WARNING: CONTAINS DISTRESSING CONTENT
Where were you when you heard about the Twin Towers? You may have been in primary school, off sick, on holiday or maybe you were too young to remember it.
It was probably the most shocking moment of most people's lives. One plane hit the tower - could it have been an accident? A second plane hit the other tower - every ounce of doubt was removed. This was a planned attack.
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We can never imagine the horrors of what went on inside the towers when countless people realised there was no way out. What we do know is that some people made the heartbreaking decision to jump. There was no other choice. It's an unthinkable situation.
It is widely believed that no-one from floors 91 and above got out alive from the first building. 1,100 people may have survived the initial crash. But that same 1,100 people were either burned alive, died from smoke inhalation, died after the building collapsed... or jumped.
There were some survivors. And over the years, they've given frank first-person accounts of what happened that morning.
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Here are their stories.
Fred Eichler
Fred, who was 54 at the time of the attack, was an insurance broker. That morning, he went to work at the normal time of 8:15. He began chatting to some colleagues when one of them remarked that a plane was flying 'very low'. They all stared out the window, but got to their feet simultaneously as the realisation of what was about to happen sank in.
"It was all in slow motion," Fred told the Daily Mail, "I am told that the plane was flying at 600mph towards us, yet it seemed like an eternity getting to us.
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"I suppose it was 15 seconds. None of us really expected it to hit the building. But it just kept coming and coming.
"Most of the time it was... right in line with the window we were staring out of. Then it was almost on us. I could make out the seams on the wings and all the American Airline markings.
"I looked right into the cockpit but I couldn't really make out the figures. They were tiny windows and the sun was shining on them. Maybe I eyeballed Mohamed Atta, the hijack pilot, but I can't be sure."
The plane hit the building and the wing of the plane entered the building around 70ft above Fred. Floors 94 to 98 took the full force of the plane.
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He heard an explosion as he and his colleagues were thrown to the floor. He continued: "No one could comprehend it. I still can't. Right after it hit I staggered to my feet and called 911. They connected us to the fire department and I told them we were trapped on the 83rd floor."
After this initial phone call, he rang his family to tell them he was okay, but he believed that he was going to die. "We were stuffing wet towels and rags at the bottom of the doors, trying to keep the smoke out.
"We wrestled with the idea of breaking a window to get more air but the eight of us decided against it. We thought it might fuel the fire and bring it in the office.
"Nobody panicked, we took these decisions together. Then at about three minutes after nine we heard a massive explosion. We thought it was the floors above crashing down on us. We didn't know it was the second plane hitting the other tower."
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He and his colleagues made their way through the building. The sprinklers had doused many of the fires; at one point the lights went out. It was pitch black.
They finally managed to get out.
Janice Brooks
After her early morning jog along the Hudson River, 42-year-old Janice went to work as a personal assistant in the South Tower.
She was sat at her desk when she heard a thud. She was then told to get out of the building. Calmly, she rang her boss, Robin Clark, to tell him that she and her co-workers were leaving their desks.
Janice remembered saying something like: "'Rob, something is happening next door but we are all OK and we are leaving. He replied: 'Something is happening next door? Fucking hell, Janice, a plane has gone into the building. Get the fuck out of there!"'
It was that sentence that she credits to saving her life.
As she ran out of a fire door, the whole building shook as the second plane hit her building. She fell to the ground.
She told the Daily Mail: "Then I heard a woman's bloodcurdling scream coming from the other side of a door.
"We started pulling on one side while those on the other side pushed and finally it gave way."
As they opened the door, a woman came through, Half of her arm was hanging off. Janice then saw another man with a huge piece of glass embedded in his chest. The woman who'd been screaming had blood all over her face and was screaming that she couldn't see.
"I felt as if I was in a horror film but still didn't comprehend what had happened.
"I kept telling myself that if a plane had hit one of the towers the pilot must have had a heart attack."
They managed to find a staircase that was in tact and made their way out of the building. Only then did Janice understand just how serious their situation was as they saw exactly what was happening.
Another victim of the 9/11 terror attacks. Credit: PA Images
Lauren Manning
On the morning of the attacks, Laura Manning left her home half an hour later than she would usually, thanks to a phone call. She made her way up to her office on the 106th floor of the North Tower. However, she only made it into the lobby.
She wrote a first-hand account of what exactly happened. As she walked, fire exploded through from the lifts. She explained: "With an enormous, screeching exhalation, the fire explodes from the elevator banks into the lobby and engulfs me, its tentacles of flame hungrily latching on. An immense weight pushes down on me, and I can barely breathe. I am whipped around... I see people lying on the floor covered in flames, burning alive.
"Like them, I am on fire."
Speaking to USA Today, Lauren explained that it was incredibly difficult putting her pain into words. But, after a while, it felt like she was writing about another person.
She also described the moments she was on fire, and how she thought of her son: "I prayed for death, in that unspeakable way that people who are experiencing unimaginable pain can.
"[I thought] I can't leave my son. I haven't had him long enough... I can't die like this, stumbling into the streets in flames, surrendering my life in a gutter."
She managed to get outside, where a man took off his jacket and smothered the flames. "He's one of the true heroes," she explained. "He ran toward trouble instead of away from it."
She had suffered serious burns. But she was a fighter. She wrote: "I had a new mission: I wanted to survive and prevail on behalf of all those who had died... I was sure I'd known some of the people who had jumped from the towers to escape the flames...
"I vowed to put every ounce of effort I could into battling back. My family would be proud of me. My survival had given me a chance to make things right, to see beyond the small sorrows of everyday life."
Laura Manning now.
On September 11, 2,977 people died as a result of terrorist attacks. 246 on the four planes, 2,606 at the World Trade Center and 125 at the Pentagon.
We will remember them.
Featured image credit: PA Images
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