03x05 - 9/11/2001

[bunniefuu]

[somber music playing]

These are real experiences,
actual detailed events that happened.

This is the biggest m*rder
that we had ever caught.

Thousands of people were k*lled
in this attack.

[MacLeod] We weren't prepared.

We weren't prepared as human beings,
not even talking about professions.

I didn't feel in control like I was
when I was doing an investigation.

I felt more like
I was just trying to survive the day.

[Zeins] You find out
what you're really made of.

You find out
what it is to be a team player.

You find out who your partner is.

You find out how important life is.

[Rivera] I think half the city
knew somebody or had a relative

who died in the Trade Center.

But time has gone by.

Some people now haven't experienced
something like that.

They haven't seen what it's like
when tragedy really hits.

And the whole city came together.

[Hovagim] It didn't matter
what background, nationality you were.

We were all humans that day.

[Panuccio] Twenty-five years later,

that will always be the date
that divides my life.

The world that existed
on September th, that's gone.

It led into years of warfare.

My whole world was changed.

The whole world was changed.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Mooney] Our job is to make sure
you can go home and sleep at night.

[Rivera] It's so important for a family
to know who m*rder*d their relative.

[Reznick] Compassion for the victims,
that's the most important thing.

[Parrino] I've always liked
the peek behind the curtain.

What really happened?

[McNeely] You want to find out the truth.

That's what detectives do.

[officer] Your instinct is to help people.

[Titus] In New York City, the NYPD…

this is it.

[suspenseful music trails off]

[MacLeod] It was the most amazing thing,
looking at the towers from below.

You know, especially as a kid,
you'd just go like this.

And it just keeps going and going,
like a stairway to heaven.

My Aunt JoAnn,
she worked in the World Trade Center.

She worked in the North Tower,
rd floor,

and then also the th floor.

She was working for Cantor Fitzgerald,
a brokerage firm.

She started working there when she was .

She ended up becoming vice president,
partner.

So JoAnn, she was my aunt,
but she was more like my sister.

Always took care of me,
made sure I wasn't getting into trouble.

She was only years older than me.

When she first started working there,

she brought me to the Trade Center
for the first time.

As a five-year-old, you know,

you get excited about things
that you've never seen before.

And here I am getting on the elevator,
and it was like a rocket ship.

You're up there in a couple of minutes,
a hundred-somewhat stories.

[Panuccio] Your ears are popping.
You get out.

And once you stepped up near the windows,
it was actually kind of like, "Ooh."

It was a long way down.

A hundred and ten floors in each tower.

It could be upwards of , people
on any given day.

[Parrino] The buildings had
their own zip code.

That's something that-- Just think that--

Wherever you live in the United States,
there's an area that has a zip code.

These two buildings
had their own zip code.

[McNeely] They had designed it
to withstand high winds, storms,

lightning strikes, planes hitting it.

It was perceived to be
somewhat indestructible.

[sirens wailing]

[reporter]
A b*mb k*lled five
and injured more than , others

in the blast
that rocked the World Trade Center

and sent Lower Manhattan
into a state of complete chaos.

[McNeely] February ,
there was a t*rror1st attack.

International t*rrorists
put expl*sives into a van

and parked it
into a, you know, subterranean garage.

It blew up, but the damage was so minimal.

Someone near me was saying,
"Man, these towers are amazing."

"They can withstand this huge blast.
I can't believe it."

[McNeely] I never really thought
that the Twin Towers were a target

of international t*rrorists
until that day.

And then I realized
that they were a symbol of strength.

They were a symbol of pride.

Something that, you know,
when you flew across the Atlantic Ocean,

you could see the Twin Towers.

[officer] The following year,
they put up cement guards

so that nobody could get close

with a truck or a car
filled with any kind of expl*sive device.

Then you felt like,
"Okay, this won't happen again."

[MacLeod] It was a Tuesday.

Beautiful weather.

I don't remember
seeing a cloud in the sky.

And I had to go to court.

I was in the Anti-Crime Unit.

I was going to trial
for a pickpocket case.

So I would travel in by ferry.

[boat horn blaring]

I get off the boat on the Manhattan side.

I started walking
towards the train station.

As I'm walking,
only steps away from the ferry,

I hear a bunch of explosions.

Sounded like… [imitating explosions]

And I actually said,
"What the f*ck was that?"

But I continue to walk.

I get on to the subway
towards the courthouses.

I had to be there at nine o'clock.

[MacLeod] I woke up
in the detective's dorm

in the th Precinct.

In the police department,

sometimes you don't go home
for a couple of days.

I signed in, and I remember it was…
ABC News was on.

And I saw that the Twin Towers
had been struck by a plane.

[Dahler]
It sounded like a m*ssile,
not an airplane.

Then there was a loud expl*si*n.

Dispatcher called me,
and says there's a small Cessna

that just crashed
into the World Trade Center.

And I can see
from the West Side Highway that

that was not a small Cessna.

That was a big-a*s jet.

[man] Holy sh*t!

I went into my police mode.

I knew, with something like that,

it was gonna be a mass-casualty incident.

[Parrino] I had just dropped my kids off
at PS , my two boys,

when I heard it come over the radio.

[man]
A major disaster is occurring
in New York City this morning.

Being a detective commander in Manhattan,

probably the only one in the NYPD
that lived in Manhattan,

I knew I'd be expected to respond.

