New York City and the nation will pause today to remember the victims and heroes of September 11th.
It was 18 years ago on Wednesday that two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, a third slammed into the Pentagon and a fourth was brought down by passengers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania to prevent a crash elsewhere.
“I think for so many of us it’s just deep, deep in us and something that moments will trigger. Sometimes I see a plane fly overhead and just takes me back there immediately or sometimes I think of the people we lost in our lives,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
An annual ceremony is being held in Lower Manhattan at the 9/11 Memorial. It will feature the moments of silence and the reading of the names.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed on September 11th and hundreds more have died in the years since because of the toxic debris in the air. The NYPD has lost ten times as many members after the attacks than it did that day.
President Trump will attend a commemoration ceremony at the Pentagon, while former President George W. Bush will lay a wreath at the Pentagon 9/11 memorial.
In the years since, Mayor de Blasio said the city and country have done a better job keeping everyone safe.
“We’re much better protected because of our own efforts as city. I want to believe that the federal government has changed too. I think in some ways it has, I think the different agencies work better together than they used to,” de Blasio said.