Remembering 9/11
Live updates, images and reports leading up to and on the ten year anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
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Man on 91st floor of World Trade Center North Tower during attacks tells survival story
By Tom Livingston, newsnet5.com
Now living in Ohio, George Sleigh is a man who has survived not one but two attacks on the World Trade Center.
On September 11, 2001, Sleigh and 11 co-workers were in the only occupied office on the 91st floor of the North Tower. He noticed a low flying plane passing the Empire State Building and headed his way. That plane would hit just a few floors above his office.
Eight years earlier, Sleigh was in his office on the 101st floor when it was attacked with a truck bomb. He and his co-workers would go up to the observation deck before climbing down 106 stories to safety.
The auditorium at the Parkside Church on Pettibone Road in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, was packed with an audience enthralled with his story.
He recalled checking on his co-workers after the plane hit and then looking at his surroundings.
“As I looked around my office, everything was still intact and the windows were not broken,” he said. “There was no smoke, no fire, no sense of anything really bad happening at that particular point. Not dreaming that those buildings would eventually collapse, but we knew we needed to get out of there as quickly as we could.”
In a light moment, Sleigh told of a co-worker doing things out of habit as they prepared to flee the office. After finding the exit they would take, the co-worker went back to his desk to turn off the lights but realized something else.
“His computer was still on, so you don’t just turn your computer off you have to log off,” said Sleigh as the audience erupted in laughter.
They wound their way down 91 floors. At first they would encounter very few people as they would later discover theirs was the highest floor from which anyone would survive.
He told of giving encouragement to firefighters the passed in the stairways, young and old, carrying many, many pounds of equipment to the area he and others were fleeing.
Sleigh, a member of Parkside Church, intertwined stories of the 2001 attack with stories of his faith and used selections of the Bible as analogies to that day.
“Looking back (at the firefighters climbing to rescue others) it reminds me of a verse in scripture in Romans 5: 7-8 that says ‘Most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, for someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good’ that’s the quality I put these firefighters in. They were willing to put their lives on the line to rescue people,” said Sleigh adding, “But verse 8 says ‘But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners’.”
Sleigh called the rescue on 9/11 a great rescue but said the greatest rescue ever was when God sent his Son to die on the Cross to rescue us.
As he detailed getting out of the Tower, he described being knocked down by horizontal debris that he would later learn was the South Tower collapsing.
Injured, he was able to find two other people alive in the rubble and the three would walk away to safety and did not look back.
A picture of Sleigh and the two other men would be snapped by a free lance photographer and was published in many papers including London.
Sleigh said his son, knowing his father was safe, would open a paper in London to see a picture of his father and the two other men dusty and dirty and injured. A closer look at picture showed his father had managed to carry his briefcase with him through the entire ordeal. -
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'Top level' security for sports stems from 9-11-01
HOWARD FENDRICH, AP Sports Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — From bomb-sniffing dogs to pat-downs of fans, security will be tight at 13 NFL games and the U.S. Open tennis tournament on Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
The two men in charge of safety at those events say any extra efforts, coordinated with the FBI and local police, are not so much a result of Sunday happening to be Sept. 11 but rather because of what happened on that date in 2001. Changes were made in the aftermath of the attacks to protect people at various sports sites.
Jeffrey Miller, the NFL's chief security officer, and Michael Rodriguez, the U.S. Open's director of security, say they are in regular contact with the Department of Homeland Security and, as of Wednesday morning, had not been informed of any specific, credible threats to their arenas. -
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Sept. 11 commemoration moved from DC cathedral
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The collapse of a crane brought in to repair earthquake damage at the National Cathedral has forced a Sept. 11 commemoration with President Barack Obama to move.
Organizers say Sunday's "Concert for Hope" will now be held at the Kennedy Center. The president is still expected to make remarks at the event.
The crane toppled over Wednesday and the operator suffered minor injuries.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) -
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Some of the emergency workers who responded to ground zero say their health has declined dramatically. AP vid here: www.youtube.comby saraAPNYC via twitter 9/8/2011 7:04:13 PM -
Nice job by AP's @lila202 on how New Jersey families are coping 10 years after losing loved ones on 9/11. news.yahoo.comby saraAPNYC via twitter 9/8/2011 7:38:27 PM
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Al Jazeera English maps out 9/11 coverage
By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Like most television news outlets, Al Jazeera English will station reporters in New York and Washington on Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It also will have reporters on hand in Baghdad, Bali, Nairobi, Kabul and Islamabad.
The network, which started five years after the attacks, said it hopes to bring a global perspective to the anniversary that domestic networks likely won't.
This weekend's events also may provide a test of whether Al Jazeera English, still seen mostly online in the United States despite its availability in a total of 250 million homes worldwide, can get past a lingering sense of hostility that many Americans feel toward it.
Anchor Tony Harris will report from the World Trade Center site on Sunday, with other New York-based reporters. Al Jazeera will also send a reporter to Dearborn, Mich., for a story on how the U.S. Muslim community is treating the anniversary.
The event will remind an international audience about what happened on Sept. 11 and how it changed the United States. But through the coverage at overseas sites and documentaries that are airing in the days before, the focus will be on how it changed the rest of the world, said Owen Watson, international executive producer.
"We're reporting the views of the people who live overseas, from people who have no idea what went on on that day to those who have lost loved ones in the wars that followed," Watson said.