So I went home and changed,
probably one of the few people

that put a suit on to respond
to the World Trade Center,

because I got in trouble in May

responding to a triple homicide
not wearing a suit.

[Panuccio] I'm in the th Precinct
in the patrol borough of Manhattan North.

This one was off the charts.

So they will mobilize people
across New York City

to respond to the Trade Center.

[officer] I was a police officer
in the th with Pete Panuccio.

The desk is calling
for the first one-in-eight mobilization,

eight officers with a sergeant.

[man]
We're heading down
towards One World Trade Center.

Joanne Dowd was with the first group
of cops in the th Precinct

that left in a van.

All of us were supposed to meet
at Church and Vesey.

I was there with the lieutenant.
I says, "Let's just grab a car."

"We'll go down there."

[MacLeod] I'm on the train.

I get off at the municipal building,
which you always see on
Law & Order.

And as I'm walking
towards those iconic pillars,

everybody's just, like, looking up.

My eyes go to what they're looking at.

And I see that big, gaping hole
in the North Tower.

Those towers were huge.

Tens of thousands of people
in each building every day.

I know so many people there.

Immediately, I call --.

-[keypad beeping]
-It's JoAnn's office number.

And I hear beep, beep, beep.
It wasn't the typical busy sound.

It's like an "out-of-service"
type of beep tone.

It's nine o'clock. She should be at work.

Now I'm like, "Oh sh*t."

We gotta get over there.

And all of a sudden…

that first sound
that I thought I heard echoing,

I hear it without the echo.

Just a big expl*si*n.

Boom!

[panicked clamoring]

Then I literally hit the pavement.

It was a second f*cking plane.

[man] We're on the th floor
of the South Tower.

The only reason I'm here now
is because we were standing

on the other side of the building
from where the plane came in.

[distressing, ominous music playing]

I wound up face down on the floor.
And I had no idea why.

Everything went dark.

There's people crying and screaming.

The woman next to me, who I knew…

Pushed her a little bit
and I said, "Are you okay?"

I didn't get any response,
so I knew she was gone.

There's dead people
laying all over the place.

It was a very ugly, chaotic scene,
and nobody knew what was going on.

[MacLeod] The homicide squad,
along with everybody else,

was involved in an emergency mobilization
down to that area.

Two of my partners and I, we were driving,
lights and sirens, from the th Precinct.

The next thing we knew, there was smoke
billowing out of the South Tower.

Then you realize
that something hit the other tower.

-[reporter ]
Oh my goodness. Another one.
-[reporter ]
Oh God.

-Oh my God.
-[reporter ]
My goodness.

We all looked at each other in the car
and said,

"This is no f*cking accident."

First thing that popped into my head
is my wife.

She was working for a company
called Salomon Smith Barney.

I knew she was in the city.

I also knew that she had a client core

that was in
one of the Trade Center buildings.

And I knew that
she often spent time there.

So I was consumed by that.

I had a cell phone,
like an old f*cking flip phone,

like a StarTAC
or whatever they were called.

And I remembered
trying to call her at work,

trying to call her cell phone,
and, um, I couldn't get through.

It was just dead air.

There was just, like,
no signal, no nothing.

[Dowd] It was mayhem in the city.

People are abandoning their vehicles
in the middle of intersections.

[man] Forget about the damn car! Let's go!

[Dowd] We are now trying
to get to where we're supposed to be,

which is Church and Vesey.

And we got to the middle of Maiden Lane,

and we couldn't move.

We left the van and we got out.

And we start running
towards the World Trade Center.

And as we're approaching the towers,
we look up.

And people are hanging out on the girders.

And black smoke is billowing out.

People are sending notes down.

"Help me.
I'm on this floor or that floor."

It's…

You're like…

[exhales]

Just beyond belief.

And your sergeant is going, "Let's go.
Keep moving. Let's just keep moving."

"We have to get to where we have to go."

"And they will tell us
what we have to do."

[panicked clamoring]

[Nicholls] The fire that was happening
on the th floor was unbelievable.

You could hear this cracking noise,
and you didn't know what was going on,

but the fire just kept getting worse.

Something from the ceiling
came down next to my head.

And you're like, "You gotta be kidding me.
I gotta get out of here."

I'm thinking, "I'm on the th floor
of a building that's on fire,

and I don't know how to get out."

[Dowd] Your instinct is to help
these people who are running at you.

So I went to go,

and my sergeant grabbed me
by the nape of the neck

and pulled me back.

And somebody jumped…

and landed in front of me.

And k*lled somebody in front of me.

It was brutal.

Brutal to watch.

[voice breaking]
There was nothing we could do.

It's not the image
as much as it is the sound.

I'm sorry.

When a body falls…

from that great height,

it sounds like broken glass.

And it is brutalized.

[somber music playing]

[MacLeod] I'm a New York City
homicide detective, so I've seen death,

horrific m*rder scenes,

violence, things like that.

One of the most disturbing things
that always stayed with me, stuck with me,

is just the fact that these poor people
would rather jump to their death

than burn alive.

Not much of an option.

[Nicholls] When I was on the th floor,
I thought to myself,

"I have two boys who need me,
but I don't know how to get out of here."

There's just too much debris,
and you definitely feel the heat.

I ran into two women,
and these two guys came over,

and we found an empty stairwell.

