'I survived 9/11 - but 25 years on the day is still killing me'

A 9/11 survivor from Leeds says he has just years to live after surviving the horror of the World Trade Center attack 25 years ago.

Raised in Headingley, celebrated documentary filmmaker and photo journalist Paul Berriff was knocked unconscious but survived the collapse of the Twin Towers.

The now 80-year-old was filming the documentary series ‘Animal Precinct’ in New York when he heard about the first plane hitting the North Tower on September 11, 2001 and immediately headed to Ground Zero to capture the efforts of the brave rescue personnel.

25 years on, Paul spoke with the Yorkshire Evening Post, where he started his career as a 16-year-old, about his memories of that dark day.

“As we drove down, the Twin Towers came into view and we saw that they were both on fire - so we knew then it wasn’t a light aircraft and it obviously looked very suspicious,” Paul recalled.

“Then we could see these little black dots appearing around both the buildings and as we got nearer we realised it was people jumping.”

Arriving at the scene, Paul and his crew set up at the base of the South Tower, just as Assistant Fire Commissioner Steve Gregory arrived and set up his incident command post.

They continued filming for about 20 minutes, watching as firefighters arrived, got their instructions and without hesitation headed into both buildings to save civilians.

Paul was filming Gregory as he received a note from the control room in Manhattan, detailing the units deployed to his position, when they heard a “massive explosion”.

“I panned the camera round just in time to see the top of the South Tower peeling away like a massive umbrella opening up and debris began descending on us,” he said.

“We started running but I kept the camera rolling. I couldn’t see anything, but I could just hear this tremendous sound of it hurtling towards us, then all I remember is the camera leaving my hand in slow motion.”

Paul was knocked to the ground and lay unconscious for 30 minutes.

Regaining consciousness, disorientated and partially blinded from the dust cloud that had enveloped lower Manhattan, he crawled out of the debris and navigated his way to safety.

After being reunited with his colleagues, who were rescued by officers, he made his way back towards the fallen towers and miraculously found his smashed video camera on the street - his tape capturing the now famous collapse of the South Tower had survived.

“When I came to everything was completely black. I’ve never seen darkness like it, I could hardly breathe - there was all this gunge and all this dust in my mouth, my eyes, my ears. I was having a real problem getting it out - it was just like liquid cement,” Paul explained.

“I looked around and saw this apocalyptic sight. To my right a 34-storey office building was on fire, from ground floor to top, all the fire trucks and emergency vehicles were on fire - and just in front of that I could see bits of the building embedded in the road.”

When news of the first plane hitting the North Tower broke, Paul spoke to his wife and she told him she was leaving their apartment, situated just two blocks from the World Trade Center, along with their cat Muffin.

They were reunited hours later when Paul was taken to a triage centre on Staten Island where he was decontaminated and treated for a head injury. Without identification or a phone and all routes back to Manhattan closed, they were stranded until a nurse offered them a bed for the night.

Now 25 years on, Paul revealed that he has been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, as a result of the toxic dust he inhaled that day, and has been given a few years to live.

“Those of us who got away with it we thought we had done well to survive,” he said. “Then they discovered that those of us who ingested the toxic dust cloud have all developed fatal injuries and one by one we’re dying off.

“The world has never forgot it and it’s still the most dramatic and visual terrorist incident to date. Having had such a near death experience it’s taught me to live life to the full, to get up and enjoy each day because you don’t know what’s next.”

Paul captured one of the closest angles of the South Tower's collapse and his footage was later played on news broadcasts and documentaries, including the ITV documentary ‘9/11: The Firefighters’ Story’, and National Geographic's ‘9/11: One Day in America’.

He returned to Ground Zero in the weeks after the attacks to capture the work of emergency service personnel to clear the rubble.

The 80-year-old has faced several “near death experiences” in his life - a helicopter crash in the Cairngorms, a volcano eruption in Nicaragua, and a sinking ship in the North Sea - and credits these experiences for helping him deal with what he saw that day.