Northallerton 9/11 survivor diagnosed with deadly lung disease

Filmmaker Paul Berriff, now 80, described an “apocalyptic scene” as buildings and vehicles burned around him after two passenger planes were flown into New York’s World Trade Center by Islamist extremists.

The September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington killed 2,977 people, and Northallerton-born Paul considers himself lucky to be alive.

Paul, then 55, was in New York with a UK team filming a TV series about animal-cops in September 2001.

He was at the office at 8.45am on September 11, 2001, when he heard an aeroplane had hit the World Trade Center, initially assuming it was a light aircraft.

Speaking to The Press ahead of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Paul said his “news instinct kicked in” and he drove to the scene with his camera crew after the first plane hit.

“On the way down, we began to see the two towers,” he said. “Both of them were on fire; the second plane had just gone in — so we knew then it wasn’t a light aircraft.”

Paul started filming as he watched firefighters run into the towers over a period of around 25 minutes.

“None of us knew it was likely to collapse at all,” he said.

Paul remembered hearing a “loud explosion”. “And I swung my camera around just to see the top of the South Tower beginning to peel away. It was like a massive umbrella just fanning out.

“Firefighters started shouting, ‘Run, run, run’, but I stood there with my sound recordist looking through the small view finder on my camera as half a million tons of concrete was hurdling towards me.

“I stood there for a couple of seconds. That’s quite a long time, but the buildings at the time were some of the highest in the world so it was taking time for all the debris to descend.”

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After another two seconds, Paul told his sound recordist to run, and they fled as debris continued to “hurtle down” towards them.

“As I was running I kept the camera running — it was over my shoulder still filming — I couldn’t see what was going on, but I could hear it,” he said. “It was just like an avalanche but not of snow, just concrete and everything else hurtling towards us.”

After 10 seconds of running, “all I remember was my camera leaving my right hand in slow motion. Then everything goes black.”

The Twin Towers in New York after the attack on September 11, 2001 (Image: Paul Berriff)

Paul was knocked unconscious for about 35 minutes when the debris hit him.

“I was lying there when the North Tower came down on top of me as well,” he said. “The next thing I remember — and I thought it was a matter of seconds, obviously it was a lot longer — I gained consciousness and everything was just black — blacker than the blackest night.

“I couldn’t see a thing. My eyes were full of all this gunge, my mouth, my nose, my ears — it was just like a cement paste.

“I could hardly breathe — I was hot and sweaty. The ground around me was on fire, stuff around me was burning — I could hear things still falling, but I couldn’t see anything.”

Paul Berriff at Ground Zero in September 2001 (Image: Paul Berriff)

Paul crawled until he felt the side of a car, then another.

He followed the parked cars which he believed led to the Hudson River.

“I suddenly thought, I don’t think I’m going to make this,” he said. “That was the first time in my career that I thought, this is it.

“Because I couldn’t breathe at all — I was gasping and gasping and trying to get this gunge out of my ears, my eyes, nose, mouth — it was everywhere. And everything I touched was burning hot.”

‘I must have been the first alive person right in the epicentre of it all’

Paul continued to crawl — still hearing things crashing and falling around him — until he got to the third car, when the visibility started to clear to around 20 yards away.

He saw an empty ambulance with its red light flashing, then followed the cars down the street.

After another five seconds of crawling, he stood up and said “everything was just deathly silent”.

“The building to my right was on fire from the ground floor to the top — all 24 stories,” Paul recalled. “All the fire trucks in front of me were on fire, and ambulances and police cars.

“And in the distance, I could see bits of the building embedded in the road.

“… I must have been the first alive person right in the epicentre of it all. I couldn’t see anybody else — it was just me.”

Paul returned to his apartment near the Twin Towers and reunited with his uninjured crew.

Paul then realised he had a “gash” on his head and was taken by paramedics to hospital on Staten Island.

“All of us that escaped that day thought it was great,” Paul said. “We’d all escaped death as thousands of others and first responders died around us.”

‘Something like that shows how fragile we all are’

Only about six of the 28 firefighters who had been with Paul at the base of the towers survived, as described in an earlier account.

Paul thought the cut on his head was his only injury. About five years ago, he learned that first responders and others who were in the area had developed coughs and illnesses linked to breathing in Ground Zero dust.

A routine hospital visit about three years ago revealed problems with Paul’s lungs.

Tests revealed he had pulmonary fibrosis — a rare, incurable condition in which the lungs become scarred, making it harder to breathe — which Paul said was caused by inhaling the dust on September 11, 2001.

Doctors gave him five years to live, but Paul said he was “still holding on”. “My consultant sees me on a six-month or yearly basis and says I’m doing alright at the moment. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

Paul Berriff now (Image: Paul Berriff)

US health officials said illnesses linked to dust and smoke from the towers’ collapse had claimed more lives than the nearly 3,000 killed in the attacks.

“It had taken 20 years for it to manifest itself,” Paul said. “Virtually everybody I know that was there that day — and others living in the area that were first responders — have all got these terminal illnesses.

“… It just shows you — we all escape our day but there’s a big sting in the tail of it all.”

But ultimately, Paul said he was “lucky that day” in September 2001.

The experience, he said, “brings it home to you that you’ve got to live every day as you find it and enjoy every day and every single minute. Because you just don’t know what’s coming either from above or behind you.”

“It has changed me,” he added. “I enjoy life and appreciate life every day now because I think something like that shows how fragile we all are: we walk a thin tightrope.”