruciating because the viewer knows exactly what is coming: a loud crash, like a bus running into a bridge abutment — the second plane. "Tommy!" someone yells. "Tommy! Another plane! Another plane!"
There is so much grit on the camera lens by now that Mr. Naudet has to scrub it with a rag.
There is a call to evacuate: "Everybody down to the lobby! All units down to the lobby!"
Smash. The firefighters jump. Another smash. Smash. Smash. Falling bodies or debris?
The men stare at the ceiling, wary, shaking their heads. Their eyes seem moist and bright. The camera pans to the mezzanine where employees, calmly bunched together, have started to evacuate in a long, tight line.
Back to Chief Pfeifer on the phone. A scrap of a nearby conversation: Now they're saying the Pentagon's been hit. Chief Pfeifer shouts to someone off-screen, "Do you have to dial nine to get out on this thing?"
Then it happens. The south tower starts falling.
It sounds like a gunshot. Then a wave crashing on shore. The camera goes up the escalator. The lens fades slowly to darkness, dust leaching away light. The tape is so hard to make out that there are only voices.
"Everybody all right? How's the way out of here?" The images seem as if they are underwater or seen through a wet shower door. Snow, infrared light.
"We've got to get everybody out! Let's go! We need some light!" Radio chatter. Screaming. "Where are we going?" "Sarge." "Hey Pete. Pete." "Chief Hayden" "We're lost." "Hey Joe, where are you?" "There's the escalator, right there." Top of the escalator. "Mike! Where's the escalator? We only got four guys. Mike, I need you. Mike!"
Daylight. Or the ashen gray of that day's light.
It is during this scene that a searing image appears: the booted foot of a dead man who is being carried by his brothers. The men carrying him later said the body was that of the Rev. Mychal Judge, the Fire Department chaplain, who perished.
Mr. Naudet had been with the firefighters on the street that day as he had been nearly every day for about three months, chronicling the life of a probationary firefighter at the downtown firehouse for Engine Company 7 and Ladder Company 1.
"We just happened to be there," he said in a telephone interview last night. "The true heroes are the incredible men who ran into those buildings and lost their lives."
Francis X. Gribbon, a spokesman for the department, said that both fire officials and the F.B.I. have a copy of the tape. For the Fire Department, it will be part investigative tool and part historical artifact.
"For some it has captured the last brave actions of a number of firefighters who went to save others," he said. "For others in the department, it will become what we use to try to definitively know who was where, and we think it has been helpful. It is very helpful. As evidence, it will help us to understand or piece together the activities that occurred in tower one, such as those companies reporting in." Mr. Gribbon added, "There's nothing else like it."
Mr. Naudet nearly lost his life himself when the north tower collapsed. In the tape, his camera lens goes blank in the storm of dust and wind, like a real eye clogged with grit.
"Chuff! Chuff! Chuff!" He tries to clear his throat. "Mayday! Mayday!" someone shouts. "You with me? It's hard to breathe."
It is dark again on screen and there are far-off yells, voices as if coming over water. The camera points straight down and captures a pile of ash-covered paper. It looks like the remnants of a blizzard, like a clip from a Buffalo weather report.
"Chuff, chuff. Chuff, chuff."
Chief Pfeifer lived, as did his superior, Chief Hayden. Capt. Terence Hatton, pictured at one point in the tape, is dead. Father Judge is dead as well. Lt. Kevin Pfeifer, Chief Pfeifer's brother, is also dead. Dozens of the faces in the tape are dead. Among those passing through its frames are Port Authority officials crucial in the evacuation and other civilians who bravely lent a hand.
The tape ends as suddenly as it starts. Mr. Naudet is almost choking, trying just to breathe. Someone shouts out, "Chief?" The camera stumbles through a doorway.
And then the screen goes blank.
Thanks for the heads up.
This is history. On the line of filming the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Just reading the account leaves me breathless, and so grateful for all the men and women who gave their lives helping others.
greater love hath no man...
God bless them all.
Ignorance Making You Ill? Cure It!
to tell as many people as we can reach
"Make this tape public!"
It may be raw, but we all need to see this again and again, until it is as burned in our minds as the melted USS Arizona was to a generation of older Americans.
Never Forget!
For a better tomorrow...
God bless the heroes that died that day, God bless the victims and God Bless America!
Make sure that you do your part to keep America's service men and women as PROUD OF AMERICA as we are of them.
.
I FORGOT
The recent events of Tuesday, Sept. 11 have brought death and destruction and sadness to so many people around the world. But It DIDN'T HAVE TO BE! Why is it, that all of a sudden we come together as a nation? Why does it take a tragedy of this magnitude to show our solidarity? The pictures from TV of complete strangers hugging each other in the streets of NYC brought tears to my eyes! For one brief moment in time we were truly a nation of one! All racial / ethnic / religious barriers came down! Blacks and whites helping each other Jews and Christians hugging and coming together! Why are we not ALWAYS like this ???? And HOW could we, the strongest country in the world let this happen!
Simply because WE FORGOT! EXACTLY WHAT THE TERRORISTS WANTED!
With everything that is happening in America today, all the new gun laws that our socialist politicians are attempting to pass, the problems in Klamath Falls with the ESA wanting to protect fish instead of America's farmers, the UN kicking the US off of the Human Rights Council, the U.N. vote to add Syria as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, Agenda 21, the New World Order, and on and on. It's just too much to think about for one man.
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: declared a holy war against the US, I thought, what an idiot, then, I FORGOT!