We got to about the th floor,

and there was two New York City firemen
who were coming up the stairs.

They both had big tanks on their back.
They were laden with all this equipment.

We said, "You gotta get up to ,
because it's really bad."

I remember these guys saying to us,

"Don't worry about us.
Just worry about yourselves."

"Get out. We'll take care
of what's going on on ."

And it was really kind of an eye-opener
into how people think,

and how first responders
really respond to situations like that.

[man] Let's go!

[Dowd] The Lower Manhattan precincts were
already in the buildings removing people.

All the Upper Manhattan precincts
were with us.

We moved to Park Place,

about a half a block up
from the World Trade Center.

And they start to assign four to a floor
to assist in the evacuation.

[Nicholls] Going down,
we did encounter some debris

that we managed to climb over
to get to the th floor.

And there was a police officer
in that elevator, saying,

"Get in here. I'll get you out."

We got down to the first floor.

The first floor was nothing but dust
and stuff all over the place.

It was amazing. You could hardly see
anything in front of you.

We walked out the door.

I really didn't understand
what was going on.

The best word to describe
any of this was "chaotic."

-[sirens wailing]
-[crowd clamoring]

From a triage standpoint,
I guess I looked as bad as anybody,

so an officer came along and grabbed me.

I didn't know her.
I didn't know anything about her.

All I know is that somebody
was helping me out.

Then somebody was taking my photograph.

The police officer took me
to sit me down on the sidewalk.

That's when they took me to the ambulance.

Then she just went back into the building.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Parrino] I drive down
to the World Trade Center.

When I first show up at the scene,

there's a plane engine
in the middle of the street.

And I thought I'd try
to pull a serial number off it,

help identify the airplane.

Frankly, under the stress,

I flipped into detective mode
when I should have flipped into boss mode.

I kind of had to snap myself
out of the situation.

And I walk over
to a temporary headquarters

that is across the street
from the South Tower

to make a call to my higher headquarters.

[MacLeod] I'm almost
to the World Trade Center.

I'm standing there by myself.
I'm like, "What do I do?"

We never trained for this
in the police academy.

They never taught us this.

I'm years old.

Or , one of the two.

I was still relatively
a young kid at the time.

What do I do?
I'm like, "How the f*ck am--"

"How am I getting up there
to get her out of there?"

Since I was young, JoAnn was always there.

She was proud of my career.

She was there
when I graduated the police academy.

When I bought my first house,
she lent me , bucks.

I could always count on her.

Now, how the hell am I gonna help her?

You know, I was looking for that guidance.

Eventually, I ran into
my lieutenant at the time.

We're walking south,
so we're in front of the Verizon Building.

I'm hearing this rumbling.

[low, distressing rumbling]

The cell phones are not working.

I'm talking on a landline.

The phone starts shaking
and going across the table.

I'm thinking it's the subway system.

[distressing creaking]

[Dowd] I felt the ground move.

The rumble got bigger.

[MacLeod] We thought it was
an expl*si*n. It was that loud.

But it was like rolling…
like a rolling, loud sound.

It was like… [imitates low rumbling]

[MacLeod] And all I see,
from like the th floor down…

[imitates expl*si*n]

[onlooker] Oh my God! Oh my God!

-Get down!
-Get over there!

[McNeely] A couple blocks
from the Trade Center,

I just saw white smoke billowing
from where the South Tower was.

[onlooker] Oh my God! Oh my God!

[McNeely] And it was coming
right towards my partner and I

at a rapid pace.

[panicked panting]

[McNeely] Two of us instinctively
just looked at each other and started,

as we call it, "assholes and elbows."

And we were hightailing it to safety
inside Syms department store.

[MacLeod] And my lieutenant
at that very moment says,

"f*cking run!"

Get out of here!

-[man] Go, go, go!
-Come on! [passerby yelling indistinctly]

[Dowd] And then all of the cops
who were with me

lining up to assist in the evacuation

were coming at me like a herd of bulls.

And I face-planted into the sidewalk,

and they proceeded to run on me.

And, I mean,
you can't blame them, I guess.

Although I was pissed.

I heard my knee pop, my back pop.

I was in pain immediately.

And I was literally crucified
to the sidewalk.

[sirens wailing]

[Dowd] I couldn't move.

And two guys from the rd Precinct,

who I never got their names,

same thing happened to them.

They were like, "Can you walk?"
I was like, "I can run. Let's go."

[man] Come on, come on!

[Dowd] We tried
to get ahead of the debris,

but we couldn't.

So we just whipped onto Broadway,

and knelt down,

and tried to cover as best we could.

[Panuccio] We're trying
to get into World Trade,

which is directly north
of the actual Twin Towers themselves.

That looked like the safest shelter
we could find.

The doors were locked.

I was actually gonna pull my g*n out
and start sh**ting the glass.

I did not want to be caught on the street.

Somebody pushes the door open
from inside, screaming,

"Get in here! Get in here!"

We ran in.

You're in basically a glass atrium,
two, three stories high.

[building rumbling]

The glass is breaking inside,
you know, the front lobby,

and the place just instantly fills
with dirt and dust.

That really was truly
the most terrifying moment of my life.

And I've been in some…

couple of hairy things
over the course of my career.

But all of a sudden
you get this realization that…

"I'm gonna die here."

