Yes, there are quite a lot of photos that depict the interiors of the Twin Towers on 9/11. For the sake of keeping my answer short, I will show some photos I found on the internet.

From Reddit user “u/Professional_Elk_893”:

I'm not entirely sure, but these pictures may have been captured between floors 40 and 50 in the South Tower.

The photo above shows the Austin J. Tobin plaza, which was unfortunately littered with the bodies of the victims who fell from the North Tower's western face. This was taken before the second plane hit the South Tower.

The picture above shows the western side of the North Tower.

I'm not sure if this photo is from the same photographer or not, but it appears to be from a similar vantage point as the pictures above. That is the western face of the North Tower and it gives a broader view of the gash left by Flight 11.

There are other intriguing photos, such as this one:

This shows the seemingly desolate lobby of the North Tower following the collapse of the South Tower.

The photo below is from one of the higher floors in the North Tower (WTC 1). According to one article, the photographer was at his office on the 74th floor at the time that the North Tower (their tower) was struck.

The above photograph was taken in the concourse - one of the many sublevels of the World Trade Center complex, featuring a shopping mall and parking garages.

I'm not sure which tower Mr. Silva was evacuating from when he took that photograph.

That photo was taken of the southern horizon from the 74th floor of One World Trade Center. It was taken just moments after the building was hit.

This frame is from a 9/11 documentary called “Inside the Twin Towers”, I think. Although this photo is obviously not real, it still shows the terror of the situation Mr. Praimnath was in the throes of. His story of survival is a popular one, and the documentary is available to watch on YouTube.

Credit goes to http://Sourceable.com for this one. It depicts the evacuation efforts that took place on that day.

This photograph is from Pinterest.

Everytime I look at photos like those, I get a sense of dread. These are among the many photos that genuinely depress me. Who knows if this brave soul even made it out…

Another photograph from Pinterest:

Credit goes to National Geographic for that one.

From Reddit:

According to Redditor u/911CTV, this was taken from the southern side of the North Tower, and the red box indicated shows an area of water leakage.

This is firefighter Mike Kehoe. Fortunately, he made it out of the North Tower before it collapsed.

This one is from SlideShare.

Incredibly sad.

(The amount of conspiracy theories in this thread is concerning.. I’m not interested in beginning an argument so don’t say anything about that to me.)

These are photos taken from inside the World Trade Centers before the collapse. I have spent some time scraping the internet for every possible “inside twin towers on 9/11” photo I could find. If you have any more, please feel free to share in the comments and I’ll add them to the album.

There are no photos of dead bodies, gore, or “”jumpers”” (for lack of a better word), but do take care when looking at them. If you’re easily disturbed by 9/11 imagery, don’t scroll down. I’ve had multiple people complain about “why I would dare upload these photos” and it’s quite confusing why they’d be here in the first place if they didn’t want to see the photos anyways.

Many of these images are taken from the imgur album above, with more added on by me from various online sources.

The descriptions are copy+pasted from the imgur post. My own descriptions (except the edits in the very bottom) are in italicized text.

View out of north-facing window of South Tower looking up at east face of North Tower following first plane hit

View out of south-facing window of North Tower before second plane struck South Tower

Another view out of south-facing window of North Tower before second plane struck South Tower

Image is from JSBachFOA.org. No caption. Image title: “9-11-View_Out_Window_WTC_pic2”

Technically not inside WTC but the photographer was about to go inside the North Tower's lobby to take the following harrowing pic...

North Tower lobby following collapse of South Tower

supposedly an “FDNY Ladder 9 Firefighters Photo” - Some versions of this image are captioned as such.

Yet another view out of south-facing window of North Tower before second plane struck South Tower

View of Austin J. Tobin Plaza out of north-facing South Tower window 3 minutes after first plane impact

According to 9/11 Interactive Timelines:

The World Trade Center Plaza, as seen from the 35th floor of the South Tower. Fritz Koenig’s sculpture, The Sphere, is visible on the Plaza.

Port Authority employee David Bobbitt is in his office on the 35th floor of the South Tower when he hears and feels the revving of jet engines followed by debris hitting the building. The strange sight of papers flying outside his window, falling from above, and a gash in the North Tower, alerts him to the crash.

