9/11: British survivor describes moment 'tsunami wave of debris' knocked him unconscious

​The Yorkshire filmmaker found himself at the foot of the doomed Twin Towers the moment they came crashing to the ground

Paul Berriff standing at Ground Zero less than a week after surviving the fall of the World Trade Centre (Paul Berriff)

A British 9/11 survivor has spoken of the moment a "roar of crashing cement" plummeted towards him as he stood at the foot of the World Trade Centre 15 years ago.

Paul Berriff, a filmmaker from Yorkshire, fled the tsunami of debris as the South Tower collapsed, capturing the moment on camera before being knocked to the ground unconscious.

Mr Berriff, now 70, had been living in New York with his wife for five months to shoot a TV series in the city, and was enjoying the job and all that Manhattan had to offer.

But little did he know the city would be rocked by one of the world's most devastating terrorist atrocities, and that he would be caught in the middle of it.

Fifteen years on, Mr Berriff tells The Independent what happened on that fateful September morning.

“I got out of bed at around 6:15 ad had breakfast as usual,” recalls Mr Berriff. “At around 8am I walked out to the car with two members of the crew. Already the streets were busy with workers on their way to the World Trade Center and the other skyscraper blocks around us.

“It was a lovely warm morning with a blue sky that could match any seen in the tropics. We talked about what a great day for all of us to be viewing the city from the World Trade Centre, which we had originally planned to do that morning. Little did we know the change in the itinerary would save our lives.”

The crew arrived at the office at 8:15. Around half an hour later, someone said a plane had hit one of the twin towers at the World Trade Center.

Unaware of the gravity of the situation, Mr Berriff's journalistic instinct kicked in. "I couldn’t bear to be missing out on something interesting," he says. "I decided that we should drive down to Lower Manhattan and find out what was going on.”

It was 9am when Mr Berriff got into the car with his sound assistant, Lou Lou, and drove towards the World Trade Centre. "We could now see black objects falling from the blazing buildings," he says. "They were people. We fell silent in the Jeep.”

As they neared the World Trade Centre hoards of people were swarming towards them, many distressed and crying. Mr Berriff was unable to drive through the crowds. He decided to abandon the Jeep and continue with Lou Lou towards the towers on foot.

"That’s when both the blazing towers came into full view," he recalls. "We stopped in a deserted West Street almost directly below the South Tower - deserted except for scores of firefighters, medic staff and arriving ambulances.

"A silence had descended around the place punctuated only by sirens and the occasional thud as the jumpers hit the ground. You could hear the roar of the fire as it consumed floor after floor just above us. In front of me - in the middle of the street - was something that looked like a bloody rag - it was the remains of what had once been a passenger in one of the doomed aircraft.”

Still following his journalistic instinct, Mr Berriff began filming the teams of firefighters as they came from all directions to take instructions from a fire chief with a white helmet and a clipboard, before setting off into the lobbies of both towers.

Then all of a sudden, without warning, it happened.

“I swung my camera off the fire crews and pointed it to where I had heard the explosion," recalls Mr Berriff. "I was now looking through the viewfinder towards the top of the South Tower. I leant backwards as far as I could go to look up the 1,300 foot high building in front of us.

"The floors were starting to collapse. Debris started to peel away and fan out like an umbrella. In its slipstream great clouds of dust spurted out like a severed artery.

“Because the towers were so high it was taking time for the debris to make its way to the ground giving me a false perspective. But then the realisation hit me - this stuff was coming our way fast, very fast. I swung round with the camera still turning and screamed at Lou Lou to run.

"I started to leg it down the street. The roar of crashing cement and girders above and behind me got louder and louder… it was gaining on us.

“The tsunami wave of debris finally caught us. The camera left my hand in slow motion as I was pushed to the ground with a great force as though a giant fly swat had hit me.

“Everything went jet black. In the blackness I could see strobe lights and firemen moving in slow-motion.”

The next thing Mr Berriff remembers is crawling through a thick smog of cement and burning debris. He thought it had all happened in an instant, but he had been lying face down unconscious for around 25 minutes during which the second tower had come down around him.

"My mouth, eyes, nose and ears were full of gunge," he says. "It was like a cement paste. I was flailing my arms around trying to find something to give me a sense of what was going on and where I was. Suddenly I felt something. It was a firefighter. I yelled out asking if I could use his air bottle but there was no reply. I think he was dead."

Mr Berriff continued crawling down the street, unable to hear and only able to see a few feet in front of him. He noticed sheets of paper were falling around him, still floating downwards after the skyscraper offices where they had belonged had been obliterated to the ground. His vision started to clear and he stood up, realising he must go back to find his colleague Lou Lou.

It was then, as he was wading back through the field of wreckage, that Mr Berriff recovered his camera. The footage from it (below) shows the moment the South tower began its sudden collapse.

"How I found it in this hell that had once been the World Trade Center I still don’t know to this day," he says.

With no sign of Lou Lou, Mr Berriff, his vision now clearer, observed the devastation around him.

"To my right a thirty story building was completely on fire from the ground to the top floors," he remembers. "I could see the skeletal frame of a section of the building embedded in the road. There was no one else around. It was completely silent apart from the noise of burning emergency vehicles.

"I must have been the first person alive to be standing so close and so soon after the collapses. It was a pure unadulterated hell hole and I was shaking and feeling cold."

Mr Berriff soon found Ocean apartments, where he and his wife had been living, and discovered that Lou Lou was there. She had been pulled out of the rubble by an officer soon after the collapse.

"Lou Lou gave me a bottle of water. My mouth had bits of debris in it. The drink was like heaven. I must have been very dehydrated," he says. "It was then she told me both towers had completely collapsed. I was still in a daze and couldn’t quite comprehend what she had just said."

Mr Berriff discovered he had a head wound and was stretchered into an ambulance. The only way to the hospital was by ferry.

"I was strapped down on the stretcher and staring up at the sky which - by now - had lost its magnificent blue and been replaced by a dirty brown smog still drifting away from the downed towers," Mr Berriff remembers.

"There was also a strong stench of burning plastic in the air. Every major disaster has a distinctive smell. And it’s these smells which always takes those involved back to that moment."

Mr Berriff was relieved to be reunited with his wife at the hospital. Soon after being treated a police officer came in and took a statement and took away his wallet containing his US driving licence, credit and bank cards and his ID, as well as his mobile phone.

"Apparently, the FBI were confiscating all documentation and IDs from anyone brought into the hospital, believing at this stage of the incident, that there may be terrorists amongst the injured," explains Mr Berriff.

"My wife turned to me and asked what are we going to do now especially with no ID, money or communications. I said: 'But we are alive'”.