[emotional music playing]

It seems like some things slow down
while other things speed up.

It's amazing what the brain can process.

I'm not an overly religious person.

But if you think you're gonna die,
better square your sh*t away real fast.

And that's what I'm like…

I said, "God…"

I was years sober at that time.

The thing that popped in my head was,

"You know what, God?
Thank you for the last years."

"Take care of my family."

And I'm like,
"This is it. You gotta ride this out."

[tense music playing]

[Parrino] The building I'm in
starts filling up

with what I think is smoke.

And I remember

from early on in elementary school
that when dealing with smoke,

you're supposed to
get on your knees and crawl.

Except this smoke is loaded
on the lower end

and thinner on the high end.

And it has me very confused
and questioning everything I learned

from Sister Elizabeth
at Our Lady of Snows in .

[man] It's gone! The whole tower!

It's gone!

Holy crap!

[Panuccio] In World Trade,

we didn't get hit with anything,
no major debris.

You're not dead.

Get to work. Be useful.

You can barely see inside this building.

I have some crappy little flashlight
with me,

and I hear people
yelling up the escalator,

so I go up there.

I'm the only guy in uniform there.

This guy, he's a building…

I don't know if he was
a fire marshal or security guard.

He goes,
"Oh, thank God, the cops are here."

I'm like…

[chuckles wryly]

"Yeah, the cavalry's arrived,
and it's me, and that's not much."

[suspenseful music playing]

[MacLeod] South Tower's collapsed.

Now we gotta regroup.

We start walking towards the North Tower.

I see the firemen.

They're pouring water into their eyes.

They're crying.

There's regular civilians
who happened to escape the building.

One guy, I remember, I grabbed him.
I gave him a big hug.

Grown-a*s man, much older than me,
probably in his forties…

And he's crying, and, uh…

Again, shock.

I'm… I'm in it.

I said, "It's gonna be all right."

[Dowd] The dust settled.

And we went to what is now known
as "Ground Zero"

to help expedite any kind of evacuation.

And when we got there,
it was just not there.

There was a shard of the building
in the middle of Church and Vesey.

[Parrino] The South Tower,
even though it's hit second,

comes down first,
'cause it was hit at a lower level,

which compromised
the strength of the building more.

After the ' bombing
of the World Trade Center,

we received training that
a plane could not knock down the tower

from the sheer force.

But now I'm willing
to change my thought process.

Get out of the area.
The second tower is coming down.

-[man] Did they tell you--
-Yes, it's about to come down.

[Parrino] We lined up
a bunch of police officers

to keep everybody
further away from the building,

'cause it was obvious
the second building was gonna come down.

-[officer] Get the f*ck out of here!
-We're going!

[Parrino] I see a bunch of EMS.
I'm like, "Dude, what are you doing?"

He goes,
"We're gonna go back into the building."

I'm like, "You're crazy."

He goes, "No, there's people in there
that need to be removed. "

And I felt like a coward…

that I was gonna walk away.

So I was like, "Okay, f*ck it."

"I'm not gonna have a fireman
embarrass me, so I'm gonna stay."

Move it! Come on!

[MacLeod] The North Tower had
the antenna on top,

and it started to tilt.

We started to hear noises.

I know I did.

[ominous creaking]

It was, like, creaking.

And we're two blocks away.

[imitates rumbling] You hear the rumbling.

And then that's when the tower…
I start seeing it f*cking drop.

[muffled explosions, rumbling]

[man] The tower's coming down!

Get away from it! Get away from it!

[Parrino] When that building
was coming down,

I remember seeing my two boys…

[breathing shakily]

…edging me on

to run as fast as I could.

Uh… [softly] And to hit the deck.

Get over here.

[Parrino] And I go hide in a curb.

All pounds of my fat a*s

squeezed into six inches
of sidewalk to survive this.

Remembering my military training,
I put my feet towards the expl*si*n.

There was, like, hurricane winds.

I look to my right,
and there's a truck on its side.

And then it becomes very dark.

I can't see.

And everything's extremely quiet.

I'm wondering if I'm dead.

I'm not feeling any pain.

And then, all of a sudden,
I could not breathe at all.

And I have to take my hands,
and physically go in my mouth,

and rake out chunks of cement.

And I'm coughing, and I'm on my knees.

A woman grabbed me.

She took me over to a fire hydrant
to clean my eyes out.

She gives me some water.

I can still see her face.

Frankly, it's one of
the more pleasant moments of the day.

It's somebody coming to help me
when I was in need.

[MacLeod] I was hopeful
that JoAnn made it out.

I was hopeful that the people
that she worked with made it out.

I was hoping most people made it out.

In a state of shock like that,

you're not gonna comprehend
the magnitude of what you're witnessing.

[suspenseful music playing]

[McNeely] We're in Syms.

The people that had been in there shopping
had looks of panic on their face.

"We gotta get these people out.
We gotta do something."

Whatever was in that smoke,
like my eyes were burning.

So we took men's pocket squares
that were on a display rack,

wet them, start handing them out.

Everybody, the employees,
and the people in there,

we told them to cover their faces
with the pocket squares,

and try and avoid breathing in
whatever it was.

[low, menacing rumbling]

[McNeely] We got everybody, single file,
to walk south towards the water.

[man] Okay, start going on. Come on.

There were ferries set up,
and people with private boats.

They were taking people
to get them off Manhattan.

