Photojournalist Survived Close Call with South Tower Collapse on 9/11 | NBC News
As a teenager David Handschuh would visit The Riverdale Press offices on Broadway, selling spot news photos he took and developed to David Stein. Becoming and award-winning photographer as an adult, Handschuh never realized the biggest threat to his life would come in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.
HIRAM ALEJANDRO DURÁN
Photographer David Handschuh is carefully carried away by firemen and NYPD officers as he grimaces from the pain of shattered legs and the trauma of being buried alive by the falling debris from the South Tower..
As David Handschuh stood on a corner in downtown Manhattan photographing United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower, all 110 floors of the building suddenly came tumbling down towards him. Handschuh, who was working for the New York Daily News, was blown off his feet and buried under a crush of glass, concrete, and a huge steel beam. With one leg shattered, the other too damaged to stand on, and dust filling his throat, Handschuh tried to yell for help. “Don’t worry, brother, we’ll get you out,” Lieutenant Tommy McGoff replied through the haze. A group of firefighters from Engine Co. 217 who were desperately searching for two colleagues separated amid the collapse pulled Handschuh from the rubble. Jeff Borkowski and Phil McArdle, from Fire Department HAZ-MAT 1, then scooped him up and carried him to a deli in Battery Park, placing him on the dusty tiled floor among soft drinks and chip packets.
There, he heard the voice of Charlie Wells, an FDNY paramedic chief he knew, asking if anybody needed something to drink. “Get me a Snapple,” Handschuh replied. Moments later, as the second tower fell, a police officer named Jim Kelleher lay on top of Handschuh so his helmet and bulletproof vest would protect Handschuh if the deli’s glass window was blown in. After the dust settled, Wells, Kelleher, and a third man carried Handschuh to an ambulance in a frenzied rescue captured by Daily News photographer Todd Maisel. An NYPD captain named Terri Tobin then held Handschuh’s hand in the ambulance and called his family to tell them he was alive.
David Handschuh lays on the floor of a dusty deli shop as he attempts to recover from his injuries.. The towers do not descriminate and will kill and injure any one in it's path of collapse..
But, for 20 years, the identity of that third man, a firefighter with neat grey hair who looks to be in his late 40s or early 50s, has remained a mystery. “I know seven people who are my guardian angels, but who was that last person?” Handschuh, now 62, told The Daily Beast on Friday, a day before the 20th anniversary of the attacks that changed America. “I know every other person who helped save my life. We talk regularly, we cry, we laugh, we run into each other on September 11th every year for 19 years. And there’s no reason that one person shouldn’t be part of that.”
In the years after 9/11, Handschuh showed Maisel’s photos to the FDNY, various fire department unions, and other first responders who were nearby that day. Occasionally people thought they recognized the man, but leads fizzled out and life went on. He has contemplated the possibility that the third man died that day, or perhaps in the years after from the toxic dust. If that’s the case, he wants to be able to thank the man’s family at least. It’s hard for Handschuh to put into words the feeling of meeting, and thanking, someone who saved your life. Humbling, embarrassing, and grateful don’t seem to cut it. Borkowsky and McArdle have told Handschuh that he saved their lives; if they hadn’t carried him back to the Battery Park deli, they would have been in the North Tower when it collapsed. Tobin, who was badly injured with a broken ankle, a piece of cement embedded in her crushed helmet, and a shard of glass stuck in her back, joked that she was weirdly comforted to look at Handschuh in the ambulance because “you were way more fucked up than I was.”
“Not one of them look at themselves as heroes,” he said.
Nevertheless, it still nagged at Handschuh that he was a journalist with an incomplete story. So as the 20th anniversary approached, he figured it was time to make one last push to find his eighth guardian angel.
“Help me find one of the firefighters who helped save my life,” he captioned posts on Instagram and Twitter this week, hoping the power of the internet might finally provide the missing link.
“All my rescuers, all my angels get together on September 11,” Handschuh told The Daily Beast. “And this year it’s time to give him a hug and say, Thank you.’”
