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A 9/11 survivor has revealed the haunting sound she heard after escaping the World Trade Center, a noise she only later realized had a devastating explanation.
Janice Brooks was working on the 84th floor of the South Tower on September 11, 2001, when the second hijacked plane crashed into the building.
Now in her 60s, Janice has spoken exclusively to VT about the horrifying events she experienced that morning and the memories that have stayed with her for a quarter of a century.
Originally from East London, Janice had moved across the Atlantic in August 2001, just weeks before the attacks that would claim the lives of 2,977 people.
At the time, she was 41 and working for financial firm Euro Brokers inside the South Tower, or World Trade Center 2 as she knew it.
Janice initially attempted to leave the building after American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.
However, she said security personnel instructed workers in the South Tower to return to their offices, explaining that the promenade between the two buildings needed to remain clear for people escaping the North Tower. However, that sense of safety lasted only around 15 minutes.
United Airlines Flight 175 then struck the South Tower, hitting the building where Janice and her colleagues were working.
The impact left her and several of her injured co-workers scrambling to find a way out.
Eventually, Janice and her colleagues escaped through a fire exit and made their way away from the building.
“There was a moment where I thought I was going to die,” Janice admitted.
The South Tower collapsed just 56 minutes after being struck, despite being the second of the two buildings to be attacked.
As such, enormous amounts of debris were strewn across Lower Manhattan, as Janice was inside her apartment, watching the streets disappear beneath smoke and dust.
“After escaping the World Trade Center 2, I managed to get home. But it was the moments after the buildings collapsed that I thought about death.
"I was in my apartment, with debris and black smoke filling the streets and covering my window. I just sat on the sofa and tucked my legs up like a little girl and cried. I thought that could be it.”
Yet one particular memory from immediately after she escaped the tower has remained especially disturbing, and it was a sound she heard repeatedly outside.
Janice recalled hearing a peculiar noise after leaving the World Trade Center.
While at the time she had no idea what was causing it, it was later revealed to her what it was.
“The most harrowing thing was after leaving the building, we kept hearing this thwacking, and I didn’t know what it was.
“It transpires that it was people throwing themselves off the top floors to escape the fires and the smoke, and that thwacking was the sound of people hitting the ground.”
Janice stressed that she did not personally see anyone jump, but learning what she had been hearing made the memory even more difficult to process.
“While I didn’t see anyone jump, knowing that was what was responsible for that distinctive sound is haunting, most definitely.”
For Janice, and her recollections of September 11, the sound remains one of the most harrowing reminders of the human cost of the terrorist attack.
