Hours of previously unseen footage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is still being released to the public more than two decades after the tragedy.
Over the years, numerous groups have been working to digitize footage of 9/11. The attacks unfolded in a moment before the proliferation of cellphones and social media provided vehicles to share information and news widely and instantly. But they were recorded extensively at the time by all kinds of cameras: television news cameras, security cameras, cameras carried by ordinary people on the streets of New York or in the vicinity of the Pentagon when the hijacked planes struck.
While some of the efforts to collect that footage and make it available online, including the September 11 Digital Archive, have closed their portal for new contributions, others are continuing the work. And footage that remained largely unseen for years is entering the public sphere.
On Wednesday, just before the 24th anniversary of the attacks, the New York Public Library announced its acquisition of the CameraPlanet Archive, a collection of more than 1,200 hours of video footage of 9/11 and its aftermath. The footage also documents the design and construction of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
Among that footage is over 500 hours of first-person video from the week of the attacks. Some of it appeared in the documentary 7 Days in September, the library said, but most of it has never before been public.
“As a city, we made a promise in the days and weeks after 9/11 to never forget. This unprecedented archive will help us do just that for generations to come,” said Iris Weinshall, the Chief Operating Officer of The New York Public Library, said in a statement. At the time of the attacks, Weinshall was New York City’s Department of Transportation Commissioner.
Other footage has similarly emerged this year. In May, the 9/11 Media Preservation Group, formed by a group of volunteers, released an unseen hour-long video of the aftermath of the attacks on its YouTube channel. The footage was derived from a tape filmed by a person identified as “Ed S.” who had stored the video for more than two decades.
The 9/11 attacks, during which nearly 3,000 people were killed, are among the deadliest terrorist attacks in history, according to the FBI. Terrorists associated with the extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four planes. Two were flown into the World Trade Center in Manhattan and another struck the Pentagon. On another plane—which historians believe was headed to the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.—passengers fought back, and the plane later crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pa. Everyone on board the planes died, and thousands on the ground were injured or killed. Many others, including a number of first responders, later died due to health complications related to the toxic conditions after the attacks.
The 9/11 Media Preservation Group, which also runs a Discord, subreddit, and Patreon, helps people digitize their footage of 9/11. Stephanie Schmeling, head of cataloging and archives at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which the 9/11 Media Preservation Group shares their work with, has said there is more unseen media of the event out in the world.
“It’s unquantifiable,” Schmeling told CNN. “We don’t know how many people had cameras, how many people documented it, and a lot of people don’t feel comfortable sharing it because it was an emotional moment for them, and so they haven’t shared it.”
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