FDNY Chief Gerard Barbara looks up at the burning towers of the World Trade Center after hijacked planes struck the buildings in lower Manhattan on 9.11.01. (Mandatory Credit: David Handschuh)
Firefighters on Rescue One respond to the World Trade Center after a plane struck the building in lower Manhattan on 9.11.01. (Mandatory Credit: David Handschuh)
9/11 Survivor Stairs Story | Our Visit To World Trade Center Memorial
National-9.11-Memorial-Exterior Jeff Goldberg. The 47,000ft2 National 9/11 Memorial Museum Pavilion is an important and poignant addition to the New York cityscape. The only above ground portion of the commemorative museum, this striking structure welcomes over five million visitors each year, and guides them down into the subterranean galleries below.
This sculpture was installed in 2015 and currently stands right outside the London Aquatics Centre. When I went closer to investigate, I was taken aback to discover it was a memorial to the victims of September 11th 2001. Designed by Miya Ando and titled ‘Since 9/11’ the work is created from steel columns collected from Ground Zero after the attack. Ando’s aim was to create a place that directly confronted the impact of the act and examine how it’s shaped our lives. It was created as part of a larger project also named ‘Since 9/11’
The 9/11 Memorial Museum has acquired more than 70,000 artifacts that document the fate of victims, survivors, and responders. You can explore some of these objects, the Museum space, and special exhibitions online at 911memorial.org/explore.
FDNY Ladder 3 truck was crushed when the North Tower collapsed of Sept. 11, 2001. All 11 responding members of Ladder 3 were killed inside the tower. Their last reported position was on the 35th floor. NBC News
Making the Memorial
In April 2003, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation—established to oversee the revitalization of the downtown area after 9/11—launched an international competition to choose a design for a permanent memorial at the World Trade Center site. The competition was open to adults 18 years or older, without regard for nationality or professional accreditation, and yielded 5,201 submissions from 63 countries. Entries were judged by a 13-person jury that looked for designs that honored the victims, spoke to the needs of families who had lost loved ones, and provided a space for healing and reflection.
In January 2004, the design submitted by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, Reflecting Absence, was chosen as the winning entry. Their design features twin waterfall pools surrounded by bronze parapets that list the names of the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The pools are set within a plaza where more than 400 swamp white oak trees grow.
The Memorial opened on September 11, 2011, 10 years after the 9/11 attacks.
The focal points of the Memorial are two pools, each nearly an acre in size, that sit in the footprints of the former North and South Towers. The pools contain the largest manmade waterfalls in North America, each descending 30 feet into a square basin. From there, the water in each pool drops another 20 feet and disappears into a smaller, central void.
According to the architect, Michael Arad, the pools represent “absence made visible.” Although water flows into the voids, they can never be filled. The sound of the cascading water makes the pools a place of tranquility and contemplation separate from the bustling noises of the city.
An aerial view of the Memorial pools..
A rose is placed on a name engraved along the South reflecting pool at the Ground Zero memorial site during the dedication ceremony of the National September 11 Memorial Museum.Reuters
PHOTO BY JIN S. LEE
The names of the 2,983 people who were killed in the 2001 and 1993 terrorist attacks are inscribed on bronze parapets edging the memorial pools. The names are grouped by the locations and circumstances in which victims found themselves during the attacks. The North Pool parapets include the names of those who were killed at the North Tower, on hijacked Flight 11, and in the 1993 bombing. The South Pool parapets include the names of first responders as well as victims who were killed at the South Tower, on hijacked Flight 175, at the Pentagon, on hijacked Flight 77, and on hijacked Flight 93.
Within these groupings, names are arranged in a system of “meaningful adjacencies.” Friends and colleagues appear together, as well as the crews of each of the four flights and first responder agencies and units. Additionally, during the Memorial’s development, victims’ next of kin were invited to request that their loved ones’ names be inscribed alongside specific others. In this way, those who were connected in life reside together on the Memorial.