Myself and my partners
had no intention of leaving.

We were like, "What do we do now?"

I couldn't help
but think about my wife again

and whether she was safe.

And I decided to try her again
on my cell phone,

and, you know, still there was no luck.

I couldn't get through to anybody.
I had no signal.

Just could not make a call.

[Zeins] There was no communications.

One tower had the antenna
that did most of the broadcasting,

most of the cell phones, TV, radio.

So we had no communications
with other agencies.

We do have a point-to-point communication
with the police department.

So you can hear transmissions
from each other.

[officer on radio]
The command post is north of Vesey Street.

[officer ]
-.

But nothing else.

And it is extremely quiet.

[faint ringing]

All you can hear is the firemen's alarms

for their oxygen
that they wear on their back going off.

And it's ever so quiet, but yet deafening

in the canyon
of what that area of Manhattan is.

[somber music playing]

[Panuccio] One of the things
I experienced that day,

in looking back on it in retrospect,
was loneliness.

Being separated
from the people I work with.

For a cop, that stinks.

In a scene of such calamity,

it really became

like almost an overpowering sense,
'cause you're just disconnected.

I says, "Let me go see if I can find
who I'm supposed to be with."

I walk past a bar.

And it's weird.

A thought popped in my head.

Nobody would begrudge you
if you walked behind the bar and…

grabbed that bottle of Johnnie Walker
and poured yourself a shot.

With the disease of alcoholism,

it's just sitting back there saying,

"Hmm, a little toot right here
wouldn't bother you."

These are the conversations going
inside my crazy skull.

And I'm like…

"Not today. I got work to do."

And…

I'm still sober today.
I'm coming up on years.

[Reznick] I was a one-star chief
in charge of Bronx detectives.

We go rushing into the city.

We got to Trinity and Liberty

when the North Tower collapsed.

Now, at Trinity and Liberty, I realize
there's a Burger King on the corner.

So I just took the opportunity

to make the Burger King
a temporary headquarters.

I just started giving out assignments,

and we moved out throughout the day.

Cops just ran into the city from Brooklyn,
from Upper Manhattan.

It was the only time in my entire career
where I didn't want to go to work.

I wanted to be home for my family.

That was my priority,
but unfortunately I had to put that aside

and rush from Queens into Manhattan.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Rivera] I was coming from the Bronx.

My car was not working that day,

and it was crazy
'cause everything was closed.

The trains were stopped.

Everybody was walking back from Manhattan.

I tried to hitchhike into the city,
but I couldn't get a ride.

So I took a bus on Lexington Avenue
that was packed.

And I remember getting off on st Street
and walking to my precinct.

So many people that I knew were missing.

[Zeins] No one knew where anyone was.

NYPD started doing missing person work.

Civilians, first responders…

Many of us went on a list
of everyone that's missing.

[officer]
Stay off the air for a second.

I got a female down.
Officer down. Stand by.

We're listening for people
who are stuck in the building.

[officer]
Female officer, where are you?
What was your last location?

[Dowd] I crawled in and out of caverns
trying to get to whoever it may be,

to the point where my shoes were burned
and my arms were burned.

[siren wailing]

[Reznick] There was a concern about,

"How do we manage
the amount of people that are missing?"

"How do we verify
whether they're missing?"

"How do we know
that they're still in the building?"

[Rivera] I leave the th Precinct

and head south
to the World Trade Center area.

I went to go see if I could find
my neighbor Bill McGinn

and see if he's okay.

Before I left my apartment that day,

Bill's wife had knocked on my door.

She said Bill was working.

She was calling him.
There was no response.

I said, "When I get downtown,
I'll see if I find him."

We looked around a bit.

I kept asking everybody,
"Anybody see Bill McGinn?"

"He worked in the firehouse
on th Street and Greenwich."

"Has anybody seen that company?"

At one point,
I asked one fireman, he went…

Like, "That company is gone."

[distressing music playing]

I felt so bad.

His daughter Cordelia
was about six years old,

and she had come to my house that morning.

She was playing with my son,
and at some point, she says,

"Oh my God, I lost my tooth!"
She lost her first tooth.

She says, "I can't wait till my father
comes home so I can show him!"

Knowing she wanted to show her father,

and knowing that most likely
he wasn't gonna come home,

it really kinda, like,
made me feel really sad.

[tense music playing]

[McNeely] We ended up off the FDR Drive
by the Manhattan Bridge somehow.

I remember seeing someone yelling,
"Get back! Get back!"

"There's a van on the bridge!
They're gonna blow the Manhattan Bridge!"

[panicked clamoring]

[McNeely] Panic overcomes everybody,
myself, my two partners, all the people.

I think to myself,
"What the f*ck are we running for?"

[sirens wailing]

[McNeely] b*mb squad went up,
and there was no expl*sives,

nothing wrong with the van.

It just had been abandoned.

But, uh, initially, it made sense,

because I kept thinking to myself,
"What next?"

We were panicked.

[MacLeod] There were
rumors flying left and right.

There were something like
eight planes missing,

still unaccounted for.

Rumors, but then
some of these weren't rumors.

We found out that the Pentagon got hit.

We found out about the plane crash
in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

[Titus] With all of these attacks
happening in multiple places,

we didn't know
what these t*rrorists had planned.

We didn't know if they were gonna hit
the Empire State Building next.

