At 8:46 a.m., the toll of a bell marked the moment 25 years ago when hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
And at 9:03, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.
In the streets of New York City, chaos as Americans watched and listened to the attack.
“For weeks after, there was just this smoke in lower Manhattan, and we all lived in that. I remember people coming into our chapel. I remember them crying, I remember them looking for answers, I remember them praying at the altar,” said Brian Johansson, CEO of Erie City Mission.
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Before coming to Erie, Brian Johansson was a New Yorker, a chaplain serving just blocks away from ground zero.
In the coming days and weeks, Johansson was tasked with guiding families through their grief and going with them as they looked to potentially identify bodies of loved ones who were pulled from the rubble.
“You really think in your mind, why? What am I going to tell this family? I think at the end of the day, I came up with two things. One, that there’s evil in this world, but the God that I serve is sovereign and in charge of all of it. It doesn’t make sense a lot of times, but I choose to believe that,” Johansson said.
Fast forward 25 years since that fateful day and more people have passed away from illnesses that they’ve received from responding to ground zero than those who died in the attacks.
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Laura DiPasqua was with Erie’s chapter of the American Red Cross, who started mobilizing to send manpower and resources to both Flight 93 in Shanksville, and then to New York City.
She’d spend the next five weeks on site at ground zero helping those in need, but at a cost.
“I’ve had five cancers, I had radical neck dissection, and I almost died from a cancer treatment that I had, but I’m resilient, I keep fighting, and I keep advocating,” DiPasqua said.
DiPasqua said there are more than 154,000 people in the 9/11 health program right now.
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More than 52,000 have cancer; that’s about one in three responders. 9,677 have died of 9/11 illnesses.
And as Erie County looks to continue to make sure we always remember what happened that day through their annual service, its significance and meaning continues to grow.
“It’s an ongoing story. September 11th has never left us, those that worked at the site,” said DiPasqua.
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