How Final Calls From 9/11 Became a Record of the Tragedy

On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history. The story of that dreadful day is mostly told through the shocking video footage captured by live news broadcasts and stunned bystanders on the streets of lower Manhattan.

As horrific as it is to watch the World Trade Center towers crumble to the ground, those indelible images were recorded from the relative safety of the streets below. The final phone calls and voicemails left by 9/11 victims, however, provide a raw, real-time record of what it was like to be trapped inside the towers or aboard one of the hijacked planes.

“We so often look back at 9/11 knowing how it ends,” says Garrett Graff, author of The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. “What you hear in the recordings from that day is the confusion of people who don’t yet know they are living through a world-changing, historic event.”

Some of the most agonizing calls were first made public as evidence in the 2006 trial of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to show the torment suffered by victims. Other calls, especially voicemails, are treasured by 9/11 families as the last words of their loved ones.

The first indication that anything was wrong on the morning of September 11 came shortly after 8:14 a.m., when air traffic controllers lost radio contact with American Airlines Flight 11. At 8:19 a.m., flight attendant Betty Ong called American Airlines personnel to report an attack aboard the flight, which was traveling from Boston to Los Angeles.

“The cockpit’s not answering,” said Ong from her jump seat in the rear of the aircraft. “Somebody’s stabbed in business class. And I think there’s mace—that we can’t breathe. I don’t know. I think we’re getting hijacked.”

Minutes later, Boston air traffic controllers received two troubling messages accidentally broadcast by Mohamed Atta, the hijacker at the controls of Flight 11.

“We have some planes,” said Atta, thinking he was speaking to Flight 11 passengers. “Just stay quiet, and you’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport. Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

Flight 11 carried 76 passengers, 11 crew members, five hijackers and roughly 10,000 gallons of jet fuel for its transcontinental journey. At 8:46 a.m., Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center between floors 93 and 99 and erupted in a massive fireball. The fiery wreckage cut off access to all three emergency stairwells from the 92nd floor up, trapping hundreds of people on the upper floors.

Within minutes of the impact, New York City’s 911 system was flooded with calls. At around 8:50 a.m., one of the first recorded 911 calls from inside the North Tower came from 35-year-old Christopher Hanley, who was attending a conference at the Windows on the World on the 106th floor.

“We have smoke and it’s pretty bad,” Hanley told the operator, keeping his composure. “We can’t get down the stairs. We have about 100 people up here.”

Neither Hanley nor the 911 operator had any idea that a plane had crashed into the tower, only that there had been some kind of explosion. Even some people who witnessed the crash assumed that it was an accident.

“America today is a fundamentally different country than it was at 8:45 on Tuesday, September 11,” says Graff. “We weren’t a country that had experienced terror attacks like this. No one really understood in those first 17 minutes that this wasn’t an accident.”

The 911 operator connected Hanley to a fire department dispatcher, who told him to stay where he was and “sit tight.” Hanley’s final words on the call were, “All right, please hurry.”

Jim Gartenberg, a real estate executive, had just accepted a new job and came to the World Trade Center on September 11 to clear out his desk. Trapped on the 86th floor of the North Tower, Gartenberg made several phone calls seeking help. After trying unsuccessfully to reach his wife, Jill, Gartenberg spoke to a reporter at The New York Times and then went live on a television news broadcast. The anchors initially spoke of him as if he had already left the building.

“It’s World Trade Center 1, and it’s not was—I am here and I’m stuck right now,” Gartenberg clarified, remaining remarkably calm. “If I’m on the air, I want to tell anyone who has a family member that may be in the building that the situation is under control for the moment and the danger has not increased. So please, all family members take it easy.”

Gartenberg never made it out of the North Tower but was able to speak with Jill one last time and tell her how much he loved her and their 2-year-old daughter, Nicole. Jill was three months pregnant with their second child.

At 8:15 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 took off from Boston, also en route to Los Angeles. Among its 51 passengers were Peter and Sue Hanson and their 2½-year-old daughter, Christine, who was traveling with them to Disneyland.

Five hijackers were aboard Flight 175. As on Flight 11, they attacked the crew and took over the cockpit. Peter Hanson called his father, C. Lee Hanson, to report the hijacking. Neither man knew that a plane had already collided with the World Trade Center, but Peter had an awful premonition that the hijackers were going to crash the plane.

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Peter said. “If it happens, it will be quick.”

As Peter and his father spoke, Lee was watching television coverage of the North Tower engulfed in smoke. Just then Peter started to mutter, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Lee watched in horror as his son’s plane crashed into the South Tower.

Julie Sweeney Roth didn’t get a chance to speak with her husband, Bryan Sweeney, a former Navy pilot who was also aboard Flight 175. But when she got home, she found a voicemail message he had left that morning using a seatback phone.

“Jules, this is Bryan,” began Sweeney. “Listen, I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked. If things don’t go well, and it’s not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, go have good times. Same to my parents and everybody, and I just totally love you, and I’ll see you when you get there.”

The scene inside the South Tower was horrific. Flight 175 was carrying roughly 9,100 gallons of jet fuel, and the impact and explosion triggered raging fires across several floors, severing elevator cables and rendering two of the three emergency stairwells impassable. One stairwell remained passable, allowing some people above the impact zone to escape.