After taking this picture, Bobbitt reports to the command post in the North Tower lobby. As the Port Authority’s maintenance program manager for vertical transportation, Bobbitt has knowledge of the building’s elevators.

According to 9/11 Interactive Timelines:

View from the 48th floor of the North Tower.

At 8: 46 a.m., George Mironis, office manager for Dai Ichi Kangyo bank, feels a force pushing him from behind and hears what he believes to be an explosion many floors above him in the North Tower. Rushing to his 48th floor window, Mironis sees paper, glass, and aluminum shards raining from the tower’s upper floors. After taking this picture with his camera, Mironis evacuates down the stairwell.

Smokey North Tower office corridor shortly after first impact

NOTE FROM ME: This is probably exactly the kind of pic the Quora poster was looking for. HOWEVER - Don’t ask “why no photos of the fire?”. If you were in a building and there is actual FIRE in front of you, it would already be extremely smoky and borderline impossible to breathe in, let alone see. You would not be standing around taking photos. You would likely be unconscious or dead.

There is plenty of footage from the outside showing fire and smoke pouring out of broken windows. Check those out if you want to see fire.

Escaping the South Tower via stairwell

[2022–06–01 EDIT] Photos from the “9/11 New York City Mega Photo Collection” by user hellointerwebz on imgur.

John Labriola, who had an office on the 71st floor of the building, took this photo. This man is firefighter Mike Kehoe, and he DID survive with no injuries thanks to his senior colleague Roy Chelsen (who passed away in 2011 due to blood cancer, likely 9/11 related), who ordered the firefighters to evacuate the building once it was clear it would collapse very soon. He escaped with seconds to spare.

Caption from the original post:

Heading Into Danger

As World Trade Center workers descended the stairs of Tower One to escape, firefighter Mike Kehoe entered the building to help in the evacuation effort.

Extremely rare view of the WTC mall on 9/11 prior to South Tower collapse

Escaping the mall

Caption from imgur Mega Photo collection:

After the collapse of the South Tower and before the collapse of the North Tower (where this photo was taken).

Whatever you think about what happened, these photos are fascinating, historically significant photos. Please stay respectful to everyone involved.

EDIT(2021/10/14): Somebody uploaded a video of how it was like working inside the twin towers (recorded on Jan 2000)! It shows a nice view of the outside from the inside, and is a much less distressing and calm (even enjoyable!) piece of footage showing the WTC from the inside.

The video begins at 8:53AM, which is just 7 minutes away from the time the first plane crashed into the first tower (20 months later).

Just putting it here in case anyone is interested in viewing it:

EDIT(2022/03/27): This is valuable footage recorded using a Casio Pocket PC on the day of 9/11. It doesn’t show an awful lot, but it is still amazing, considering that the Casio Pocket PC Video was only released in October 2000, cost $500, and the optional camera attachment cost an extra $300. Also, it could only record a minute at a time AND required longer than that to actually save. Whoever recorded this was absolutely dedicated to doing so, and it is extremely rare and valuable footage. I believe that this is the only publicly available “amateur” video footage from inside the towers on 9/11.

EDIT(2022/06/01): Here is the JSBachFOA.org website, with many more photos from 9/11 up close to the towers. Lastly, here is an interview article of Steve Silvia, the man we can thank for taking and preserving some of these rare photos. You can read his testimony, as well as view some of the many other photos he took on that day. Take a look if you’re interested:

Nothing on fire, but I found this one of Rick Rescorla. He helped thousands of people get out that day. He kept going back up and down rescuing people. He was last seen going back up the stairs of the south tower right before it collapsed.

I believe there's a picture of Fire Marshall Ronnie Bucca taken on the stairs when Mr. Bucca was walking up and the civilian photographer was walking down. If I remember right, Mr. Bucca was a marathon runner, which facilitated his climb up the stairs. I can't find the picture now, but I believe it appears in Peter Lance's excellent book "1000 Years for Revenge".

Mr. Bucca and Chief Orio Palmer (another marathoner) climbed up to the lowest fire floor in WTC2, where they reported that they found some "isolated pockets of fire" and they wanted to run a couple of [hose] lines and "knock them down".

Both of them died when WTC2 fell on them. 343 firefighters died that day.

