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IBEW Member Recalls Tragic September
Day in NY In endless live and video footage, the world watched in horror as the two towers of the World Trade Center came crashing down on September 11, 2001. But the image and the deafening sound of the collapse are forever seared into the memory of IBEW lineman Terry McNerney, who was there to see it happen. "Sometimes when I remember it, I try not to, it was so awful," said McNerney, a member of Syracuse Local 1249, who was working temporarily in New York last year. "The noise was unbelievable. It made the earth shake. You could hear the steel twisting." McNerney and his work partner, Local 3s Jeff Valenti, were driving a bucket truck the day in mid-Manhattan, installing EZ-Pass monitoring devices on the undersides of city overpasses. When they heard the news about the plane hitting the first tower of the World Trade Center, they headed for the site, thinking as many did at the time the plane was a small one and the accident was a mistake. The truth became apparent as the second plane powered into the other tower as they arrived on Canal Street, near the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. "By now we were thinking it must be terrorists so I called home," McNerney said. "Then I ran across the street and bought a camera." The images on the film show the progressive destruction of Twin Towers from the vantage of an amateur gazing into the window of history unfolding. McNerney, a graduate student at the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, is a 30-year member of the IBEW. He lives in Binghamton.
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IBEW
Members Among Moments after the first hijacked passenger plane hit One World Trade Center, the northern tower of the landmark 110-story World Trade Center, at about 8:50 a.m. ET.
This picture was taken just as the southern tower begins to collapse.
The northern tower stands by itself moments before it fell.
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