We didn't know
if the subways were gonna be hit.

We just knew today was the day,
and it was happening in multiple places.

[McNeely] As we're proceeding
and continuing to help and assist people,

I still had not spoken to my wife.

I make another attempt to call her.

Eventually, I'm able to get through
to the person who we hired for child care.

I asked her had she heard
from my wife, and…

She said, "Yes, she's on her way.
She's in New Jersey."

She was okay, so…

that allowed me to focus a little more,
to help render aid,

and hopefully rescue people that
had been caught up inside those towers.

[dark, foreboding music playing]

[Dowd] At this point, I'm in shock.

I am dehydrated,
and I was wandering around alone.

I walk up to the Woolworth Building,

and I happen to see Pete Panuccio,

my sergeant from the th,

who I used to work with on the midnights,

and I'm like, "Somebody I know!"

And he's like,
"Oh, my God, Joanne, where have you been?"

To be reunited with a cop
in the th Precinct was a huge relief.

She's alive.

And we were maybe just a block
or two away almost the entire time.

That's how chaotic the scene was.

He goes, "You look like hell."

And I was like,
"You don't look so hot yourself."

Joanne was limping badly.

When I saw her knee, I'm like, "Uh…"

I probably would have been
on the floor howling and crying,

and she was like,

"We're good. Let's do what we need to do.
I'll go to the hospital when we all go."

[sirens wailing]

[Panuccio] Some boss comes by,
and he says,

"We need people on the street
leading down to World Trade."

This thing was in flames.

To me, it gave out a death groan.

[imitates groaning]

[low, ominous rumbling]

[Panuccio] We ran.

[onlookers screaming]

[Panuccio] There was
this gigantic cloud of dust

that just blew straight out
across Broadway.

And you're like, "When does this day end?"

[distressing music playing]

[Dowd] When I finally got home,

I couldn't believe that I was home.

My daughter hugged the stuffing out of me…

and literally said,
"I knew you were okay."

"I knew you were okay."

And I literally sat in a bathtub,

and my ten-year-old bathed me.

She was like, "I have you."

"I'm so lucky you came home."

[somber music playing]

My wife and I were both very emotional,
and we were kissing my daughter.

She slept in the bed with us that night.

Such a, like, feeling
of almost like a dread or something

that had just kind of…

I shed it at that time, just being home,

being in bed, being with my family.

It was just such a relief.

I only slept for about maybe an hour.

Took a shower, fresh clothes,
turned around, and went back to work.

They told us to be back at : a.m.

As the department organized,
everyone got specific instructions.

Every detective
was utilized somehow, someway

in connection with the World Trade Center.

[MacLeod] I was working at the Pile.

A couple of days in,
my commanding officer says to us,

"All the crime guys,
go back to the office, get changed,

put on your civilian clothes."

"You're gonna go out there
and look for looters."

And I shook my head no to him.

I said, "No."

I was crying. I was in hysterics.

I said, "I need
to get the f*ck back in there."

"All right? I'm not going out
and look for looters. I don't care."

"I'm going in there. I'm looking
for JoAnn. I'm going in there."

And then I see my commanding officer,
and he says,

"You just go back into the Pile."

"Go there for however long you need,
however many days."

He goes, "Just keep in touch.
Let us know you're all right."

When they tallied and whittled down
that "unaccounted for" list,

we learned that , civilians,

Port Authority police officers,

New York City firefighters,

and NYPD police officers

in and around those towers had died.

For me, unfortunately,
I knew quite a few of them,

one being Moira Smith.

[poignant music playing]

And I had just saw her in front of
the th Precinct desk that morning.

It just hit home, because she was a girl
from my old neighborhood.

And Moira was the only female
police officer that had perished inside.

[Rivera] She was a police officer
that worked in my precinct.

I'm like, "What?"
I know Moira, and she had a little girl.

At times, I would see her daughter
in the locker room,

in the police dorm, the female dorm.

She was really cute
with little red cheeks.

It was very, very hard.

We saw a photo in one of the newspapers
of Moira rescuing a survivor,

bringing him out of the building.

I've never seen a timeframe
of when I got admitted to the hospital,

and when I got downstairs,

but it was, I guess,
around the time the tower collapsed,

so I don't think I had a lot of time
before I wouldn't have been around.

And Officer Smith…

I don't know how many people
she helped out of the Trade Center

before she helped me.

She was true-blue
to her task as a police officer.

She went back into the danger
and tried to rescue more people.

[MacLeod] As time went along, my family,

you know, they all realized
that JoAnn wasn't coming home.

Pretty much lost hope.

Reality started to kick in.

So they made arrangements
with the funeral home.

The day that they made these arrangements,
I got home from work.

The phone is ringing.

"Brian, your Uncle Mike's on the phone."

And I could hear it in his voice.
He's a big, burly guy.

[clears throat] All choked up.

He's like, "Yeah."

He goes, "Anybody call you?"

I'm like, "No. Why?"

He was like, "They found JoAnn."

"Oh f*ck."

Now she's found.

And…

[clears throat]

[clears throat]

And it still hurts to this day.

This was at least…

knowing.

Knowing for sure.

Unfortunately, a lot of people
haven't found anybody.

And maybe never will.

We were lucky enough, if you call it that,

to be able to get that
in the first couple weeks.