I’ve found the picture now. The firefighter on the stairs has been identified as Mike Kehoe. I’d say from the look in his eyes that he knows he’s walking into the jaws of death. He was one of the lucky ones. After climbing to the 28th floor, he was ordered down to the lobby, and then to evacuate — and he did, about 30 seconds before WTC1 came down.

Heroic Firefighter Is Alive--and Still on the Job

Edited to add: The photo above was taken by John Labriola, he has written a book entitled “Walking Forward Looking Back”, and some of his other photos from inside the WTC can be seen here:

The book (on page 9) names Eileen Hillock as another 9/11 photographer who may have captured interior shots.

The video Brandon Zamora linked to (which has since been deleted) is from Jules and Gideon Naudet's documentary '9/11'. The brothers were making a doco about a New York City firefighter during his first year on the job. They were out in the street when Flight 11 hit the North Tower (and filmed it)

They then travelled to the North Tower and documented the firefighters in the lobby as they attempted to deal with this unprecedented situation.

One of the brothers was inside the North Tower when the South Tower collapsed and would continue to film as the rest of the days events unfolded.

It's a harrowing documentary to watch - and a glimpse at the events of that day from a point of view we never expected to see.

Here are some photos inside the Twin Towers on 9/11:

Credits to Scott Rubenstein

These were the various photos taken by multiple people, who were inside the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001.

9/11 - James Hanlon and the Naudet brothers - 2002

One of the most incredible documentaries ever made regarding the most unprecedented day of my lifetime.

The Naudet brothers were friends with a firefighter from ladder 1 in NYC, and decided to make a documentary about a rookie firefighter making it through their first year. What is amazing is that this story is so compelling that you actually forget that you are watching a film about 9/11 until it happens mid-way through the film.

By this point we are invested in the lives and personalities of ladder 1’s crew, and the brothers themselves.

And they go into the towers with a camera.

If you have not watched this (and you need to be prepared because this will absolutely devastate you whilst watching), then I can’t recommend it enough.

Shortly after it happened, I remember seeing some pics posted of people in the stairwells going down, getting out. Packed as far as you could see, but orderly, and obviously the person who had the camera survived to send them out.

Remember that smart phones didn’t exist in 2001, so phone cameras weren’t something everybody had with them; you would have needed an actual camera, which generally you probably wouldn’t have at work. I think that’s a good thing, because nowadays, everybody would be snapping pics and posting them, including many people who didn’t survive, which Could be very unfair to the families of those who were in the pics but didn’t lived, to see their photo show up on Instagram or something.

I suspect the person who asked this question is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Why else would they ask for inside photos of this disaster?

I don’t have photos (no camera phones then), but I was in Manhattan on 9/11 for a business trip. When we arrived for the meeting on the morning of 9/11, our colleagues were looking at the WTC from the upper floor windows of the conference room in a building on 6th avenue. They told us a small private plane had (accidentally they thought) just hit one of the WTC buildings, which was was burning. Smake was billowing from it worse and worse. I said “That fire isn’t going to stop by itself.” Then we saw the second plane. From that distance, I thought it was a Canadair sent to try to put out the fire. Then it hit the second building and we screamed in shock, realizing this was an attack.

I personally witnessed the second plane hitting and the collapse of both buildings. 500 people from our company working in the towers were killed. To add to the stress, we were stuck in NY for days afterwards, as there were no flights to get back home. My 3-year-old son couldn’t understand why Mommy couldn’t come home for so long. I had recurring nightmares about all of it for quite a while.

So, conspiracy theorists, this happened. Stop spewing BS and get a life.

The Answer is unknown

But I have this photo of one of the floors are on fire

The closest you’ll probably get is the pictures taken right outside, namely in the Tobin Plaza which was that big area located between the two Towers. Some photos are taken from inside the building looking out, some show the fire from the Plaza looking up. Here’s a nicely done video showing those photos, which has the background music playing the actual music that was playing that day inside the Plaza (that sounds like elevator music):

UPDATE: I also forgot about the Naudette brothers’ fireman documentary. They’re inside the lobby during the time before the building collapsed. I think it’s on Youtube. The most horrifying thing about that to me, was the repeated sounds of booms which at one point they said were people falling and hitting the ground right outside, as the lobby’s windows were all busted out, and they had not shown any corpses, but they said there were burned people inside the lobby as well, as a bunch of people were in the elevator when a fireball went down the shaft from jet fuel.

