Cameraman Recalls Escape From Debris Wave as Twin Tower Fell

A video journalist who filmed the World Trade Center attack has described how he and others escaped a wave of debris when the south tower collapsed, sheltering in a small room before finding their way out into a landscape of ash and dust.

Jeremy Brown, then 26, was at his office when he learned a plane had struck the towers. He grabbed his camera and drove toward the scene, filming smoke pouring from the upper floors and the outline of the aircraft's impact as he approached.

"It was unreal. Absolutely unreal," he recalled.

On foot, he moved closer, eventually positioning himself beneath a footbridge linking Tower 2 to 7 World Trade Center, where he filmed firefighters running into the south tower. Then he heard a deep rumble. A firefighter ran toward him shouting, "Grab your camera, follow me."

Brown followed the firefighter into the loading dock of 7 World Trade Center as the debris cloud advanced. Inside, the group sheltered in a small room as the building went dark.

"You could feel the heat from the debris. You could smell it," Brown said. "I don't think anybody in that room thought that we were going to escape."

When the rumbling stopped, they felt their way through the pitch-black building to an emergency exit. Outside, Brown said, was a different world, blanketed in ash and debris. He pulled his T-shirt over his face to breathe and resumed filming.

Then he heard his name. His father, who worked at the Bank of New York near the trade center, had been searching for him. Neither had known whether the other was safe, and with no cell service, Brown's mother remained unaware that both had survived.

"It was just incredible. It was like winning the lottery," he said.

Father and son stayed together that day, with his father carrying the camera bag holding spare tapes and batteries. Brown later filmed the collapse of 7 World Trade Center that afternoon, hours after he had been inside it.

He described the assignment as the longest and hardest of his career, working at least 48 hours straight. Looking through his viewfinder, he said he knew he was recording history, but each time he looked up he saw the devastation and sensed the world would never be the same.

Brown was due to marry in late September. The wedding went ahead on a boat on the Hudson River, with smoke still visible over Ground Zero weeks later.