Right through here, need a bucket line.
Pass it back.

[Butcher] The last rescue
was hours after the collapse.

After that, no one.

And the rescue mission
quickly turned into a recovery mission.

At the medical examiner's office,
we continued the process of identifying,

labeling, doing anything we could

to get these people
back to their families.

[Hovagim] Bereavement center was very sad.

I remember one particular family
asking me all kinds of questions

as I'm doing paperwork,
and taking the toothbrush or hairbrush,

and processing it
so we can get DNA off of it.

That was very heart-wrenching,

to see the fear in their face
and the sadness.

, civilians
were m*rder*d that morning.

Twenty-five years later,
% have been identified.

% of the families have nothing to bury.

And without answers, you go crazy.

[Rivera] One thing about /,

it helped me
get used to the smell of death.

Working in the morgue,
I saw so much death.

In the beginning, I couldn't even take it.
I was gagging.

But then after a while,
the smell didn't bother me anymore.

[Butcher] We had or
refrigerated trucks in an empty lot.

Some women's group came in
and started bringing in flowers,

major wreaths to put
in front of the trucks

to honor the people inside.

We covered that whole area
in a huge white tent,

and that became Memorial Park.

People wrote things on the wall.

They pinned up pictures.

And one such picture…

It was obviously
a kid had scrawled something,

and it said at the top, "Mommy."

And that was a reminder
of who we were looking for.

A few months after the attack,
they did find my neighbor Bill McGinn.

His wife had told me,
"They recovered him last night."

I was at the morgue that day.
I remember they brought two firemen in.

I didn't know he was
one of the people recovered.

I found that out later on.

One thing I always noticed,
when it rained,

he always left his shoes
out of his apartment.

It was Bill's shoes,
Cordelia's shoes, and Liam's shoes.

The kids' shoes were always out.

And then one day after /,
I came home, and it was raining.

I see Liam's shoes and Cordelia's shoes,
but Bill's shoes aren't there.

And then it hit me.

I was saying,
"I can't believe that he's gone."

Any time a first responder was found,
everything would stop.

An American flag would be placed over it,

and we would all get up and salute

as that person would be
brought out of Ground Zero.

It, um… It was…

Brings tears into your eyes.

The full recovery effort after /
lasted about nine months.

It went on until, I believe, May .

[Parrino] I had a tough time.

I spend time at work
where I can't function.

I am, like, crying, and…

like, in the fetal position.

Because I'm trying to recount what I did,
and different things, and…

Like, that's truly when I became scared.

Finally started thinking about the sh*t
that happened, I guess. I don't know.

[foreboding music playing]

[Butcher] m*rder kept going on, right?

People kept dying
outside the World Trade Center.

So we had to maintain
a full investigative staff on the streets.

[McNeely] It brought back a little bit
of normalcy to your everyday routine, but…

we were not excused
from the recovery efforts.

At one tour or another,
somebody from our squad

was assigned
to the medical examiner's office,

and sometimes two of us
were at the recovery efforts

at the landfill in Staten Island.

[Parrino] Fresh Kills was a retired
New York City dump in Staten Island,

and they would remove the debris
over to there.

So that was
the detectives' bureau's responsibility,

to go through this debris
and try to recover body parts

or items that belonged to individuals.

[Reznick] First, they gave you a rake
and said, "Go through it."

"If you come up with any ID
or what you think is a bone,

put it in these buckets."

[Parrino] I volunteered to work there,

and that was tremendously satisfying

because you're hopefully
giving some information

to some family member
somewhere along the line.

After a while, they got wise.

They started issuing Tyvek suits,

boots, gloves, and masks
as you went through the debris.

Unfortunately, that's probably
where I get my cancer.

I've been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

I'm very fortunate.
They caught it in the early stages.

The majority of the people
that worked down there

end up with some related / illness.

Back in , I got a message
on my f*cking phone that I had cancer.

It was a urological cancer, very rare.

One in four million men get it.

I felt sorry for myself for about,
you know, maybe ten minutes,

and I went from feeling
a little bit like a victim

to feeling like, "I'm ready. Let's go."

"Let's do this. Get this sh*t out of me."

And that was it.

[MacLeod] I got skin cancer on my face.

When I found out, I was scared.

[McNeely] To date now, more people
have died from /-related illnesses

than actually died
on the day of the attack,

which is… extremely alarming.

I think that the t*rrorists
wanted initially to take out those towers

because of what they symbolized.

And I think they got
more bang for their buck

because the tragedy just keeps going on.

[somber music playing]

[Dowd] We're going years.

I have buried at least friends.

Friends! Not even…

people I don't know.

There's more than that.

-[Butcher] Here's all the boys.
-[Hovagim] What's going on here?

-Good to see you, brother.
-You look great.

Thanks! So do you, bro!

-How you doing?
-Roger.

[Dowd] Every single one of us…

should just talk.

Me and Pete talk.
Every year, we would talk about it.

Hello, darling.

[Dowd] Relive the hurt.

-How are you?
-[Dowd] I'm okay.

It's so good to see you. You look so good.

And it helped.

It helped until it didn't.

And I needed to seek counseling.

Look at Manhattan.

[McNeely] Yeah.

[Rivera] How are you feeling up here?

Yeah, I know.

-It's a little weird.
-[Rivera] Yeah.

The new building is nice, though.

