Former RNZ reporter remembers witnessing 9/11 - a podcast by RNZ

Twenty years ago, New Zealanders woke up to news of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
Nineteen militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda had  hijacked four airplanes and killed almost 3,000 people.
Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington DC, and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Former Health correspondent Rae Lamb was by coincidence in New York on the day working for RNZ.
She told Corin Dann she had been in a meeting when news of the attack on the twin towers broke and walked through Manhattan with a colleague to get to ground zero.
"Everything was upside down, everything was different, those busy streets that you'd normally see in New York had come to a standstill."
"There were cars parked haphazardly, everyone was desperate for information, they had car radios on, people were sitting on church steps lighting candles.
"There was this increasing tide of people very disheveled, looking dirtier and dusty, and some of them bloodied walking uptown as we got further down there. It was just like something that you just couldn't comprehend."
When she arrived, she joined a group of rescuers and locals taking turns to use a singular payphone to get news out.
"We would just queue up and every time I got to the front of the queue, I would ring Radio New Zealand."
When she got through to RNZ she was put to air on Morning Report.
Lamb says she has gone back to New York three times but has never been able to get back to Ground Zero.
"My daughter who's now grown up, who was 10 at the time, has been down to the memorial and she's told me that it's really good, it's been done very sensitively," she said.
"I'm glad about that but I don't feel I could ever go back down there."

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