Yes actually. One man bravely did. He started descending around 9:40am from the north tower near the impact zone. He made it down around 20 stories, absolutely no small feat.

here are two pictures where you can see him, they’re the same picture one just zoomed in. You can see the floors above where he descended. No doubt he watched colleagues and people above him jumping to their deaths to avoid being burned alive, or that were forced out by the heat and smoke. This was a choice those people made, they made the choice to die a quicker painless death rather than being burned alive or suffocating by the smoke, this man chose another option. He wanted a chance, a miracle even, so he started to climb down.

Here’s a photo showing an up close image of one of the towers. As you can see the columns on each side have barely any grip to hold onto, besides the tracks for the window washer rigs. If you managed to cram your fingers into these grooves it would make for a very awkward grip. In the photo it appears as though instead he’s balancing on the very small “ledge” where the floor and window insert meet (as you can see in the picture above) and leveraging himself further down inch by inch. The space between these columns is about 18 and a half inches.

theoretically this man could’ve made it quite a ways down, sooner or later though he would’ve hit the 76th mechanical floors where the space narrows about 10 inches and there’s even less leverage.

In this picture the dark grey lines on the towers show the mechanical floors.

it’s doubtful this man was aware of this as why would he need to be? He wasn’t a repairman or engineer he just worked there, like the 2000+ others who lost their lives that day in the towers. What would have happened had he reached these floors is all up for speculation as he unfortunately never made it that far.

after the collapse of the south tower he wasn’t spotted again. It’s most likely when the south tower fell it caused the building to sway and possibly wind from the building collapsing caused him to loose his footing or grip and fall.

all victims that day showed a level a bravery. This man’s determination to live speaks in volumes. I can’t imagine what was going through his head. looking down 80+ stories, seeing people fall around you, knowing one slip up and you’d share the same fate as them. then thinking about what drove him to try this unthinkable feat? no doubt the thought of his family. Making it down and being able to see his kids or wife just one more time. He wasn’t going out without a fight, he showed he was going to try until the very end to get out alive and try until the very end he did.

Not sure where some of the info came from that others are telling you.. one of the jobs at the pile was doing a very cursive look through the buckets for anything we thought might be human. This was the first few weeks. We would take the pieces, wrap them on a specimen tray, seal it, write what we thought it was, what sex we thought, and then hand it off to another group that would bring it to the make-shift morgue. The largest piece I saw was an avulsed half of a face with a few intact teeth. No bones. Most of the pieces were smaller from the buckets. To say we didn’t see much is a bit disingenuous. Through our efforts to go through the buckets to pick out anything and everything, they identified over 1600 victims. We worked out asses off trying to find anything just to give families peace of mind. No matter how small, we did our best to get it all. Some bodies, once it turned to recovery from a rescue, were more intact then others. If something was found, the remains were put into a body bag, draped with a flag, and all work stopped in order to pay our respects to those found. We could not do that on the pile as it was still a rescue operation at the time. Body parts were found on adjacent roof tops, aircraft passengers found a block or 2 away from the site still strapped into seats. Again, not close to complete bodies. That’s what we saw, found, and gave to be given to the ME’s to hopefully be identified through DNA. Hope that helps.

Highly unlikely.

This was 2001. Smartphones did not exist. People were not taking pictures every 3 seconds.

You used a 35 mm camera to take photos and had to develop the film at a photo lab before you ever got to see if they turned out.

People went about their day getting their work done, listening to music, chatting at the water cooler and killing time playing minesweeper or solitaire on their work computer.

You didn't generally bring your camera to work with you unless you knew something exciting would happen at work that you wanted to document.

The last thing people trying to escape from those buildings thought was to snap a couple selfies on the way down the stairs.

Amazing that you thought it would be. Makes me wonder how many survivors there would have been if that happened today. 1/4 as many maybe?

It was too hot.

If you had been listening to the harrowing telephone messages left by the people who were trapped, with no way out, who made one last phone call to say goodbye -- and no one answered -- you would have heard them explain what they were about to do.

