The Day That Changed The World

Twenty years on from the world’s worst terrorist attack, three women who were caught up in the unprecedented disaster of 9/11 share their stories of horror, heartache and hope

On the brilliant, sunny morning of September 11, 2001, Port Authority executive Kayla Bergeron was sitting at her desk in her office on the 68th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower in Manhattan, when she felt the building heave forward. She looked out her window, to a postcard view of New York City, and saw debris raining down from above, like confetti. “I called the governor’s office,” Bergeron told marie claire. “I said, ‘I’m not sure, but I think a small plane must have veered into the building.’ I just thought there’d been a terrible accident.”

It wasn’t until Bergeron was on her way down the emergency stairwell that she learnt her country was under attack and her life was in peril: the twin towers of the World Trade Center had been hit by passenger jets, and the South Tower – the second building to be struck – was no longer there. In its place, half a million tonnes of rubble, melted steel and the remains of hundreds of human lives.

It is 20 years since 9/11, a catastrophic assault on the US that claimed the lives of an estimated 2996 people, including 10 Australians, and ushered in a new and more brazen age of terrorism. Playing out on live broadcasts across the world, in what was the most watched disaster in history, terrorists of the militant jihadist group Al Qaeda, led by its wealthy Saudi founder, Osama bin Laden, hijacked four domestic flights. Two were flown into the Twin Towers, both of which collapsed, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth was on its way to Washington’s Capitol Building before an intrepid band of passengers overran the cockpit and the United Airlines jet crashed into a field.