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN AND HIS BUDDY, HEZBOLLAH: attacked the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 Americans, I thought This sucks! THEN I FORGOT
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: bombed the Jewish cultural center in Argentina in 1994 that killed 95 people, I thought, oh my God this guy should be stopped! But then, I FORGOT!
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: Bombed the World Trade center in 1993 (the first time), that killed 6 people and wounded over 1000, I thought to myself how horrible! Then, I FORGOT!
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: Admitted to the 1995 bombing in Riyadh that killed 5 US servicemen, I thought, OH my God, what a tragedy! THEN I FORGOT!
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: Had his terrorists attack the USS Cole (DDG-57) while it was refueling in port in Yemen on October 12, 2000. 17 sailors were killed and over 30 were injured in the bombing, I thought we need to stop these guys before they kill any more Americans. THEN I FORGOT!
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: Was named in the June 25, 1996, terrorist truck bombing in Dhahran that killed 19 U.S. airmen, I was outraged! THEN I FORGOT!
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: bombed the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 1998, I thought it was so sad, then, I FORGOT!
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: Was prevented from a plot to hijack 12 planes in one day in Algeria, and blow them up, I thought GREAT work FBI! THEN I FORGOT!
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: This past February, renewed his threat of a "jihad" or holy war against the U.S. and, in speaking to an Arabic newspaper, bin Laden said, "We had thought that the Riyadh and al-Khobar blasts were a sufficient signal to sensible U.S. decision-makers to avert a real battle between the Islamic nation and U.S. forces, but it seems that they did not understand the signal." I thought to myself this guy must be stopped! THEN I FORGOT !
WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN: Sent his "punk ass" henchmen to fly airplanes into the Word Trade Center, killing what will probably be over 10 thousand people, and THEN fly an airplane into the pentagon and kill (NO MURDER) someone so close to me, I PROMISE YOU, I WILL NOT FORGET!
NOW! ITS F*&%&$ing PERSONAL!
Please, Please, Please, if you are reading this, don't look away when they show the airplanes flying into the buildings on TV, look at it over and over again !! Don't stick your head in the sand! Remember how despicable the act was, remember the loss of life, don't shield your children, use restraint, but help them understand it, and remember it! They are our future! You will go back to work, and resume your daily duties, but, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, DON'T EVER FORGET!
I assure you the terrorists around the world are counting on us to FORGET AGAIN! I fear the next time we will see a mushroom cloud on our beautiful horizon! Then it will be too late! All because WE FORGOT !
Maybe one of the reasons we won WW 2 , was because everyone.............................REMEMBERED PEARL HARBOR !
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There are American sailors and soldiers on ships, in aircraft and on the ground fighting to keep America safe. These servicemen and women don't want to be fighting the Afghans. They would much rather be home, like us with our families, our husbands, our boyfriends, our girlfriends, our wives and children. At night we sleep safely in our homes because of them!
President Bush is wrong! Don't go back to life as normal
Don't Forget who is protecting us, AMERICAN military troops!
Before you go to sleep, everynight, say a prayer that they will be able to avoid the dangers of WAR and come home to us, so that we may say, "Thank You".
All Americans:
Keep this picture in your mind forever and the attack on the World Trade Towers, the death of those men, women and children will stay personal forever! When you get a peacelover whining in your ear, this is the cure. Six columns from the left, in the middle of the picture you see someone holding an infant out of the building trying to give it fresh air. These folks are all dead now! Keep this atrocity personal forever! Do not listen to the whiners and weepers about the civilian casulties that our pilots accidentally cause. Remember foremost the four thousand civilians who died in the attack on the World Trade Center Towers. This terrorist attack was an intentional mass murder of innocent civilians. So tell Reuters and CNN to go somewhere else with their 'sad stories'!
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Here is a great PBS show that Clinton made sure we didn't see. Look at it with your Real Player program.
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America -- here
I can certainly understand that... the important thing is to tell others that this tape exists and should be made available for those who need reminding.
Video shows disaster in WTC from within the building
There is a video-recording that shows the 11 september disaster in the World Trade Center in New York from within the building itself. On this video is shown how there is being called for an evacuation of the northern tower. This the New York Times reported on saturday.
Also you can hear how a short time later the southern tower is being hit by an airliner and how the firedepartment-commander in the WTC is informed via telephone that there was an attack on the Pentagon as well.
The video is made by the Frenchman Jules Naudet, that was making a documentary about the education of firefighters in New York. Accidently he was that day filming near the WTC site. After the impact of the first airliner in the northern tower Naudet ran towards the tower.
Eerie silence
The first footage he made there shows how firedepartment-commander Joe Pfeifer and his superior Pete Hayden are establishing a commandpost in the building. They give their men oders and try to evacuate the building by phone. In the fronthall of the building is an eerie silence. The faces of the fireman are filled with fear.
Those who watch the video, the New York Times writes, is strained to the limit "because he knows just what is going to happen: a hard bang, like a bus that collides with a brigdepost, the second plane', "Tommy! Tommy! Another plane! Another plane!, somebody shouts. The lens of Naudets' camera is covered with dust and debris in such a way he has to wipe it clean to be able to film.
There are images of scared people that will die minutes later and from a firedepartments' chaplain that is being carried away amidst the screaming of wounded people.
Northern tower
The outside footage that Naudet made shows how a plane strucks the northern tower, were show just after 11 september. Almost no one knew about the footage of the building. The video was never released.
According to the New York Times it is questionable if the public will see the rest of the video. Copies have been showed in New York Firestation. It will also be used in the ongoing investigation. Naudet want to make a documentary from the video for the families and victims.
[END]
LEST WE FORGET!!!
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