NEW YORK – Two journalists in New York City share Intense accounts about the morning of September 11, 2001, when the attacks happened.
They both rushed towards ground zero to document what was happening.
“As thousands of people are coming running up the highway screaming in terror, we are going down getting there any way we could,” said radio anchor and reporter Glenn Schuck.
“It felt like you were inhaling sandpaper,” said Jay Dow, a TV news reporter in New York City. “You could not breathe, and we were probably 100 to 150 feet away from where one of the towers fell.”
The images, sounds, and feelings that Tuesday morning 20 years ago are just as chilling today.
For Schuck and Dow, the World Trade Center attacks that day became unexpected assignments for years to follow.
“I saw police closing the tunnel and that’s when the second plane hit,” Shuck said. “We obviously knew that this was no accident.”
Schuck rushed into the city from New Jersey, having to eventually pay for a private boat to go across the Hudson River to get to the scene, along with a handful of other reporters.
He eventually linked up with then-New York City mayor Rudy Guliani and other reporters, giving minute-by-minute updates to millions of listeners.
“Tragically, we stood with him and watched many people jump from the building,” Schuck said. “You can imagine the nightmare.”
Sounds of sirens alerted Dow that something was not right that morning.
After learning about the attacks from his station, Dow raced to Manhattan from The Bronx. He had to navigate his way across the Henry Hudson Parkway, through the chaos to report throughout the day for those glued to their TVs.
When finally making it to Ground Zero, he experienced something he will never forget.
“Literally kicking through dust and ash,” Dow said. “This is the combination of construction, debris of human remains as we got closer.”
Every breath is a struggle, even from 100 feet away. Dow says it had to be worse for the first responders desperate to find whomever they could through the rubble.
“They weren’t just pulling artifacts or looking for various pieces of debris,” Dow said of the first responders. “They were looking for people. I can only imagine how hard it was to breathe being right on top of the ruins.”
Schuck and Dow knew they had a job to do for the millions of people relying on them for information that day.
“It was really important to get the word out to the public who had no idea if we were going to be attacked again,” Schuck said. “[They didn’t know] what was happening, what level of safety was, where they needed to be, could they get out of Manhattan, could they not.”
Balancing that job, objectively, with their own trauma they experienced that day and the years since is not easy.
The countless stories they continue telling, even on the 20th anniversary, comes at a cost mentally.
“I was getting feelings of anxiety,” Dow said as he filed a September 11 story recently for his current station. “All of that emotion, that overwhelming emotion just came rushing back and it was really hard to get through the story. It was really hard to put that story together.”
“For this one event where we were attacked, and people were murdered and to have to watch people have no choice but to jump from a 110-story building, I don’t think I’ll ever see anything like that again,” Schuck said.
These journalists say the images, sounds, and feelings from that day contribute to how they report
20 years later.
“Processing that grief from the outside looking is difficult enough,” Dow said. “Again, I can just only imagine how hard it continues to be for the people who lost someone on that day and having to go through this all over again like it was yesterday.”
Dow and Schuck say covering what happened on September 11, 2001, only affirmed their commitment to journalism.
They say getting critical information to people and telling stories needed to be told, no matter how challenging it may be matters.