{"id":342597,"date":"2026-09-10T06:12:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/342597\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T06:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:12:07","slug":"associated-press-journalists-who-witnessed-sept-11-remember-what-they-saw-25-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/342597\/","title":{"rendered":"Associated Press Journalists Who Witnessed Sept. 11 Remember What They Saw, 25 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Karen Matthews was getting her 3-year-old daughter ready for preschool in her Manhattan apartment on Sept. 11, 2001, when she heard a loud boom, unlike anything she\u2019d ever heard before.<\/p>\n

Holding her child, she went outside. Around her, people stared up at a gash in the north tower of the World Trade Center, smoke billowing from the building just blocks from her home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you see? What did you see?\u201d people were asking one another. Matthews, an Associated Press reporter, began asking the same question, fumbling to get out her notebook and record what people had witnessed, all with her daughter still in her arms.<\/p>\n

Matthews had planned to drop her daughter at school before working later to cover New York\u2019s primary election. Instead, she and other AP journalists found themselves documenting the Sept. 11 attacks as they lived through them.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later, they remember what they saw.<\/p>\n

At first, no one knew what was happening\n <\/p>\n

On her way outside, Matthews passed a woman in her building\u2019s lobby with tears streaming down her face. Some people assumed a small plane had accidentally struck the tower.<\/p>\n

Then she saw a \u201cbig fireball\u201d erupt from the south tower as a second hijacked jet struck.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I want to go to school, I want to go to school,\u2019\u201d her daughter started crying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when we all knew that we were under attack,\u201d Matthews said.<\/p>\n

Matthews started toward the preschool anyway, until she saw teachers grabbing children and running north, many of them crying. She took her daughter upstairs, intent on getting her to a safe place, and put on Barney.<\/p>\n

Then she heard two more impossibly loud roars \u2014 one tower collapsing, then the other. Nearly 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and on the four jets hijacked by al-Qaida militants.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later, Matthews, now retired, still divides her life into before Sept. 11 and after.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a really fearful person,\u201d she said. \u201cBut you lose a sense of security when something like that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think it helped to be part of telling the story of what happened,\u201d Matthews said.<\/p>\n

The camera becomes a wall\n <\/p>\n

Lower Manhattan\u2019s streets were filled with smoke and debris when Richard Drew got off the subway at Chambers Street and saw the burning twin towers.<\/p>\n

His assignment that day had originally been to cover the opening day of Fashion Week \u2014 a whirlwind of glamour, models and runway shows.<\/p>\n

He began taking pictures. Gray ash and soot covered his clothes, face and cameras.<\/p>\n

An emergency medical worker pointed up and said, \u201cLook at that.\u201d People were plummeting from the burning towers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know whether they were jumping or they got forced out by the fire,\u201d Drew said.<\/p>\n

Drew photographed them. One image became known as \u201cThe Falling Man.\u201d It shows a lone man falling headfirst, his body nearly aligned with the vertical lines of the towers. The photograph appeared in some newspapers the next day, but was rejected by other publications that worried readers would find it too upsetting.<\/p>\n

Drew still thinks about the photograph \u2014 and the unidentified man in it\u2014 at least once a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m in a situation like September 11th, I go into professional photographer mode and I concentrate on whatever\u2019s happening in front of me,\u201d said Drew, who also photographed the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n

He said his wife calls his camera a wall \u2014 a filter between the photographer and the reality they\u2019re capturing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I\u2019m in denial about whether those things really affected me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The wheelchairs stayed empty\n <\/p>\n

Dust from the pulverized towers was falling \u201clike a snowstorm\u201d when AP reporter Larry Neumeister made it to a hospital near ground zero that afternoon.<\/p>\n

Doctors and nurses gathered outside. Lines of wheelchairs and gurneys waited at the entrance. Staff were preparing for a constant stream of injured survivors \u2014 potentially thousands, Neumeister said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became clear nobody else was being brought in,\u201d Neumeister said.<\/p>\n

Around midnight, Neumeister walked by the World Trade Center site. A doctor told him: \u201cYou either walked away from the site or ran away from the World Trade Center buildings when they fell, or you were gone. There was no in-between.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sept. 11 was supposed to be Amy Sancetta\u2019s day off.<\/p>\n

Then based in Ohio, the AP photographer had traveled to New York to cover U.S. Open tennis. But the tournament was over and she had the day to herself. Then her editor called: A small plane had hit one of the towers. She needed to go downtown.<\/p>\n

As she gathered her gear, Sancetta realized she didn\u2019t know where the twin towers were. She got into a cab and told the driver to get her as close as he could.<\/p>\n

About a block and a half away, Sancetta was photographing the south tower when it began to collapse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weirdest thing that went through my head at the time was, it was kind of muscle memory, like shooting a basketball game,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

When the cloud of debris came toward her, Sancetta ran into a parking garage. In a stairwell, she found a woman crying who had escaped from the towers and wanted to call her son. Sancetta hugged her and reached for her flip phone. Her hand was shaking. There was no signal. Sancetta took the son\u2019s number and promised to call him.<\/p>\n

When she emerged onto the street, everything was white, \u201clike covered with snow, but not snow.\u201d The screaming and pounding footsteps had given way to crying and whimpering. Loose-leaf office paper floated through the sky \u201clike birds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I\u2019d shot that,\u201d Sancetta said. \u201cI didn\u2019t, but I can see it \u2014 I see it right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later, Sancetta held up a newspaper from Sept. 12 showing the burning towers she had photographed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNIGHTMARE,\u201d the headline read.<\/p>\n

Outside her windows now are woods. But she can still remember the sound of the tower collapsing \u2014 \u201cjust unearthly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a journalist, I\u2019m glad I was there,\u201d Sancetta said. \u201cBut as a human being, I wish I\u2019d gone home on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willingham reported from Boston.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n

The Month in Photos: Sept. 2026<\/p>\n

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