For many, the most disturbing images from the morning of September 11, 2001 were little blurred shapes, obviously human, falling from the World Trade Center towers and instants from death.
Audio of the aftermath of the attacks captured heavy thumps as they hit the pavement and died. One killed a New York firefighter.
What led them to fall? It’s not always clear – for some, it could have been a desperate attempt escape the heat and smokre, for others a confused stumbling over an edge in smoke, or pushed by a crowd, or a mind overwhelmed by the need to do something, anything, to get away from the pain and terror of flaming jet fuel.
Few people, particularly bereaved families, wanted to think about it in detail, but the images sit like a thorn in the imagination, painful and hard to remove.
As many as 200 people died that way.
The jumpers are hard to talk about and hard to ignore. Yet, over the last decade, many have tried to understand what led them to their ends:
Esquire gets at the story behind an iconic photo known as the Falling Man, which shows a slim man in a white jacket and black pants falling head first from one of the towers. Who was he? It was never really resolved, though the question seemed to have been answered several times. “One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame — the Falling Man — became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen,” the writer concludes.
NPR interviews Tom Junod, author of the Esquire article. Why the reluctance to publish the photo at the centre of his story?
The 2006 documentary ‘The Falling Man’ found that “’the jumpers’ remain one of the most disturbing and taboo subjects that day.”
In 2002, USA Today tried to work out how many people jumped or fell to their deaths from the towers (their total of about 200 wasn’t disputed by officials), and finds a redemptive crumb in the horror: many people in the south tower were so terrified by the sight that they ignored reassuring announcements and fled – before the second jet hit.
The CBC’s Passionate Eye talks to witnesses and families.
Artist Eric Fischl’s sculpture “Tumbling Woman, ” which depicts a human tumbling in midair, touched far too many raw nerves when it was exhibited at Rockefeller Center in September 2002, and was removed after two days.
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