Sujo John was on the 81st floor when a plane crashed into the World Trade Centre

0:0025 years ago today, a group of alkydor terrorists hijacked three aircraft and crashed into the twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia and also an aircraft ended up in a field in Pennsylvania. Let's take a listen. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and acquired unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. That was the then US President George W. Bush addressing the nation after the attacks and the fourth plane was overrun by passengers and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Around 3,000 people died in the attacks and thousands more died in the years following

1:03after becoming ill. Sujo John was working on the 81st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the hijacked aircraft crashed into the building around ten floors above him. Sujo, can you take me back to the morning of September 11, 2001? What do you remember of that day as you arrived at the World Trade Center for work? You know, 25 years ago today, it started off as a clear, cloudless day in New York City and I remember leaving home early that morning, getting into the towers. Little did I know that, you know, about an hour after I got into work that day would change forever. So I would work on the 81st floor of the North Tower and interestingly, my wife would also work at the World Trade Center. She used to work on the 71st floor of the South Tower and she was four months pregnant at that time and that day I remembered as if it were just last week, 846 in the morning.

2:07I hear this incredible explosion and this is American flight 11 flying coast to coast from Boston to LA carrying 10,000 gallons of jet fuel comes crashing into a tower and for those of us on the 81st floor, we knew it was a plane. What else could hit you at that height because the buildings are shaking violently? But we thought it was a small commuter plane, no one thought it was a large jetliner, let alone the fact that it was actually a terrorist attack. So this wall is kept collapsing around us as we look up, there's a picture at Twisted Street and Cable and as the building is shaking, our faces on the carpet, I'm lying there with 28 of us, my coworker friends and I'm thinking if something is going to happen to this building, I'm never going to see my wife or I'm never going to see my parents or I'm never going to see the child she's carrying. And then we far away through that chaos, we get to the stairwell, hundreds, thousands of people joining us on that stairwell and that's when I realize that around that time my pregnant wife makes it to the other tower. So I'm trying to reach her through my cell phone, but cell phones are not working.

3:10And then we hear the second explosion, which was the second plane crashing into the second tower. How long did it take to get from the 81st floor down to the ground in this stairwell with thousands of other people? Well, it took forever, but actually it took about an hour and 20 minutes to come down 81 floors and we passed all these firemen policemen as we were going down and they were going up and we high five them saying you guys are the real heroes. But you know, although it took an hour and 20 minutes for me, but it felt like it looked longer. Time had just stopped still. But then when I got to the plaza level, I'm still in the building. That's when I see bodies and body parts of people that have jumped out of the building. It's just a picture of destruction. And then we were told, go down one more level, make it to the street level from there. So I get to the concourse level of the building and I start walking towards the south tower and that's when the unthinkable happens. The ground shakes and this is now the south tower collapsing. So I get caught up with the collapse of the south tower with 15, 20 people.

4:11We thought we were facing death and we said, I last press, I said, God, I'm going to die here. I hope I can make it to heaven and I had this piece of heaven at that moment. And then eventually I was pulled out by an FBI agent who was also there. We both told each other, we're going to die because we couldn't breathe. But then we see a red light flashing to the sit and the smoke that light leads us out of the pit. And then the man says, I got to go back and get more people. He runs back and then the north tower collapsed on him. He's actually the only FBI agent who died. So both the towers of collapse, I'm out of the debris, but I'm convinced my wife has gone. The buildings don't exist anymore. And now hours have passed and I'm on the streets. I'm in heaven, angry, confused, bitter. My cell phone rings for the first time that day. And when I said, hello, it's my wife on the other side. She was late coming into work for the first time for a few minutes. By the time she got to this train, which stopped one stop before the World Trade Center, by the north towers hit so the trains didn't go to the basement of the building, she gets

5:12out and she sees people jumping out the building. And she's all these bodies landing around her. And she sees the second plane crash into her tower. And she's thinking, I'm one of those people jumping out the building. So it was just a crazy day, a day where just a workplace, a lower man had it known as a financial capital of the world had turned into a war zone. And the hopelessness, the pain that people are going through, it's so hard to put in words and explain that for those who are listening to me right now. Suja, you were right amongst all of this as this was happening. What was it like for you later when you saw the television footage to better understand what had it occurred? Well, that's a great question because for those on the street level, we didn't know what was going on. It almost felt like it was the end of the world. You know, these tall buildings, collapsing, fire, smoke, and then the F-16 fire jets have flying over the city. And those of us on the street level, we thought those planes were dropping bombs. And we didn't know what was going on. And only eventually, actually, I was taken to a place to be decontaminated because everything

6:17that I inhaled that day. So I got home the next day and that's when slowly it began to understand that this was a terrorist attack. And there were two other planes, one that these brave men and women on the plane, they challenged the terrorists. The plane, for sure, was headed to the US Capitol and they brought it down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania in the middle of Norway, distant country land. And then the other plane that went into the Pentagon. So we understood the magnitude of that only later. But then that was not quite the end of the story that we thought thousands have perished. Yes, the death toll is 3,000 and actually over 10,000 more have died since then. Those that were, when that's first responders and even survivors and those that lived in Lower Manhattan, many have died to cancer and other sicknesses as a direct result of the toxic nature of the air that they breed then after 9, 11. So the death toll has been huge. Suja, John, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. I'll see you in a minute.