A previously unseen 9/11 video capturing the attacks has emerged on YouTube more than two decades after the tragedy.
In the years that followed the attack on September 11, 2001, thousands of photographs and videos came to light - footage that documented the terror of a morning when almost 3,000 people lost their lives. For twenty years, the public had become familiar with what was believed to be a complete archive of photographs and film from that fateful day.
Yet a new clip, lasting nearly nine minutes, was posted to YouTube by Kevin Westley decades later, marking the first fresh footage displaying the attack from a previously unrecorded perspective. It shows a never-before-witnessed angle of the second plane hitting the World Trade Centre's South Tower, seventeen minutes after the North Tower was hit by American Airlines flight 11.
Footage filmed from a boat
Filmed from a boat, the camera angles upwards towards the twin towers from amongst a gathering of shell-shocked onlookers. Initially, the footage focuses on the inferno engulfing the North Tower, zooming in on documents drifting through the heat currents generated by the flames.
Two minutes into the recording, the camera pivots just in time to catch the second plane approaching across the water before crashing into the South Tower. Cries of horror can be heard from the assembled crowd in the background, reports the Express US.
In a post alongside his previously unseen 9/11 footage, uploader Kevin Westley wrote: "I posted this video in the 2000s but accidentally left it private until now. I noticed the video was private and made it public."
Uploader's account of the attack
In his extensive post, Kevin looked back on witnessing the catastrophic assault on 9/11 and spoke touchingly about his subsequent deployment during the 2003 Iraq War as an aircraft commander flying combat operations.
"In an instant I saw 2,763 die, 25,000 injured," he wrote, remembering the terror of the New York strikes. "As I was caught in the dust cloud of the collapse, I remember seeing a picture of a child (and am now wondering) if I now was looking at an orphan."
Reflecting on his military service during the Iraq war, which was launched by the US in response to the 9/11 attacks, Kevin said: "When I flew the rotator into Iraq, the guy that sat next to me died in a mortar attack the next day. That was my welcome to Iraq."
He added: "Some days my sleep was interrupted by incoming mortar fire, with one-time gravel spraying against my tent woke me up."
As one of the officers, I would often draw funerary detail. As they wheeled the coffins into or out of the aircraft, I would wonder did they have a wife? Kids? Have their parents been notified yet?"
After processing his feelings through notes from a service he led, Kevin arrives at a heartbreaking realisation: "In war a piece of our soul is lost on the battlefield and it can never be replaced in this life."
Firefighter's survival story
Amongst the hundreds of memorable images that emerged in the wake of the tragedy, numerous captured deeply personal stories and moved hearts across the globe in the decades that followed. One especially striking photograph depicted firefighter Mike Kehoe climbing the North Tower of the World Trade Centre while workers fled, embodying the bravery shown by all emergency responders on that terrible day.
More than two decades have nearly passed since his photograph appeared on the Mirror's front page. Many were shocked to learn that Mike somehow survived.
Yet 343 of his colleague firefighters lost their lives in the terrorist attacks. Several mates have also since died from cancer contracted while labouring amongst the wreckage of both towers.
When questioned in 2021 about why he stayed devoted to firefighting after all he'd experienced, he replied simply: "I just love it."
Mike said: "I've never been back to Ground Zero since my time there in the weeks after 9/11."
Mike recalls that as he ascended the stairwell, people offered encouragement. He explained: "Our job was to get up to the floor where the plane hit to reach people there. That's what we were determined to do. As we were going up people kept saying, 'good luck', 'lots of luck'. But I must admit that even at that stage, I was frightened. Then over the radio [my boss] Roy said everybody evacuate the building now.
"We all turned around immediately. It was frightening. We managed to get into the lobby, it was like Beirut, there was rubble everywhere."
Incredibly all six members of Mike's Engine 28 company - Roy Chelsen, Brian Becker, Frank Compagna, Bob Salvador, Jim Ippollito and Mike - managed to escape unscathed.
