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Aerial photos of WTC collapse show raw apocalyptic imagery
Source: Agencies |
February 12, 2010, Friday
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A TROVE of aerial photographs of the collapsing World Trade Center was released this week, offering a rare and chilling view from the heavens of the burning twin towers and the apocalyptic shroud of smoke and dust that settled over the city.
The images were taken from a police helicopter - the only photographers allowed in the airspace near the skyscrapers on September 11, 2001. They were obtained by ABC after it filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal agency that investigated the collapse.
The chief curator of the planned September 11 museum pronounced the pictures "a phenomenal body of work."
The photos are "absolutely core to understanding the visual phenomena of what was happening," said Jan Ramirez of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. They are "some of the most exceptional images in the world, I think, of this event."
In some of the pictures, the tops of the nearby Woolworth Building and other skyscrapers can just be seen above the enormous cloud of debris, gray against a clear blue sky. Gray clouds billow through the streets of the financial district and shroud the 6.5 hectares where the towers had stood just moments before.
Buildings can hardly be seen at all in one image - just dust clouds hanging over the Hudson River at the southern tip of Manhattan.
One close-up shows orange flames and black smoke pouring from the upper floors of the north tower, the first hit by a hijacked plane.
"I almost didn't realize what I was seeing that day," Greg Semendinger, the former New York Police Department detective who took the pictures posted on ABC's site, said. "Looking at it now it's amazing I took those pictures. The images are ... stunning."
The attack and the collapse of the World Trade Center were well documented on live TV and amateur video. But more than eight years after the US's deadliest terror attack, the images still had the power to shock and disturb. They were an instant sensation on the Internet.
"Some survivors may find these pictures too painful to look at," said Richard Zimbler, president of the WTC Survivors Network. "But they are an important part of the historical record."
ABC said NIST gave the network 2,779 pictures on nine CDs. It posted 12 pictures on its Website on Monday and an additional 12 on Wednesday.
The images were taken from a police helicopter - the only photographers allowed in the airspace near the skyscrapers on September 11, 2001. They were obtained by ABC after it filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal agency that investigated the collapse.
The chief curator of the planned September 11 museum pronounced the pictures "a phenomenal body of work."
The photos are "absolutely core to understanding the visual phenomena of what was happening," said Jan Ramirez of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. They are "some of the most exceptional images in the world, I think, of this event."
In some of the pictures, the tops of the nearby Woolworth Building and other skyscrapers can just be seen above the enormous cloud of debris, gray against a clear blue sky. Gray clouds billow through the streets of the financial district and shroud the 6.5 hectares where the towers had stood just moments before.
Buildings can hardly be seen at all in one image - just dust clouds hanging over the Hudson River at the southern tip of Manhattan.
One close-up shows orange flames and black smoke pouring from the upper floors of the north tower, the first hit by a hijacked plane.
"I almost didn't realize what I was seeing that day," Greg Semendinger, the former New York Police Department detective who took the pictures posted on ABC's site, said. "Looking at it now it's amazing I took those pictures. The images are ... stunning."
The attack and the collapse of the World Trade Center were well documented on live TV and amateur video. But more than eight years after the US's deadliest terror attack, the images still had the power to shock and disturb. They were an instant sensation on the Internet.
"Some survivors may find these pictures too painful to look at," said Richard Zimbler, president of the WTC Survivors Network. "But they are an important part of the historical record."
ABC said NIST gave the network 2,779 pictures on nine CDs. It posted 12 pictures on its Website on Monday and an additional 12 on Wednesday.
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