Melissa Doi was on the 83rd floor of the South Tower when the second plane struck the World Trade Center. The 32-year-old manager at IQ Financial Systems was able to reach a 911 operator at 9:17 a.m., about 15 minutes after the impact. Doi’s final phone call is one of the most gut-wrenching to hear and was played during the sentencing trial of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who received a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for his role in plotting the attacks.

“There’s no one here yet, and the floor’s completely engulfed,” Doi told the operator. “We are on the floor and we can’t breathe and it’s very, very hot.”

The operator tried to keep Doi calm as they waited for help to arrive, but her situation was dire. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Doi asked, in tears. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, ma’am, say your prayers,” replied the operator. “I’m going to die. I know I am,” Doi cried. Again, the operator urged Doi to “think positive,” but the last words the operator heard before the line went dead were, “Oh, God, it’s so hot. I’m burning up.”

Kevin Cosgrove, a 46-year-old insurance executive, was trapped on the 105th floor of the South Tower, well above the impact site but surrounded by acrid black smoke and desperate to get out. Like so many other 911 callers in the towers, Cosgrove was told to “hang tight” and that help was on the way.

“It doesn’t feel like it, man,” responded Cosgrove, clearly distressed. “I’ve got young kids.” Two other people were in the office with Cosgrove. “We’re young men—we’re not ready to die.”

Later in his nearly five-minute call, Cosgrove said, “My wife thinks I’m all right. I called and said I was leaving the building and that I was fine. And then bang!” As the operator continued to ask questions about Cosgrove’s location, a deep rumbling sound could be heard before Cosgrove cried out, “Oh God, no!” The South Tower was collapsing.

Some have argued that the South Tower should have been evacuated immediately after the North Tower was hit.

“I think it’s incredibly hard to second-guess almost any of the decisions that were made on 9/11, because again, we operate today knowing how the story ends,” Graff says.

For Cosgrove’s wife, Wendy, who testified at the Moussaoui trial, it was “haunting” to listen to her husband’s final 911 call, but she also believed that it served a purpose by putting a human face on the tragedy.

“Some people told me that hearing Kevin’s words have made the events of 9/11 more human for them,” Wendy said in the 2011 HISTORY Channel documentary 9/11: Voices from Inside the Towers. “That there were really people in there and it wasn’t just buildings.”

The next hijacked plane to hit its target was American Airlines Flight 77, which took off from Washington Dulles International Airport on its way to Los Angeles. Only a few phone calls were made from Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., killing all 53 passengers and six crew members aboard, plus 125 people at the Pentagon.

One of those calls was from Barbara Olson, a lawyer and prominent conservative political commentator, who reached her husband, Ted Olson, at his office. Ted was the U.S. solicitor general at the time and later recalled the two short conversations he had with his wife. He described her as cool and focused as she learned about the other hijacked planes and tried to figure out what she could do.

Ted Olson’s office telephone is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History as a physical reminder of the crucial role that phones played on 9/11.

Delayed by more than 25 minutes before takeoff, United Airlines Flight 93 was still in the air when the other three hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Flight 93 was the only hijacked plane whose passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers, preventing the plane from reaching its intended target. They were motivated to fight back, in large part, because of the information received during phone calls with family and others on the ground.

“That’s what inspires the passengers and crew to take back control of the plane and storm the cockpit,” Graff says. “You can listen to [the phone calls] and read the transcripts of them coming to that realization in real time.”

Alice Hoagland, the mother of Flight 93 passenger Mark Bingham, spoke with her son shortly after 9:37 a.m. After their call was disconnected, she later left him a voicemail warning him that other hijacked planes had been used as weapons and urging him to try to regain control of the aircraft.

“The news is that it’s been hijacked by terrorists,” Hoagland told her son. “They are planning to probably use the plane as a target to hit some site on the ground, so if you possibly can, try to overpower these guys if you can. ’Cause they’ll probably use the plane as a target.”

Deena Burnett spoke with her husband, Tom Burnett, another Flight 93 passenger, and told him that the Pentagon had been hit. She later recalled hearing him relay the news to other passengers. “I’m putting a plan together,” Tom told her. “We’re going to take back the airplane.”

CeeCee Lyles, a flight attendant aboard Flight 93 and a former police officer, left a voicemail for her husband, Lorne. “They’ve hijacked the plane,” Lyles said. “I’m trying to be calm. We’ve turned around and I’ve heard that there’s planes that have flown into the World Trade Center. I hope to be able to see your face again, baby. I love you, bye.”

Lyles called back and was able to speak with Lorne briefly. They prayed together, and Lyles ended the call by telling Lorne, “Tell the boys I love them. We’re getting ready to do it now. It’s happening!”

On another phone call with a telephone operator, passenger Todd Beamer was overheard saying, “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.”

By fighting back against the hijackers and attempting to storm the cockpit, the Flight 93 passengers and crew prevented the plane from reaching its target in Washington, D.C., where investigators believe the intended target was either the U.S. Capitol or the White House.