Sixteen years ago, on a quiet Tuesday morning, two hijacked planes crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. This marks the day that nearly 3,000 citizens lost their lives. However, something that not many people stop to consider: What about those who survived? How are they doing now? What did they see? What did they hear? What was going through their heads as tons of debris, metal, dust, and people crumbled over their heads? What was the recovery process like for survivors? In an interview with Esquire, survivor Michael Wright gives his insight on what it was like being inside the towers.

He starts the recount of his experiences by explaining what he heard, or rather what he felt upon impact of the plane. “All of a sudden, there was the shift of an earthquake. People ask ‘Did you hear a boom?’ No. The way I can best describe it is that every joint in the building jolted. You ever been in a big old house when a gust of wind comes through and you hear all the posts creak? Picture that creaking being not of a matter of inches but of feet. We all got knocked off balance.”  Wright continues to recall a situation with a woman who was trapped in the bathroom after the initial strike. He speaks of the immense confusion and how nobody really knew what was happening. Many thought they were being bombed as they witnessed a giant crack in the floor opening that was about the size of half a football field.

One thing was for sure. This was an attack with the pure intent of killing and hurting people. The whole event, from start to finish, was traumatic. Many people take into consideration the physical damage done to those who survive these things, but sometimes what’s even more debilitating is the emotional and mental damage.

After going down the stairway, Wright begins to explain the view on the way down. Upon entering the mezzanine level, which resembles a mall setting, they were met with approximately 50 dead bodies. On seeing this Wright explains, “That’s when I realized the gravity of what had happened. I saw dead bodies everywhere, and none that I saw were intact.” When people had been jumping out of the building from higher levels, many of them jumped close to the building, and had stained the windows with blood. Everywhere the people trying to escape the building looked, there was death. There was the smell of death, and the knowledge that people had died already. It was only bound to get worse.

Michael was fortunate enough to have made it outside of the building before the tower collapsed. He realized that if he stayed inside, the tower would fall on top of him and he would be suffocated by the debris and smoke. So he ran back inside, down to the underground levels. He describes the experience by saying “I turned to run back into the building. It was the instinctual thing to do. You’re thinking, if you stay outside, you’re running into it. If you go inside, it might not land there. So I turned and ran into the building, down into the mall, and that’s when it hit. I dove to the ground, screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘Oh, no! Oh, no! Jenny and Ben! Jenny and Ben!’ It wasn’t a very creative response, but it was the only thing I could say. I was gonna die. The explosion was extreme, the noise impossible to describe. I started crying. It’s hard for me to imagine now that when I was on the ground awaiting my doom, hearing that noise, thousands of people were dying, That noise is a noise thousands of people heard when they died.” (Jenny is his wife, and Ben is his son, who was only six months old at the time.)

Suffocation…

That was how many people lost their lives, or later developed health issues from because of the debris, and people who were vaporized and crushed in the collapse that was inhaled by the people on the ground. Everyone at this time was trying to make it out of the dust cloud and into safety. During this time, Wright explains some of the sights he saw on the ground, one of them being, “It started clearing up more and more, and I got to an intersection that was completely empty. That’s where I saw one of the weirdest things – a cameraman near a van with the NBC peacock on it, doubled over with his camera, crying.” This moment truly defines what it was like to even watch an event like this happen. The thought that there are people in the world who want to commit such acts of cruelty against their fellow man is evil and impossible to fully wrap your head around. The fact that there were people who saw this day as a success, is disgusting. Just the sheer thought of what had really happened that day and the motivation behind it, was too much to bear.

For many, adrenaline was what was keeping them going. The damage done had not yet surfaced for most. In the case of Michael, he eventually reached New York University where his brother was attending college. There, he received medical care and was able to reach his family and ensure them of his safety. Once he was out of the survival mode, and the adrenaline had worn off, he noticed that his eyes were so scratched he could barely open them. Upon inspection, the doctors had to extract a total of 147 microfiber glass fragments from his eyes. However, despite his physical ailments, it would be the emotional trauma that would be the hardest to recover from.

“For a while right after, I wondered, How the hell am I going to work again? How am I going to give a damn about selling someone a T1 line? I had a list of people who were going to be my business for the next year, hundreds of people, all on my desk – blown up.”

Many struggled with thoughts such as these. However, Michael explains what helps him through his bad days. “Luckily, I’ve been equipped to deal with this. I have a family that’s unbelievably close and supportive and a lot of friends. I’ve been to therapy, and I can do the whole checklist…I’ve been giving myself the space to be freaky for a while. I don’t think this is going to turn me into Rambo or motivate me to sleep with 19-year-old-girls. Yeah, it’s gonna bug me for a while. I’m gonna have some scars on my brain.”

The importance of that last sentence is indescribable. The story of Michael Wright is an incredible one. It moved myself personally enough to write another article about it. There are thousands of stories similar to this, but all unique in their experience. We must find the courage to forever cherish those who lost their lives on that day. Their story lives on in our thoughts as well as through experiences like these. They may be gone, but they will never be forgotten.

We may all have scars on our brain. We may all face tragedy and unjust suffering; but we get through it. We rise back up taller and stronger than we were before. We will not get knocked down and stay down.

Michael Wright will forever serve as proof of that.