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Twenty years ago, on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, Mark Clifford was in Dublin attending the funeral of a friend. The Cork native had driven to the capital for the day and was at the reception following the funeral when he caught sight of a TV screen.
"I could clearly see the twin towers and I saw an explosion coming from one of the towers," recalls Clifford. "I asked the person next to me is this a new movie or something and they said no, this is live from the United States in New York."
Clifford froze, knowing that his brother who lived in the US was due to attend a meeting at the World Trade Center that very day. “I picked up my phone and tried to ring my brother and couldn’t get through to him. I had this eery feeling so I decided to leave immediately and start heading for Cork.”
In the hours that followed, as Clifford drove south towards his home, he learned that his brother Ronnie had survived the terrorist attack on the twin towers and had made his way home to New Jersey. However, the relief of this news was fleeting as he then discovered his sister, Ruth Clifford McCourt, had boarded a flight to LA that very morning.
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Clifford was still driving, making his way to be with his family in Cork, when he received a call confirming his sister Ruth, and her four-year-old daughter Juliana, had been on board the United Airlines flight which crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center.
“I really had to stop and take a couple of breaths, I was losing myself in a very surreal moment. The whole day was a nightmare and I was hoping I might wake up from it.”
The Clifford family from Cork is just one of the thousands of families around the world who continue to grieve their loved ones who lost their lives twenty years ago during the 9/11 terror attacks. "Their absence never gets any easier," Mark Clifford told presenter Sorcha Pollak in today's episode of In the News.
Former Irish Times Washington correspondent Paddy Smyth, who reported on the attacks from the US with his colleague Conor O'Clery, recalls the day was like being in the middle of "a horror movie".
Unable to leave Washington DC and get to New York the day of the attacks, Smyth started filing analysis of the situation back to the newsroom in Dublin. “I have this strong recollection of a sort of brain freeze occurring as I tried to write, my words coming with enormous difficulty. The world was watching and how could I add to what they could already see in front of themselves? It was extraordinarily difficult.”
In the News is presented by reporters Sorcha Pollak and Conor Pope.