The day the world trembled: 9/11 remembered

First York planned to introduce a new network of high-frequency bus routes across the city, we reported. It was to be dubbed 'The Metro' - and there would even be a simple, London Underground-style map to make using it easier.

Yet even as Press readers were shaking out the pages of their newspaper and settling down to read, an event was unfolding across the Atlantic that was to shake the world to its foundations.

Lawrence Rainey, an American-born professor of English Literature at the University of York, rang his mother Emma in Chicago at 2pm to discuss her planned visit to the UK. It was 8am in Chicago - and 9am in New York.

He found his mother in a state of shock. "She said 'you won't believe what's happened'," he told The Press. "She said 'I'm watching it on the TV. A plane has just flown into the World Trade Center."

The images his mother was watching on live TV quickly became horribly familiar to us all.

An appalled silence fell across the newsroom at the Evening Press as they unfolded on a giant TV screen hanging in one corner of the room.

The first plane - an American Airlines Boeing 767 - crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8.45am New York time that morning. The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor - instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors.

As the evacuation of the tower got underway, television cameras broadcast live images of what many at first assumed to be an accident. Then, 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767 sliced into the south tower near the 60th floor.

A screengrab of the shocking TV footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Picture: PA

It quickly became clear that this was no accident, but a terrorist attack - one perpetrated by a group, Al-Qaeda, led by a shadowy figure named Osama bin Laden.

There were other attacks that day, too - a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington DC, and a fourth was hijacked and crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In all, almost 3,000 people died in the attacks.

The initial, horrifying images of the World Trace Center in flames were quickly replaced by others - firefighters streaming into the burning building after the first tower was hit to try to save those inside; the towers themselves collapsing in a swirling cloud of smoke and rubble; dust-choked survivors and rescuers running through the streets of New York or searching through the rubble to try to find someone, anyone, who may have survived.

Firefighters make their way through the destruction at the World Trade Center. Picture: AP Photo/Alex Fuchs

Speaking in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, York MP Hugh Bayley articulated the shock that we all felt.

Comparisons with Pearl Harbor were not misplaced, he said. "I think it is that serious. If there was a nation state claiming responsibility for this, the United States would be at war."

But Mr Bayley warned that we must not allow what had happened to lead to increased international tension, or to undermine democracy and personal freedom.

"There is a risk that to protect ourselves against terrorism we will undermine the freedoms that we enjoy," he said. "Then it becomes these freedoms themselves that are under attack by the terrorists."

To allow ourselves to become a society crippled by fear, in which our every move was monitored by security services and subjected to rigorous checks, would be to allow the terrorists to win, he said - it would mean we had 'lost the battle for freedom and democracy'.

During a service of remembrance at York Minster a few days later, the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, said much the same, though he worded it differently. "Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good," he urged.

Dr David Hope: "Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good"

There was more anger and sadness than fear on the letters page of The Press in over the next couple of days.

"The morality of a common humanity condemns last week's events," wrote John Bibby, of Heworth. "So I was surprised, but proud, as an atheist ... to find myself in York Minster with thousands of others, expressing grief and solidarity with the USA. As citizens of Old York or New York, we should all be proud to say "Ich bin ein New Yorker'."

N Fletcher, of Langton Road, Norton, added: "I am gutted for the American people and the perpetrators of this monstrous atrocity should be hunted down and brought to justice. But it is a time for cool heads. Whoever did this should not be allowed to get away with it. But Mr Bush and Mr Blair have got to be very careful.

"If the US use Pakistan as a base for military action, the Afghans could turn on their neighbours. This could be a vicious circle of conflict and prolonged hate."

How prophetic those words seem now. Osama bin Laden, it emerged, was hiding in Afghanistan. US President George W Bush demanded that the Taliban hand him over and expel Al-Qaeda. The Taliban refused.

On October 7, 2001 - less than a month after the attacks on the World Trace Center - the US, with the support of the UK, invaded Afghanistan in what it called 'Operation Enduring Freedom'.

The aim was to drive the Taliban from power. By December 17, that initial aim had succeeded. Yet the Taliban were not gone, simply driven underground. For almost 20 years US, UK and allied troops kept an uneasy peace in the country - until pulling out suddenly last month. We all know what has happened since.

Ten years on from the attack on the Twin Towers, The Press carried a leader article.

"This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the worst terrorist atrocities the world has ever seen," the newspaper said. "The phrase '9/11' entered the vocabulary that day along with 'Ground Zero', words that have since acted as a memorial to the 2,996 people who died in the attack which spawned the so-called 'War on Terror'.

"The alleged architect, Osama bin Laden, is dead, but that will be of little consolation to families whose lives will never be the same again. While the images we stared at incredulously on TV are ones we would like to forget, they cannot be erased from our minds."

We now have much more recent images in our minds, from the last few weeks, of desperate Afghan families trying to escape from the Taliban following the sudden withdrawal of US and UK troops from their country.

Yet that sentiment from The Press of ten years ago remains as true today as it was then. The two sets of images are inextricably linked.