Some held hands with colleagues. Some wrapped their arms around people they worked with, and they stepped together into the empty air. Some went alone. No one understood the fire. No one understood why no one had come to save them.

Their last words were unforgettable. Their voices. Their deep regret. How calm some almost seemed. One young guy left a message for his brother: I'm sorry we fought; I love you.

One left a message for his mother. I love you, mom. I'm sorry.

I don't think anyone understood what was happening -- a plane, an explosion, why they were left there, and could not be saved.

Then for weeks, the recordings were played on the radio during New York City's news coverage.

I had a friend who thought this public use of intimate, personal farewell messages was obscene. I disagreed. The tragedy of losing thousands of people so quickly in a single morning could be impersonally arms length, but for those voices.

If desk phones weren't working, they used cellphones. The towers were built originally with helicopter landings. Many had expected, of course, to be lifted off the roof. There was no other way to get out. Slowly, they began to realize it would soon be over. They started to jump. "I have to go," said one, and hung up.

The towers hadn't fallen yet. No one knew that was going to happen. This is why so many people died.

At the base, office workers from buildings on Broadway and Liberty and Chase Manhattan Plaza walked over and stood at the bottom and watched as people dropped in front of them.

I had a colleague named Tom whose young cousin worked in one tower. He prayed she would appear, safe. He walked over and stood next to a man who counted out loud each body as it hit the pavement. 26. 27. 28. "It was so weird." She was never found.

For months, photos of the "Missing" were taped to walls by the people who loved them, all around Penn Station, on telephone poles, on the sides of buildings, lamp posts, pillars. Every surface of New York was covered with these color xeroxes. No one took them down.

Why did they jump?

There, at the windows, they waited as long as they could, until it was unbearable, and they simply could not stay there anymore. They apologized for dying, said goodbye, and went.

Edna Cintron was an employee for Marsh and McLennan, located on floors 93–100 of WTC1(North Tower).

The company (I think they are insurance) just happened to be located right on all 6 floors of the impact. Almost everyone would have been killed instantly, but the lady in the picture below survived the impact and explosion.

Since floors 93–99 were hit, and the woman is at the bottom of the hole, we can assume she was on the 93rd floor. I read somewhere that Edna worked on the 93rd floor. So let’s compare the two pictures

I believe that after comparing the pictures, the woman here is Edna. There was however, a claim from the fiancé of Karen Juday, a victim, that this was Karen instead. He claimed this because he said the clothes the lady in the hole is wearing are what his late fiancée was wearing that day. But here are two reasons why I doubt this is Ms. Juday…

1. Several people worked in the World Trade Center, 50,000 at max. So it was probably not uncommon for people to be wearing similar clothes.
2. Ms Juday worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, and her office was on floor 101.

So why would a Cantor Fitzgerald employee be downstairs in the office of Marsh and McLennan? Precisely 8 levels down from her office. That’s enough to doubt that the lady is Ms. Juday, and in fact is Edna.

Back to the question though. Edna was not among the survivors. Anyone from floor 92 up to 110 was trapped. They either died by smoke inhalation, jumping or falling to their death, or in the collapse, but looking at pictures of the North Tower prior to its collapse, I doubt anyone was still alive above floor 99 at around 10:28 am.

There was a picture of what is believed to be Edna falling or jumping. I decided not to show it, as some viewers may find it distressing, but assuming that the woman is Edna, we know that while all her colleagues were killed by the impact and preceding explosion, she survived for some time. But because it would have been hot in that area, she may have realized she would not make it out alive, that the rescue services would not be able to get up in time. If she jumped, it’s because she realized this, and if she fell, it’s because she slipped or lost her balance. It’s a tough decision that hopefully none of us will have to face.

After the South Tower collapsed at 9:59, firefighters got the order to evacuate the North Tower. While some made their way down, others who either declined the order or didn’t get the command kept walking up to look for survivors. While a group of firefighters and one cop were on the way down stairwell B they encountered a woman with an injured leg who couldn’t walk down the stairs without help, so the firefighters got her and began carrying her down. They calmed her down by talking in a casual way, asking for her name, after which she said her name was Josephine Harris. They were close to the bottom of the staircase when the tower collapsed. It turned out their section was the only part standing after the collapse, and they initially didn’t think the whole building fell, giving their location in the tower to rescuers outside via radio. They were rescued hours later and are featured in several documentaries. Josephine died in 2011.

