After the first plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, Reporter Brandon Roth got a call from a friend in New York City. She told him to turn on the television.
“I was like, ‘That’s no accident,” Brandon Roth said. “Right then the second plane hit and my phone rang, and it was work and they were like, ‘Get your gear, you are heading to New York.”
When Roth arrived in Manhattan, he says it was like a war zone with the ash from the buildings over his ankles.
” I saw terrible things,” he said. “I saw skull fragments and hair attached to them and people just hysterically crying. “
Brandon remembers so many powerful images like a shopkeeper just sweeping in front of his store, a show of continuing on amid the chaos. There were also people desperately looking for missing loved ones.
“There were people coming with flyers,” Roth said. “It just heartbreaking. “
Roth and his photographer were just blocks from Ground Zero. They were surrounded by thick smoke and many exhausted firefighters who kept working.
“I remember one had come and asked if he could use my phone and I gave him my phone,” Roth said. “He had no way to contact his family to let them know he was ok.”
Roth interviewed one first responder on the scene from New Jersey and they stayed in touch.
“He actually got lung cancer like a lot of those first responders, and I did a story on him 10 years after and then he died, just some of the casualties that extended past that day,” Roth said.
The September 11th attacks changed Roth as a person and a reporter.
“It made me want to continue to tell stories of people, but it definitely had an impact on me because it was difficult to see so much suffering,” he said.
Roth says he recently went down to the 9/11 memorial in New York City. He had been hesitant about going but says he’s glad he went because it was powerful and an important reminder.
“Twenty-five years later we can’t forget what that was like, the price so many people paid,” he said.