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PHOTO BY JIN S. LEE
The Survivor Tree
More than 400 swamp white oak trees fill the Memorial plaza around the pools. This hardy species of tree is native to the areas of all three 9/11 crash sites: New York City; Arlington, Virginia; and Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
The Memorial plaza also includes one Callery pear tree. In October 2001, recovery workers discovered the severely damaged tree at Ground Zero. Members of the New York City Parks and Recreation Department removed it from the site and nursed it back to health. Having survived the events of 9/11, the tree became known as the Survivor Tree. It was returned to the World Trade Center site in 2010 and now stands on the plaza as a symbol of resilience and perseverance.
9/11 Memorial Glade
The southwestern quadrant of the Memorial plaza is dedicated in honor of all who are sick or have died from exposure to toxins in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. This population includes first responders and recovery workers at all three sites, relief workers and volunteers, World Trade Center survivors, and lower Manhattan residents, students, and workers, including those who cleaned buildings in the vicinity of Ground Zero. Named the 9/11 Memorial Glade, this historic modification to the Memorial also recognizes the determination and perseverance of those who participated in the recovery efforts, responding when our nation needed them most and helping to make rebuilding possible. It includes a pathway flanked by six large stone monoliths, each inlaid with remnant World Trade Center steel, symbolizing strength through adversity. The Glade opened on May 30, 2019, the 17th anniversary of the official end of the recovery period.
A new component of the memorial opened earlier this year: The Memorial Glade, comprising six large stone monoliths, is intended to honor those who participated in the rescue and recovery efforts post-9/11, and died or otherwise fallen ill because of their time at Ground Zero. It was dedicated at the end of May, and sits at the southwestern corner of the memorial plaza.
An arial view of the large open-air memorial plaza and its two waterfalls.
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Liberty Park, an elevated park that runs along the southwestern edge of the WTC site, opened in 2016. It’s the future home of the St. Nicholas Shrine, the Santiago Calatrava-designed Greek Orthodox church that will replace a similar house of worship that was destroyed on 9/11. Fritz Koenig’s Sphere, a bronze orb that sat in the plaza between the Twin Towers, and was badly damaged on 9/11, was moved from Battery Park to this site in 2017.
From Liberty Park, you can see One WTC, as well as the Brookfield Plaza complex, located on the other side of West Street.
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Haunting, never-before-seen images of Ground Zero
The collapse of the twin towers spread dust across New York City and left hundreds of thousands of tons of debris at the site. To organize the cleanup and search for survivors and for human remains, the New York City Fire Department divided the disaster site into four sectors, each headed by its own chief. Cleanup workers trucked most of the building materials and debris from Ground Zero to Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island. Some people, such as those affiliated with World Trade Center Families for Proper Burial, were worried that human remains might also have been inadvertently transported to the landfill. According to NIST, when WTC 1 (the North Tower) collapsed, falling debris struck 7 World Trade Center and ignited fires on multiple floors. The uncontrolled fires ultimately led to the progressive collapse of the structure. Shortly after the attacks, the surrounding buildings were fitted with red mesh to prevent further damage. In November 2001, the remaining portions of Building 4 were leveled..
In 2001, the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island became a sorting ground for debris and personal effects from Ground Zero. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters - The Staten Island landfill once received 10m tonnes of waste annually. After 9/11, it unexpectedly became a burial site. Now its ‘trash mountains’ are being turned into a public park – but where does that leave New York’s waste problem?
Fresh Kills closed in March 2001, only to be used again six months later following the World Trade Center attacks. Photograph: Beth A Keiser/AP
What fills a landfill? Garbage archaeologist William Rathje says it’s not the styrofoam and disposable diapers we imagine, but paper – which biodegrades very, very slowly, after hundreds and maybe thousands of years. As an ageing writer and hard-copy freak living virtuously off the grid on solar power, and owner of far too many books – which may, in this electronic age, end up in landfills – I represent a sizeable percentage of the garbage-producing demographic. I shudder to think of my banished personal trash archive.