Josephine Harris during an interview

Joe Dittmar and company (seven others). They are considered the highest floor survivors because they didn’t heed advise given to them. They were on floor 105 of the south tower waiting for a meeting to start (there were meeting rooms on the top floors) when the first tower was hit. Someone came and told them that there had been an explosion in the first tower. The group prepared to evacuate, but a person told them all to stay. Most ignored that advice and started down the stairs. At floor 90 there was a door propped open. They poked their heads out and saw the plane directly across from them. Some walked out almost in a trance to watch the horror across the way. The rest of the group stayed together until they got to the 78th-floor lobby. There, all but 7 of the group left the stairwell to join the crowd waiting for instructions and for the express elevators. Joe Dittmar walked onward. He thinks he got to floor 74 when the second plane hit. Just above him at floors 85–77, everybody who left to wait in the lobby was gone. At floor 35 their group met with the firefighters on the way up, most of whom died. By the time they reached the bottom and navigated their way out of the tunnels, people were not allowed on the street directly around the towers because of debris and bodies. He only got 8 blocks away when the tower collapsed.

Out of the crash zone, only four made it out in both towers. Brain Clark, as mentioned, is one of them. This is due to a stairwell being unblocked. But, as he points out, little things saved his life. While several people survived the crash on his floor and made it to the right stairwell, they were on floor 81 well within the crash zone, saved only by the slight angling of the wings of the plane on impact. So, going downstairs only led to smoke while going up led to clean air. Most of his coworkers went up, while he heard a cry for help on a lower floor and went south. Everybody who went up died.

Being slowly roasted by heat is a very painful way to die. You might see the skin on your body start to turn red, shrivel up, begin to blister and crack.

Your lungs would start to hurt. You have to breathe, but every breath feels like boiling acid being poured down your throat.

You might have trouble seeing because of the smoke. Your eyes are streaming with the pain.

You know, absolutely certain by now, that you will not survive no matter what you do.

The windows are broken. The air outside is cooler and you’re burning up.

You know you’re going to die either way.

But if you jump the burning pain will go away. You’ll have a few pain-free seconds.

And when you hit the ground, you know it will be instantaneous. You feel no pain. You know it would all be over before your brain can even register that your body is dead.

I think I’d jump too.

This is possible the last photo of “Edna” about 1 min before the North Tower collaped. If you zoom to the location where she was first seen waving, you can see that she is still in the exact same spot holding on the the same column, partially shrouded by smoke. Notice the enire floor below her is now completely engulfed. 2nd image is zoomed in on “Edna”. 3rd image shows the exterior columns beginning to bend inward. At the very top of the photo you can see brown dust/smoke, this is from concrete failing. The tower is just starting to collapse as the photograph was being taken.

I was… I worked with Aon through a temp agency. I wasn’t hired on full-time as yet, so I got a badge every morning that showed my info and where I was going. I started on the 92 floor and jumped onto the 81st floor when the plane crashed into the building.

Edit: My sincerest apologies. I'm now seeing these comments. You all are right. The comment was poorly written. Thank you to those who were able to understand what I was internally trying to say despite the words actually written. Trauma is real y'all..

I started on the 92 floor. When the plane crashed into the building the stair fell from under my feet and I had to jump unto the floor in front of me. That was around the 81st floor.

Technically (some) were - but it was impossible to say for sure that they were the remains of those who were forced to jump.

At terminal velocity, approximately 120mph, the human body experiences thousands of G’s when it suddenly decelerates from travelling at around 50 meters per second to 0 instantaneously. That sudden halting is enough to obliterate our bodies, literally. So violent, total and instantaneous was the destruction of the people who fell, that many eyewitness accounts report there being very little blood in the area where those poor souls landed. Instead, there was an eruption of “pink mist” and then what was left was A: barely distinguishable as human and B: pale and colourless, with few if any distinguishing anatomical features.

