It’s almost 20 years since the September 11 attacks but for many survivors, the pain and trauma are still raw.
Some were left with life-changing physical injuries, while many still struggle with the mental torment caused by the events of that day.
One of the most severely injured survivors, Lauren Manning, suffered burns to more than 80% of her body.
“By any medical standard, I should have died,” she tells Sky News.
Lauren had just entered the World Trade Center’s North Tower when the first hijacked plane crashed into the building, sending a fireball hurtling down a lift shaft and into the lobby.
“There was this incredibly loud, piercing, whistling sound and an instant later I was engulfed in flames,” she says.
“The pain was incalculable, crushing, penetrating deeper and deeper.
“I was burning alive. There are no other words for it.”
As Lauren fought against the flames, she ran outside and across a road before dropping and rolling on a grass embankment where a man tried to help her.
“I didn’t fall down and die in a heap of flames – I struggled against them,” she says.
“I was screaming to him: ‘Get me the hell out of here!'”
As she lay severely injured, Lauren watched in horror as terrorists smashed a second plane into the World Trade Center’s South Tower.
She saw people fall from the skyscrapers, knowing that her colleagues from financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald were trapped on the upper floors.
All of the company’s 658 employees in the office on September 11 were killed that day.
On the ground, Lauren – who had previously escaped the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center – managed to find an ambulance but her chances of survival were slim.
“The burns were extraordinary,” she says.
“It burnt 82.5% (of my body), most of it third-degree.
“More than 20% was fourth or fifth degree, which means you lose the muscle or the bone – so various amputations (were needed) on fingers on both hands.”
• ‘I was so afraid my son would not recognise me’
Lauren was rushed to hospital and eventually placed in an induced coma before being moved to a specialist burns centre.
Over three months while she was in a coma, her husband Greg would read Robert Burns poems and play music from their dating days.
“Perhaps it had an impact on me, knowing I was loved,” she says.
“My parents drove hours and hours expecting me to be dead – and they were there every day.”
Several days after waking from her coma, Lauren’s then one-year-old son Tyler visited her for the first time since the attack.
“I was so afraid that he would not recognise me,” she says.
“He came down the hall and there he was walking. A beautiful little soul.
“He did not recognise me at first…. but he came back towards me and he recognised me, I guess through the eyes and the voice.
“That was everything I needed.”
Lauren spent more than six months in hospital but her recovery – which involved several operations – took nearly 10 years.
“You get burned – which is probably the most sadistic form of human torture – and it takes years and years,” she says.
Lauren, whose second son Jagger was born in 2009, still has contact numbers listed in her phone for many of her colleagues who died on 11 September 2001.
“The notion of the murders and the terror and the death are never far away,” she adds.
• The fire official who narrowly escaped Twin Tower collapse
Lynn Tierney arrived at the World Trade Center after both planes had hit the Twin Towers.
The deputy commissioner at New York City’s fire department had been due to attend a job interview on the 68th floor of the North Tower that morning – but her plans had been drastically changed by the terror attacks.
“It was a horrific scene outside,” she says.
“Both towers were burning… it was engulfing the upper floors.
“But in addition to the flames, the worst thing was there were people jumping (from the towers).
“I saw a couple jump with their hands together. That was unbelievable.
“It continued the whole time we were in the lobby. You could hear it. It was a terrible sound.
“I can’t imagine the choice they were faced with. I was just thinking about their families. It was just horrific.”
Lynn had travelled to the scene with 12 firefighters from two different units – all of whom later died during the rescue effort.
She walked into the lobby of the North Tower through a window after the exploding jet fuel had blown out the glass.
But at that point, fire chiefs had already determined they wouldn’t be able to put out the flames.
“The mission became purely rescue, to try to go up and get out as many people as possible,” she says.
Lynn was working to help coordinate the rescue effort from the north side of the North Tower when suddenly the South Tower collapsed.
• ‘The dust was so thick you could almost chew it’
She says she “ran like hell” and jumped into a loading dock about 80 yards away.
“The dust was so thick you could almost chew it,” she says.
“It was gritty so you couldn’t take a breath up your nose or anything.
“I was having trouble breathing. Everybody was.”
After entering the loading dock, Lynn says a police inspector tried to shield her with his body.
“That’s the only time I thought about dying,” she says.
“I just thought: ‘God, just let it be fast.’ I don’t want to linger in here like a miner for 18 days and be crushed at the same time.”
After getting to safety, Lynn was in New York City Hall when the second tower collapsed, about two blocks away.
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9/11: ‘People decided between burning and jumping’
The force of the building collapse blew the hall’s doors open and as smoke and dust came into the building, Lynn hid in a staircase.
Some 343 firefighters died that day and Lynn wrote about 100 eulogies for the victims.
On one day alone, 23 funerals were held.
“These emotions from 9/11 are always under the surface,” says Lynn, who later became president of the 9/11 Tribute Centre and held the role until 2007.
“You learn to live with it. I call it ‘keeping a bolt in your heart’.
“It’s overwhelming sometimes. The oddest thing for me is I lived through it.
“I can’t believe I got out of there. That’s the biggest surprise.”