Although it was estimated that Fresh Kills still had 20 more years of capacity, the landfill was abruptly closed by three Republican officeholders who owed their victories to the people of Staten Island. By 2000, all five New York boroughs had found out-of-state sites to replace it, leading to more transportation by trucks, more climate-changing emissions. The 13,000 tonnes of residential waste generated by 8 million people every day have been diverted into a new “urban waste stream” (another kind of kill).
Garbologist William Rathje on a New York City garbage barge. Photograph: Getty Images/Science Faction
Investigators walk by World Trade Center debris at the Fresh Kills landfill in 2002. (Michael Falco)
Twenty years later, some Staten Islanders fear the inactive landfill and its contents — including the 9/11 debris — is contributing to cancer rates in the borough. “I know way too many people with cancer on Staten Island,” said Jamielee Nelson, who recalled standing on her balcony in Staten Island’s Rossville neighborhood after 9/11 and watching smoke rising from Ground Zero. The 32-year-old, who said there is no history of cancer in her family, said she worries that living near the former landfill is linked to the breast cancer diagnosis she received last year.
Jamielee Nelson lives near Fresh Kills. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2019. (Will Lanzoni/CNN)
Three years ago, the city health department launched a study — the third of its kind in 25 years — to investigate concerns like Nelson’s and found little evidence to link living near the former landfill and cancer. In a report published in January, the study’s researchers said they compared incidence rates for 17 cancers in the area around Fresh Kills to the rest of Staten Island and New York City. They found that between 1995 and 2015, adult residents of Staten Island suffered from certain cancers at slightly or moderately higher rates than residents in other boroughs. In adults living in the area around Fresh Kills during the same period, there were statistically significant elevations in five cancer types — bladder, breast, kidney, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and thyroid — when compared to residents elsewhere in Staten Island. But the trends for each cancer type “did not show a consistent increase over time or between men and women,” they wrote, suggesting other factors were to blame. A proximity analysis, which modeled how many cancer cases could be explained by distance to Fresh Kills, found that none of the five cancer types had elevated rates closer to Fresh Kills between 1995 and 2004, although it did find that some thyroid and bladder cancer rates were higher near the former landfill site between 2005 and 2015. But the researchers still saw little evidence of a link to the landfill because they could not find any reasonable explanations for how residents would have come into contact with materials in the landfill that were known or suspected to cause bladder or thyroid cancers, especially since Fresh Kills closed. “More plausible” explanations, the authors wrote, were higher screening rates for thyroid cancer and Staten Islanders’ higher smoking rates. Smoking is a known risk factor for bladder cancer. The cancer rates have underscored decades-long tensions between Staten Island and the city of New York.
Crushed cars and a NYPD van are among the debris at Fresh Kills after 9/11. (Michael Falco)
Jonathan Eisler-Grynsztajn was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer in March 2019. (Will Lanzoni/CNN)
Workers at Fresh Kills sift through rubble removed from Ground Zero in 2002. They were looking for recoverable objects, including body parts that were used to help identify victims. (Michael Falco)
Firearms were among the items recovered from the wreckage. (Michael Falco)
ID cards found in the remains of the World Trade Center are sorted in an evidence decontamination room at Fresh Kills. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The Owl Hollow athletic fields are part of Freshkills Park. The development project is turning what was once the world’s largest landfill into a 2,200-acre park. (Will Lanzoni/CNN)
In 2006, NYPD detective James Zadroga emerged as a harbinger of the uphill battle some 9/11 survivors would face in trying to prove their illnesses were a result of their time at Ground Zero. Zadroga died at age 34 at his parents’ home in New Jersey. A coroner attributed dust found in his lungs to Ground Zero, reportedly making him the first rescuer whose death was medically linked to dust inhalation from the site. New York City officials rejected the finding. In a letter to Zadroga’s family, then-Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch, who died in 2016, wrote it was his office’s “unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in (Zadroga’s) lungs did not get there as a result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere.”
