‘Everyone Deserved to Know What Was Being Done, To See as Much as Possible Unfiltered’: FEMA Photographers Share Stories of Their Work at Ground Zero

As part of CNN’s coverage of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, they aired a segment focusing on several of the photographers and videographers employed by FEMA, who were deployed to Ground Zero to document the extensive search, rescue, and recovery efforts that occurred after the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

“Let’s take a remarkable look at images recorded by two firsthand witnesses to Ground Zero that reveal, sometimes for the first time, the light of kindness and compassion that shined even on our darkest day twenty years ago,” said Jake Tapper to introduce the video.

“9/11 shook the nation in a way not just physically but emotionally throughout the country,” said FEMA videographer Jim Chestnutt. “Everyone deserved to know what was being done, to see as much as possible unfiltered, and that’s what our job was.”

Photographer Michael Rieger said that he had “concentrated on the human aspect and the people” as he took his pictures.

Rieger described the scene as “surreal” and emotional, and told how they had been given red card passes to allow them access to the site, “but really what allowed us to go everywhere and get the photographs we got was the relationships we’d built with the urban search and rescue team members.”

“They all understood there’s reasons to capture these images,” he said, but there was a clear understanding with the search and rescue workers that “anyone could wave me off at any time.”

Their work was “driven by humanity,” said Chesnutt, his voice breaking slightly as he talked about the human impact. “There [were] people who don’t know if their parent is in there, if they’re trapped, if they’re alive or not. I remember one story where a young girl gave me a picture and asked me to find her dad. And you know, that’s really, really hard.”

Working at Ground Zero, it “became quickly evident was how everyone took care of each other,” said Rieger.

“There was no politics,” Chesnutt agreed. “There was no red and blue. It was the community united. It was the families united.

“The whole group of people discovered their patriotism like they never had before,” Rieger concluded. And we came together as a nation. To this day I think back and, you know, we did it then, we can do it again.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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