Haunting video of live Sept. 11 morning news goes from mundane to tragic in an instant

A haunting live NY1 broadcast from the morning of Sept.11, 2001 shows the world suddenly change in real time — as the news segment shifts from mundane to terrifyingly tragic.Morning news anchor Patrick Kiernan is first seen covering ho-hum stories about the weather, local primary elections and school dress codes — before the station abruptly airs footage of smoke billowing from the World Trade Center’s north tower.“This is a live picture from our camera on the Empire State building looking toward the World Trade Center,” Kiernan says in the report, which went viral Thursday on X ahead of the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack.“You can see the plume of smoke from the top of one of the World Trade Center Towers,” he says calmly, adding it appears to be a large fire.

“I don’t have a lot more detail on this other than that at the moment.”The heartbreaking footage then captures reporters piecing together live and in real time that planes had been highjacked in a likely terrorist attack — one that would turn out to be the deadliest in American history.When Kiernan takes a call from a witness, George Shay, he frantically describes hearing explosions and seeing a massive tire “smash down on the street in front of me” as he drove into the city via the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.“I heard an enormous explosion then I heard another enormous explosion and it scared me,” Shay says, adding debris filled the air.“I looked out the window and what appeared to be an enormous tire smashed down on the street in front of me.” “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.The NY1 anchor man then cuts him off to report a plane had crashed into the tower. “I’m just getting word from our assignment desk that we have information that a plane has crashed into the side of the World Trade Center,” Kiernan says in the footage.The segment then grows more tense as a second plane crashes into the south tower — and horrifying footage show...