NYPD detective James Zadroga’s funeral is held in 2006. His death was reportedly the first to be linked to exposure to the dust at Ground Zero. (Richard Perry/The New York Times/Redux)
The city has acknowledged that thousands suffer from 9/11-related health conditions and added Zadroga to New York City’s Hall of Heroes in lower Manhattan, which honors NYPD members who died in the line of duty. But the conflicting findings and ensuing controversy in Zadroga’s case set the stage for how certainty about cause and effect would be elusive for many families. Zadroga would later become the namesake for federal legislation, enacted in 2011, to extend health monitoring and compensation for first responders and survivors whose illnesses were related to 9/11. Barasch, who represented Zadroga, said Staten Island residents are receiving similar treatment from the city. “They take the debris. They load it onto barges [...] and dumped it then at the Fresh Kills landfill where dust went flying everywhere,” Barasch said. “If you lived across the street from the landfill, of course you were going to get exposed to the same carcinogens as Jimmy Zadroga and the entire 9/11 community.”
Lawyer Michael Barasch has handled personal injury cases for 9/11 first responders. (Will Lanzoni/CNN)
Experts said it’s challenging to prove that a person’s cancer came from a specific environmental exposure like Fresh Kills. While the specifics vary, several studies in the 1990s linked other waste sites in the United States and Canada to possible increased risks of a variety of cancers, including leukemia, bladder, stomach, liver, lung, prostate and cervical cancer. But the American Cancer Society says many factors — a person’s environment, their lifestyle, their genes — make people more susceptible to cancer and experts said it can be difficult to identify just one source. In 2002, a UK study concluded that its research did not “support suggestions of excess risks of cancer associated with landfill sites.”
Remains of a Rodin sculpture and airplane parts lie together at Fresh Kills in 2002. (Michael Falco)
Investigators use conveyors to sift through the 9/11 rubble at Fresh Kills. (Michael Falco)
Staten Island City Council Member Joe Borelli has pushed for a more thorough investigation into Fresh Kills since he was elected in 2015. He grew up in the district he represents. (Will Lanzoni/
Rendering of Freshkills Park. Photo via Freshkills Park and the City of New York
Freshkills Park is a public park being built atop a former landfill on Staten Island. At about 2,200 acres (8.9 km2), it will be the largest park developed in New York City since the 19th century. Its construction began in October 2008 and is slated to continue in phases for at least 30 years. When fully developed by 2035–37, Freshkills Park will be the second-largest park in New York City and almost three times the size of Central Park in Manhattan. The park is envisioned as a regional destination that integrates 2,200 acres of open grasslands, waterways and engineered structures into one cohesive and dynamic unit that will host a variety of public spaces and facilities for social, cultural and physical activity, learning and play. Sections of the park will be connected by a circulation system for vehicles and a network of paths for bicyclists and pedestrians. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) is managing the project with the New York City Department of Sanitation.
The landfill in the 1960s.
DSNY
The landfill opened in 1948 in what was then a salt marsh in a rural agricultural area. The subsoil was clay, with a layer of sand and silt on top. There were tidal wetlands, forests, and freshwater wetlands. The area was considered prime for development because the value of wetlands in buffering storm surges and filtering water was not understood at the time. The initial plan was to raise the elevation of the land by filling for three years and then redevelop it as a multi-use area with residential, recreational, and industrial components. However, three years turned into fifty years. New York City's population was growing and generating more garbage and it was easy to expand the filling operation on Staten Island, especially for people living in the other four boroughs. The landfill accepted garbage from 1948 through 2001. By 1955, the landfill was the largest in the world. At the peak of its operation, the contents of twenty barges – each carrying 650 tons of garbage – were added to the site every day. Staten Islanders tried many times to close operations at the landfill and were finally successful in 1996 when regulations were passed to close the landfill by 2001.