Now consider the collapse of the towers - thousands of tonnes of steel, concrete and building materials which pancaked down on top of itself; A 100 story building reduced to piles of rubble in around 10 seconds. The amount of energy released by each of the collapses is hard to visualise. Each tower’s fall produced sufficient energy to be registered on the Richter scale at 2.2 and 2.3 - more than enough energy to completely pulverise the fragile human form.

The remains recovered from the rubble pile were often little more than scraps - pieces of people - and rarely were they complete bodies. It is therefore extremely difficult to say with any confidence if one has just found the body of someone who leapt or someone who lost their lives in the gargantuan crush.

A small silver lining, if any exists at all, is that the victims of the crush and of the fall likely died instantly. No pain, just immediate lights out. Small consolation for a day of pure barbarism.

* (I believe this figure to be correct as of May 2023) Around 40% of all of those who died that day have had no remains discovered at all. The immense power of the collapse eradicated their physical form beyond what our current technology can recover.

* the fall itself is discussed in detail in some of my other answers - whilst many of the victims who fell or were killed in the collapse felt no physical pain, I am aware that they would have had moments of excruciating emotional pain and fear!

Watched a great documentary about first responders on 9/11 on NG. One of the EMT’s was talking about the tags they have for different levels of injuries and the last was deceased. He had started walking around the base of tower one. This was before two was hit. He didn’t find anyone. They were all deceased. This is until he came across one and the lady faintly said, I’m not dead yet. Thinking they were placing tags on them for body bags. He said looking at this lady, he knew there was no way she was going to live long. He said she had obviously fallen straight down and landed feet first. He said everything below her lower torso was just smashed/crushed, you wouldn’t want to see it. He said she looked like a flight attendant the way she was dressed. Could by some luck this was the case? The could’ve come down through the building and out of the plane? Who knows. Probably just a business worker that was dressed like that. But he knew she wasn’t going to make it much longer. But he told her that he made a big mistake and was sorry. ANd was correcting it. He assured her that help was coming right over for her and taking her to the hospital. But he was correct. Before anyone could even make it over, she passed away. He said that was in his head for three years. You could imagine the first responders and what they went through. He said it was the only person though that he ever found was alive at first.

There are records of phone calls to 911 and answering machines at homes. Keep in mind that some people died below the impact floors. They were unable to get their office doors open as the frames were bent out of shape. One woman, Patricia Puma, spoke on the phone with the NY Times and she and another man in her office died of smoke inhalation.

In the North Tower, there were many calls from the higher floors where people called about standing on furniture because the floors were hot. Most died of smoke inhalation, particularly those who had climbed to the 109th floor, thinking the door to the roof would be open.

In the South Tower, where many more escaped, one person said he saw part of his floor (the mail room) fall to the floor below.

Those who jumped likely were in rooms burning much too hard, but the majority would have died from smoke inhalation. This is not counting those who stayed in the buildings never expecting the towers to collapse (and no it wasn’t a controlled demolition), the firemen had made it to the 23rd floor and some to the 78th floor. Several people were trapped in elevators. Port Authority officers used crowbars to open doors and kept climbing higher. Police officers died as they were assisting injured people down the lower floors. A man in a wheelchair who had a bad handicap could not be taken down stairs from the 33th floor. An office assistant and then a Fire Captain stayed with him.

Those above the impact zone…it doesn’t take long to die of smoke inhalation.

I worked at a camera store when 9/11 happened. Soon after a mother and daughter brought in a camera. Before they could tell me what even happened. I had a pretty good idea what happened to it. I had never seen that type of camera in such bad condition I couldn't even open it normally. It was filled with dust and God knows what else.

The mother and daughter were in the lobby of one of the buildings when it was hit. They asked me if there was any way I could save the film. We didn't have a dark room. So I had to use a dark box. It's a box that you can stick the camera and your tools in. Then work by feel to do whatever you needed to do.

I had to break the back of it off with a screwdriver. Then carefully remove the film and respool onto a new roll. After which it was able to be developed. I think only a frame or 2 was damaged and even in those I could still get some kind of print off of.

So yes it exists and I held some in my hands right after it happened. I live in Rochester NY and it was the hardest photography related task I ever had to do. I felt honored that they trusted me with such a valuable piece of history. They both safely made it out which made it even better.

