Let’s talk about the miracles of September 11, 2001.
They were numerous.
But first, if you want to revisit a news report that day:
Latest casualties?
Cancer from the toxic chemicals in all that smoke and dust.
Prayer need, for it seems the disaster has not ended.
“The number of 9/11 cancer victims has skyrocketed 1,680% over the past decade — fueled by rare variations of the disease, according to new statistics released as the grim 25th anniversary of the attacks nears,”reports the New York Post. “Cancer certifications among Twin Tower survivors, downtown Manhattan residents and workers on and near The Pile have exploded from 3,204 in 2015 to 57,044 this year, reveal figures compiled by the World Trade Center Health Program.”
Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, an estimated 9,425 are now dying from post-9/11-related illnesses, more than triple the 2,977 lives lost Sept. 11, 2001.
“Sadly, we lose roughly two clients a day and see a new cancer certification every 50 minutes,” said lawyer Michael Barasch, whose firm represents thousands of people enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program.
It is considered the most historic event in the lifetimes of most Americans—for good reason. Compare it to the roughly 1,500 who died in the Titanic.
Miracles?
Port Authority officer Will Jimeno was buried under roughly 30 feet of wreckage after the South Tower collapsed. Badly injured, burned, desperately thirsty, and believing he was dying, Jimeno prayed and thanked God for his life.
He later said he then saw a figure in a glowing white robe whom he immediately understood to be Jesus, approaching amid a scene of water, trees, and waving grass.
One of the most extraordinary escapes of all: that would be Stanley Praimnath.
He worked on the 81st floor of the South Tower, within the impact zone. After initially evacuating because the North Tower had been hit, he was told it was safe and returned upstairs.
He then looked out his window and saw United Flight 175 coming almost directly toward him.
Praimnath dropped beneath his desk crying out to God.
The aircraft ripped through his floor, destroying virtually everything around him, yet the section containing his desk survived.
And how about Pasquale Buzzelli—the man who apparently “surfed” the collapse.
Buzzelli, a Port Authority structural engineer, was descending the North Tower and had reached approximately the 22nd floor when the building began collapsing.
He curled into a fetal position and prayed for his family.
The stairwell gave way beneath him. Instead of being crushed, he apparently rode or fell with the descending mass of debris and eventually landed atop a pile of wreckage many stories below.
He awakened hours later.
Depending on the reconstruction, his fall may have amounted to roughly 15–18 floors or around 200 feet, with injuries that were astonishingly modest.
His pregnant wife had spent the day clutching a Crucifix and praying for his return.
During the recovery operation, workers discovered two massive steel girders joined almost perfectly in the shape of a Cross, standing amid the devastation and now preserved at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
There was the story, which we broke, of a Catholic named Tom Burnett who led the charge into the cockpit of that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. He and his wife Deene both had premonitions that he would die young, so much so that they tried to double their life insurance policies.
He felt he was on some sort of a “mission” that would involve the White House.
The plane they stopped from diverting to D.C. is thought to have been aimed at the Capitol.
Close enough.
The “Falling Man”?
In the photograph this victim looked almost serene, suspended perfectly upside down in mid-air, for a moment defying the inevitable.
He is believed to have been Jonathan Briley, 43, a sound engineer at Windows on the World.
He does not project fear, nor panic, nor anger at a life cut short in its prime.
Briley was deeply religious and, six months before his death, had been ordained a deacon, serving as an armor bearer for his father, a Baptist pastor.
There have been countless cases of people who had premonitions of the disaster or afterward reporting “messages” from deceased loved ones who perished that dreadful day—the far-beyond-coincidental finding of certain articles and objects (such as coins). Or dreams.
Most haunting?
As reported by a newspaper, “After hearing a report about the trumpeter on WNYC radio, [A photographer who goes by the name of Miklos] went to Ground Zero to photograph him. In the eerie quiet of lower Manhattan, he could hear a trumpet as he approached a police barricade. About 150 yards away, Miklos says, the trumpeter stood ‘in this abandoned urban canyon, illuminated by shafts of light caused by the smoke and dust.’”
The article went on to say that Miklos raised his telephoto lens, feeling he had “an incredible image” — the photograph of a lifetime — but he couldn’t depress the shutter and so never got the shot.