The landfill in the 1990s.
DSNY
In 2001 it was estimated that, if kept open, the landfill would have eventually become the highest point on the East Coast. Under strong community pressure and with support of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the landfill site was closed on March 22, 2001, but it had to be reopened after the September 11th attacks on the WTC in Manhattan. Virtually all the materials from the World Trade Center site were sent to the temporarily reopened landfill for examination. Thousands of detectives and forensic evidence specialists worked for over 1.7 million hours at Fresh Kills Landfill to try to recover the remains of people killed in the attacks. A final count of 4,257 human remains were recovered; the City's Chief Medical Examiner retains custody of all still-unidentified materials at a facility within the National 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan. The remaining materials at Fresh Kills were then buried in a 40-acre (160,000 m2) portion of the landfill that will be known as West Mound. Afterward, the landfill facility was closed permanently, in anticipation of the park on the site.
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In December 2001, a temporary viewing platform at Fulton Street, between Church Street and Broadway, was opened to the public. That month, the last standing perimeter columns from the North Tower and the last remaining portions of Building 6 were removed. Early estimates suggested that debris removal would take a year, but cleanup ended in May 2002, under budget and without a single serious injury. The Winter Garden Atrium was reopened to the public on September 17, 2002, the first major structure to be completely restored following the attacks. Starting March 11, 2002, eighty-eight searchlights were installed and arranged to form two beams of light shooting straight up into the sky. This was called the Tribute in Light, and was originally lit every day at dusk until April 14, 2002. After that, the lights were lit on the second anniversary of the attack and have been lit on each subsequent September 11 since then. In February 2005, the New York City Medical Examiner's office ended its process of identifying human remains at the site.
Tribute in Light
The 'Tribute in Light' memorial shines in Lower Manhattan on the night before the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
WABC Photo/Mike Waterhouse
The 'Tribute in Light' memorial shines in Lower Manhattan on the night before the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
WABC Photo/Mike Waterhouse
In August 2008, New York City firefighters donated a cross made of steel from the World Trade Center to the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company. The beam, mounted atop a platform shaped like the Pentagon, was erected outside the Shanksville firehouse near the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93. Portions of the South Tower had also damaged the nearby Deutsche Bank Building, which soon became filled with toxic dust. By 2002, Deutsche Bank determined that its building was unsalvageable and it was scheduled for demolition. In January 2011, the demolition of the Deutsche Bank Building was completed.
'Miracle': The intersecting steel beams were found in the rubble of buildings destroyed in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center
Religious relic: Workers prepare the World Trade Center cross to be moved into its permanent home at the 9/11 Memorial Museum after a blessing ceremony in Manhattan on Saturday
Memorial: The cross-shaped steel beam was lowered 70 feet down into the bowels of where the twin towers once stood
'Comfort for all': The 9/11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center site will open on the 10 year anniversary of the attacks on September 11
Symbolic: Father Brian Jordan a Franciscan Priest, blesses The World Trade Center Cross at the site on Saturday
Soon after the September 11 attacks, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Governor George Pataki, and President George W. Bush vowed to rebuild the World Trade Center site. On the day of the attacks, Giuliani proclaimed, "We will rebuild. We're going to come out of this stronger than before, politically stronger, economically stronger. The skyline will be made whole again." During a visit to the site on September 14, 2001, Bush spoke to a crowd of cleanup workers through a megaphone. An individual in the crowd shouted, "We can't hear you," to which Bush replied, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."
President George W. Bush's Remarks At Ground Zero September 14, 2001
Historic: Father Brian Jordan and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani look on during a blessing of the World Trade Center cross before it was moved into its permanent home
Founder: Father Brian Jordan, a Franciscan Priest, introduces Frank Silecchia (R), a construction worker who found The World Trade Center Cross, made of intersecting steel beams. A miracle has come from the twisted ashes..
Thank you: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani shakes hands at the blessing ceremony for The World Trade Center Cross