I had a colleague from my previous company who worked at the WTC. She never liked talking about the attacks until one anniversary of 9/11 she shared that she used to work in the towers.

She told me that the morning of, she was talking with some coworkers, when she looked up and saw a plane hit the first tower. She thought at first it may have been a Cessna as it happened so quickly she didn’t get the opportunity to process things. Everyone heard the boom and her building rattled. Reports starting filtering in and they were given the option of staying or going. The HR manager actually asked people to stay saying there was no immediate danger.

She opted to go, which ultimately saved her life, because all her coworkers who decided to stay perished when the second plane hit. She felt the building rumble with the impact of the second plane. On her way out there were already bodies on the street and she said it looked like a war zone.

It’s been the one and only time she ever discussed working at the WTC and we never talked about it since.

The ghost of Edna Cintron was seen waving to be rescued till the very moment when she disappeared forever in the WTC North tower collapse.

Her husband (William Cintron) believed that the woman in the photo indeed was his wife, based on her outfit and blonde hair. (There was another husband of a victim who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald (four floors above the Marsh and McLennan floors Edna worked at), Karen Juday, but based on the location in the building, most probably it was Edna and not Karen.)

Some people think that Edna was seen jumping to her oblivion in pictures such as the one below, but apparently there are images of Edna seen waving till the very moment at which the North tower collapsed. So it wasn’t her.

The sheer idea that Edna Cintron was seen waving till the very end — maybe to say goodbye to her loved ones when all hope had evaporated into thin air — is extremely dramatic and very significant.

It was September 11 of the year 2001.

And seconds later she would be gone.

SOURCES: Google images and various news outlets.

Why, in the case with both of the twin towers on 9/11, did the huge fireballs emerge on the side of the buildings directly opposite the side where the planes hit?

Because aviation fuel has to follow Newton’s First Law (… an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force…)

The fuel was in the fuel tanks of the aircraft.

The aircraft were travelling at around 440 miles per hour/710 km/h/200 m/s/380 knots.

Therefore the fuel was travelling at that speed, and in the same direction.

As the tanks were ruptured, there would have been a (comparatively) minor resistance applied, as the fuel passed the disintegrating wing structure. This would also apply to the building structure. The fuel would probably ‘atomise’ as in like a liquid dispensed from a squirty bottle. It would still be travelling in the same direction.

As sparks etc contacted the now atomised fuel, it ignited, and burned as a fireball.

The fireball would therefore appear to have the same trajectory as the aircraft.

I would say that many, perhaps a few hundred, primarily in the 102–106th floor zone, were. Outside these areas, the vast majority had succumbed to fire, heat, and/or smoke.

Most of those who were still alive at 10:28 had made it to smaller offices with limited venting points near the north and west perimeters of the building on floors 102–106, where smoke was somewhat less severe than nearer the fires (which were primarily on 92–98).

The largest group of said people was a northwest corner conference room on 104 that had 40–50 people and very limited smoke exiting from the broken windows. These people were almost certainly still alive at 10:28. The people in this room had blocked doors and vents with clothing and broken windows to get fresh air, so conditions in that room were far better than almost anywhere else above the impact zone, but were still hellish. Other small offices and conference rooms had people that did similar things.

The vast majority of people somewhat lower, floors 99–101, would have succumbed to smoke inhalation and/or extreme heat well before the tower collapsed. The heat rising from the fires and the thick, black smoke would have been at its most concentrated in these areas. Temperatures on these floors likely reached several hundred degrees in most areas. There were likely a few survivors to 10:28 on these floors in very favorable areas, but nowhere near the numbers or percentages we’d see on 103–106.

Anyone on floors 102 or up who was in an open office area or near the core of the building would have died long before collapse, as well. Even though the heat and smoke had somewhat dissipated, it was still lethal enough to kill in minutes if one were exposed.

In the impact zone, very nearly everyone on floors 94–98 were deceased before 10:28 owing to the fires that consumed the entireties of those floors. The exceptions were Edna Cintron on 94 and another person who was still seen alive on 95 at 10:23. Floor 93 was possibly in the same situation, a wipeout zone by the time of collapse. Some people on floor 92 were still living at 10:28, but fires were rapidly encroaching on the last bits of the floor where they could survive.