[MacLeod] It's the first time
I've been in the new buildings.

[Rivera] Really?

[McNeely] MacLeod, that f*cking hick.

-Leave my brother alone.
-[McNeely] Why?

Calm down, champion.

[McNeely] Yeah, man.

[Dowd] I would wake up
with these horrific dreams.

-[low, echoing boom]
-[panicked clamoring]

[Dowd] That's the worst part.

You go to bed, and you feel like
you're being buried alive.

There isn't a cop out there, I'm sure,
that doesn't feel the same thing.

And I nearly had a breakdown.

Then the / Foundation kicked in
and said, "We got you."

"We will help you."

I can tell
you're a little bit, like, upset.

-Shaken? A little bit.
-Shaken, yeah. It's all right.

I was scared, coming.

[Dowd] I'm a big advocate now
for guys getting mental health checks.

Just do it. We have the coverage. Do it.

It doesn't hurt to talk.

I don't enjoy…

being here at… at the site.

I don't like it up here.
I love that I'm with all of you.

I feel protected because you get it.

We know things that no one else
on this earth will ever know

and probably never should.

Never dealt with it, me personally.

My daughter wasn't even two yet.

She just wanted to know where Dad was
all of the days that I came to work

to get the f*ck away from these memories,

just to not have to relive this sh*t
every f*cking day of my life.

[emotional music playing]

My life was never the same.

Just like a lot of other people's.
[clears throat]

I didn't have any way

to identify what I was dealing with,
'cause I didn't see it.

I didn't understand it.

[Panuccio] It was a horrendous attack
on our nation. It's a crime scene.

For many months afterwards,
it was a graveyard.

My mind is racing right now,

and I'm seeing photos
of Pete and Joanne that day.

I'm seeing photos of Roger
in the Pathmark parking lot

pouring water over your head.

It's all coming back,

and it's really, uh,
difficult to think about it.

My place to let it out was the shower.

I went in the shower,

and I cried.

And I cried, and I cried, and…

[voice quavering]
…I never told anybody that.

That was how I got it out.

Yeah.

[delicate, emotional music playing]

And when I retired,
that's when it hit, bang, so hard.

Suddenly, who am I?
I'm not relevant to the world.

-It changes you.
-It does.

That's why I stopped drinking.
When you retire…

How did we deal with it?
We went to the bar.

That's how we dealt with it,
and we talked about it with each other.

But now, there's guys
that are f*cking suffering out there

from / and PTSD

that they've never dealt with
in their careers.

You guys in Homicide,
seeing all the dead bodies,

the dead children, and all that sh*t…
And you all have it. All of you have it.

You gotta deal with this sh*t,

'cause it will fester,
and you will change as a person.

Honestly, thank God
for this little meeting here.

All those years, I thought I was
the only one losing my f*cking mind.

And I wasn't. And I know it.

Coming here-- I'm sorry, I got--

I'm not crying! You're crying!

I won't do it for the cameras,
but I'll make fun of you later.

-All right. [clears throat]
-I love you.

You gotta dry-clean your brain
like all of us.

You can't keep it in.

[Rivera] I feel happy now
just looking at Brian's face.

From the minute he started to now,
it's like a different person.

[Hovagim] This is a therapy group today.

-I mean, look at it.
-'Cause it's a comfort zone.

It's a comfort zone!

We feel comfortable talking to each other.

We chewed some of the same dirt.

[Hovagim] Yeah.

Mental health is just as important
as physical health.

And now I understand that.

But it took me about years
until I talked to therapists about it.

I had to.

Because, you know,
I'm not a… I'm not a superhero.

Part of this is like survivor's remorse.
Chief, you were in the Burger King.

Tommy, you were there.

He was there. Everybody was there.

You're saying
"Why didn't it happen to me?" a little.

You think about it.

We had NYPD officers,

we had Port Authority police officers,

and we had firemen k*lled.

God gave us memories for a reason.

And it's to remember them.

Remember what happened.

Never forget.

In the place
where the Twin Towers once stood,

we now have, uh, the Freedom Tower.

I've never seen it
from, like, this… this level either.

It's so majestic.

And I'm glad, um…
I'm glad we put it right up their asses.

-Very happy for that.
-Yup.

We're all alive.

We're all surviving
in one shape, form, or another.

And I appreciate that they set up
the memorial for those memories

of the first responders and the civilians

and all the citizens from other countries
that got k*lled that day.

[McNeely] It is a symbol
of strength and resilience

that we got knocked down, but we got up.

As a country, not just a city.

[Dowd] The memorial,
it's absolutely stunning.

The imprint of the buildings
with the names and the waterfall.

-[Rivera] What a beautiful day, right?
-Not unlike the day.

-[Rivera] Really?
-Jimmy Riches, right here.

He was a cop, too,
before he was a fireman. John Chipura.

[Rivera] You know so many of them
from Staten Island, right?

[McNeely] Timmy McSweeney.
And then we got Moira.

[emotional music playing]

[Butcher]
Terrorism is not just one attack.

It's a constant state
of ruining people's lives with fear,

with illness, with mental incapacity.

[McNeely] Counter to the evil,
there's… love,

and there's people
that really, like, care.

[Titus] Through that tragedy, the country,

especially here in New York,
everyone came together.

It shows me what we're capable of.

[music swells, trails off]

[dramatic outro music pulsing]