• The British trader who felt Twin Tower plane crash
Briton Charlie Gray thought an earthquake had hit New York when he was working in the North Tower on 11 September 2001.
The London-born trader, who was employed by broker firm ICAP, was stood in the office on the 26th floor when the building “shook and moved”.
Suddenly, he saw debris falling from the upper floors.
“You could see this stuff was really burning,” Charlie tells Sky News.
“We thought it must be something like a bomb.
“Nobody had to tell us. Everybody just headed for the stairs.”
Charlie and his colleagues began walking down the tower but they were slowed down as more and more people entered the stairwell, before they passed three firefighters on the 17th floor.
“As they passed us we heard on their radio another plane has hit the South Tower,” Charlie says.
“It had taken about 17 minutes to get down nine floors.”
• ‘It was like a warzone’
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What is the legacy of 9/11?
Charlie describes the scene outside the World Trade Center as “like a warzone”.
He says he saw body parts on the street and cars that had been destroyed by falling debris.
A “black charred body” landed about 30ft away as he walked to the ferry terminal and he watched 20 people jump from the towers, he says.
“What was their option?” Charlie asks.
“You stand and either die of smoke inhalation, you burn to death, or you take that quick leap and get it over with.”
After boarding a ferry, Charlie “heard a rumble” and watched as the South Tower came down.
“In less than a minute, the dock where we were just standing was a mass of dust and dirt,” he adds.
The swimmer who was the first victim in the 1975 blockbuster Jaws has died.
Susan Backlinie died in her home in California at the age of 77, according to her agent. Her death was first reported by The Daily Jaws website.
The opening scene of Steven Spielberg‘s classic features Ms Backlinie running along the beach and before diving into the water and skinny dipping.
Her character Chrissie Watkins is then suddenly pulled under the water and she screams as she is violently attacked by an unseen great white shark.
Ms Backlinie had been a champion swimmer when cast in the film. She told The Palm Beach Post in 2015 that Spielberg told her: “When your scene is done, I want everyone under the seats with the popcorn and bubblegum.
“I think we did that,” she said.
In the documentary, Jaws: The Inside Story, Spielberg called Ms Backlinie’s sequence “one of the most dangerous” stunts he’s ever directed.
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“She was actually being tugged left and right by 10 men on one rope and 10 men on the other back to the shore, and that’s what caused her to move like that.”
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It marked the first time a genetically modified pig kidney was transplanted into a living patient. Surgeons said they believed the organ would last for at least two years.
Slayman’s family announced his death yesterday, thanking the doctors who carried out the world-first surgery for their “enormous efforts”.
They said the animal-to-human transplant – known as a xenotransplant – gave them “seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories made during that time will remain in our minds and hearts”.
The transplant team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) said they did not have any indication he died as a result of the transplant.
Slayman, from Weymouth, Massachusetts, previously had a kidney transplant at MGH in 2018, but had to go back on dialysis last year after it showed signs of failure.
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As he needed frequent procedures as a result of dialysis complications, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant.
His family said Slayman wanted to undergo the procedure to give hope to those on waiting lists for transplants, adding: “Rick accomplished that goal and his hope and optimism will endure forever.”
Pig kidneys had previously been transplanted into brain-dead donors, but only temporarily. Two men have also received hearts from pigs, with both dying within months of their prodecures.
More than 100,000 people are on the transplant waiting list in the US – most need a kidney, but thousands die waiting.
In the UK, the NHS said that in the year to March last year, there were 6,959 patients waiting for an organ transplant.
It said 439 patients died while on the active list waiting for it and a further 732 were removed from the transplant list, “mostly as a result of deteriorating health and ineligibility for transplant”.
Oprah Winfrey has admitted playing a role in perpetuating diet culture during her career and said a dieting item from a 1980s show was one of her “biggest regrets”.
The 70-year-old star – who has been ranked among the most influential women in the world – has been open about her struggles to maintain a healthy weight and attempts to lose weight.
In March she said “making fun of my weight was a national sport” for more than two decades.
In comments reported by NBC, Sky’s US partner, the talk show host told a livestream and live audience: “I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in this diet culture through my platforms, through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years.
“I’ve been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight loss shows and makeovers I have done and they have been a staple since I’ve been working in television.”
But she admitted an item on a 1988 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show was one of her “biggest regrets” when she rolled a wagon of fat on to the stage to represent the weight she had recently lost thanks to a liquid diet and exercise.
She had starved herself for months, she said, admitting that it “sent a message that starving yourself with a liquid diet and set a standard for people watching that I, nor anybody else, could uphold. The very next day, I began to gain the weight back.
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“I own what I’ve done, and now I want to do better.”
Winfrey was speaking on Thursday at an event organised by WeightWatchers, whose board of directors she joined in 2015, before saying in February she was leaving.
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In 2016, she used an interview in the magazine O to reveal she had lost 12kg, sharing the cover with nine other woman to celebrate their “best body”.
In the issue, Winfrey said, “It was my idea to share the cover with other women who are on the same journey that I am. My own struggles with the scale are well known. I’ve never believed in hiding them.”
In December, she told People she had started taking a weight loss drug, saying she used it “as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing.
“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.”