The network has been running a three-part documentary series on the 9/11 decade, focusing on the war between the United States and al Qaida in intelligence and image. One part is about the "clash of civilizations" between American political conservatives and international terrorists.
Watson contrasted Al Jazeera English's coverage to advertisements he has seen for domestic reporting of the event with the theme of "America Remembers."
"We're providing a niche that is not available somewhere else," said Amjad Atallah, bureau chief for the Americas at Al Jazeera English.
Still, Al Jazeera has a lingering image problem in the United States that has been most obvious in its failure to become available on all but a few cable television systems. Many Americans don't distinguish the Qatar-based network from its Arabic-speaking main network, Al Jazeera, which started in 1996 and had problems with the Bush administration, Atallah said.
Many Americans put Al Jazeera English in with a general hostility toward Arab people and institutions that arose out of the attacks, and they falsely consider Al Jazeera English a network that promotes an Arab view of the world instead of simply an international one, Atallah said.
"The stereotypes that are there aren't because you've watched it," he said. "The stereotypes are there because you haven't been given the opportunity to watch it."
Al Jazeera English did not debate internally whether or not to give extensive coverage to the anniversary, he said.
"I don't think you can claim to be a major global news organization and not cover the anniversary," said Dave Marash, a former "Nightline" correspondent who worked for Al Jazeera English in Washington before leaving in 2008.
Some of the misunderstandings with U.S. consumers have been promoted by Al Jazeera English itself.
Its correspondent Gabriel Elizondo has traveled across the U.S. from California to New York reporting on 9/11 and its aftermath. He wrote a blog entry about how "Al Jazeera Isn't Welcome" at a high school in Texas just over the Oklahoma border. Elizondo said he showed up at a Friday night high school football game in Booker, Texas, and asked to speak to some of the people there about their attitudes toward Sept. 11.
Elizondo wrote that the reaction of school officials grew cold when they found out he was from Al Jazeera English and he was refused permission to film interviews.
The school district's superintendent subsequently wrote that the refusal of Elizondo's request came because some townspeople had given permission to have students depicted in news reports on school grounds and some hadn't, and that it was difficult to police that at a large event like a football game.
Marash said he's been impressed with how quickly Al Jazeera English has been able to build a television news organization that in some places was second to none in the world. But he has noticed how some of its coverage of the United States reflects a negative attitude toward the country that he didn't see in its coverage of other nations - one of the issues that led to his leaving.
Of its Sept. 11-related coverage to date, Marash said that "what I have seen so far essentially reflects a reasonable collection of the various points of view, most of them sympathetic, but some of them growing less patient with the United States."
Atallah said he expected a significant amount of people in the United States would check out what Al Jazeera English has to say this weekend.
"The type of viewers we will get are often people who would describe themselves as global citizens," he said. "We don't have a separate news that shows in the United States and a separate news that's shown in the Middle East, a separate news that's shown in Africa, a separate news that's shown in Asia. It's all one program.
"It has to be relevant to everyone at the same time," he said.
© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. -
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RT @katiecouric: Putting a stitch in the National 9/11 flag at last nite's @Sept11Memorial dinner where my new boss Bob Iger was honored ...by Sept11Memorial via twitter 9/8/2011 11:14:38 PM
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WASHINGTON (AP) _ Officials have received a credible but unconfirmed terror threat having to do with New York or Washington. #APby saraAPNYC via twitter 9/9/2011 12:24:02 AM
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@Sept11Memorial: Tribute in Light in New York City fb.me p.twimg.com
by SharonSalzberg via twitter 9/9/2011 1:02:27 AM -
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@MikeBloomberg is going to make a speech 2nite re: the terrorist threat in NYC and DC. so, where is Vince Gray?by mattjoh via twitter 9/9/2011 1:02:46 AM -
@MikeBloomberg to speak from One Police Plaza on "specific, credible, unconfirmed" threat. @NorthJerseybrkby JulietFletcher via twitter 9/9/2011 1:29:09 AM -
@Sept11Memorial twitpic.com
by CandyLane8 via twitter 9/9/2011 1:29:15 AM -
@MikeBloomberg Please keep our city safe.by Emilia_Ferrara via twitter 9/9/2011 1:29:21 AM -
"the threat at this moment has not been corroborated, but it is credible," says NYC Mayor #Bloomberg.by saraAPNYC via twitter 9/9/2011 1:43:32 AM
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Holding a briefing w/ Commissioner Kelly & the FBI. Watch on www.nyc.govby Mike Bloomberg via twitter 9/9/2011 1:44:08 AM -
RT @NYCMayorsOffice: BREAKING: NYPD taking steps in response to credible info about possible terror plot, but no reason to change your d ...by Mike Bloomberg via twitter 9/9/2011 1:54:08 AM
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RT @NYCMayorsOffice: Go about your business as normal, but if you see something potentially suspicious, call 311. If it's potentially da ...by Mike Bloomberg via twitter 9/9/2011 1:55:39 AM
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RT @NYCMayorsOffice: The terror threat at this moment has not been corroborated, but we live in a world where we must take these threats ...by Mike Bloomberg via twitter 9/9/2011 1:56:53 AM
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RT @SansingChevy: The 9/11 Memorial is a beautiful exhibition honoring the lives of those who perished on the day that changed our natio ...by Sept11Memorial via twitter 9/9/2011 2:57:24 PM
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