25 years after 9/11, a reporter digs through the WNYC recordings from that day

0:00When the first plane hit the first tower on that sunny morning on September 11, 2001, WNYC reporter Samantha Maxx was in kindergarten. Maybe you saw it as an adult and you'll never forget what you saw or maybe it happened before you were born. 25 years later, Samantha Maxx dug through recordings that WNYC reporters gathered back then and be prepared that because of the topic, the story will have some intense audio moments. At 8.46am, a hijack's plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center near the southern tip of Manhattan, less than 20 minutes later, another tore through the south tower. In 911 recordings, dispatchers for an medically-fielded callous from people inside the Swarang skyscrapers. One dispatcher prayed in between a churrensist to a collar.

1:00The dispatchers didn't fully understand what the conditions were at the twin towers, but they tried to calm the people inside. About an hour after the first plane hit, the south tower fell. Then WNYC reporter Beth Vertig was just blocks away and recorded herself as she described what she saw. People are running through the street. Smoke is everywhere. They graced smoke, billowed from the crumbling building and into the crowded downtown corridors as people tried to escape. The image played over and over again on television screens around the world.

2:04Moments later, supervising fire marshal Thomas Williams told Vertig he was responding to the scene when suddenly he was engulfed in smoke and started running. He said he had been working with 10 firefighters. I pray to God that this safe and all right. But I don't know. Loretta Williams worked in the north tower for the port authority of New York and New Jersey. She described running down 82 flights of stairs as she felt the building shake. I just heard an explosion. I just looked into the hallway and the steel and everything just collapsed and we were trying to get out and when we was on our way down the stairs, that's when I felt the shaking again. We were just trying to get out this all.

3:05Sanitation police captain Charles Diaz was buried under the rubble. I don't know how I'm alive. Diaz said a school safety officer helped to unbury him. I don't even remember her name. We helped each other out. She had a flesh like and we made our way through the darkness and picked up some stragglers on the way. He said the thick air made him choke. Everything turned black. Yeah, people injured all over the place crying for help screaming for help. We couldn't see in front of our face. It was total darkness. Like the sun was just covered over. Then Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in the area the morning of 9-11. When he spoke with reporter later that day, there were still a lot of questions. And doing everything. He couldn't say who was responsible, how many people had died or what the extent of the damage was. And we will strive now very hard to save as many people as possible. Giuliani said he wanted to send a message that New York and America were stronger than terrorists. He asked New Yorkers to go about life as normal.

4:06Everything is safe right now in the city. And the people who are doing the relief effort need all the help they can get. The mayor urged the public to avoid the hazy debris cluttered streets around the fallen towers. Annoxious burning smell filled the air. Tardh's scraps of paper fell from the sky. But first responders stayed downtown to search for survivors. And later, the dead. College students drove from upstate New York to hand out water. Paramedics and firefighters traveled from Missouri, Massachusetts, and other states. Veterinarians treated rescue dogs searching the rubble. We just started doing all this stuff to help out. We've been running around in the city. 19-year-old nursing student, Jing Kong, posted up at a burger king here at the pile of ruins to distribute food, attach fire hoses, and assist in whatever other way he could. You just can't explain the feeling you get when you see everything there in front of you. Social worker, Lauren Ardman told WNYC's Andrea Bernstein that she left her home upstate in

5:09New Pulse to counsel people in need. Joshua Raskin was a middle school social studies teacher on the Upper West Side. After school led out on 9-11, he rode his bike as far downtown as he could get. I just wanted to help. I live in this city and I couldn't stand not being a part of this, not helping. Raskin is a lifelong mealker. When I visited him recently in his Manhattan apartment, he told me he didn't want to sit around and watch his city burn. I was a school teacher. I didn't have an actual credential to be helpful, but I thought of myself as someone that was good at counseling people and good at crisis management and I just figured I could have a role in this. On September 11, Raskin helped to set up a triage sensor. Then he coordinated mental health professionals and religious leaders who came to support people with missing or dead loved ones. He recruited friends, family and strangers who noticed the

6:12silver piece of duct tape on his shirt that marked him as a volunteer. And I would explain to him and say, can I come tomorrow? And I'd say, of course, here's my number. 25 years later, Raskin still has a New York Knicks double back, filled with mental health from the few days he spent volunteering. Has Matt suit never needed to put it on but was issued it when we were downtown? He pulls out a hard hat, a protective mask, newspapers and magazines, a small black canister filled with dust from ground zero. Glad that I scooped that up. Yeah. For months after the attacks, bagpipes wailed at funerals across the city. New Yorkers mourned firefighters, police, finance workers and others. Nearly 3,000 people were dead from the attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a flight they crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

7:12Then President George W. Bush ordered strikes on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Suddenly the city and the country were grappling with a new reality. But between the funerals, strangers comforted each other on the subway and volunteers kept lining up to help mend what was broken. Friend PR News, I'm Samantha Maxx in New York. The audio you just heard came from WNYC's archives.