Maire Aunaste recalls ferry vanishing into ash cloud on September 11

Estonian journalist Maire Aunaste told ERR’s Ringvaade that she was travelling on a ferry in New York on September 11, 2001, when it became engulfed in darkness and an ash cloud. She said the tragedy brought daily funerals, halted life and made her realise that the world had changed forever.

September 11 marks 25 years since terrorists hijacked planes in the United States and flew them into several large buildings. A memorial to those killed was opened at the former location of the towers 10 years after the attacks.

Aunaste said she had been working in New York for a year and a half, caring for two elderly people. Her shift ended at 8:30 each morning. She would leave the building at the corner of 79th Street and Third Avenue, buy coffee and a cottage-cheese pastry from a Pakistani coffee cart, take the subway and travel downtown to catch the ferry.

When she emerged from the subway, she saw people looking up at the sky. One of the towers was on fire, she said, but she did not see the second tower.

“I thought it was a fire,” Aunaste said. “If I had been 100 metres farther to the right, I might have seen the other tower, which was already burning too. Perhaps I would have developed an unhealthy curiosity and gone to see what was burning.”

Passengers were given life jackets on the ferry. Aunaste said nobody knew what was happening, but everyone was quiet and behaved strangely. Some men had blood splashes on their white shirts, while one woman turned prayer beads between her fingers.

She said the ferry was suddenly plunged into total darkness, as if someone had jumped into a fireplace and sent ash into the air. The passengers smelled burning. Moments later, the captain announced that everything was all right.

The ferry began moving with about 3,000 people on board. Everyone was completely silent, Aunaste said. When she reached the island and looked towards Manhattan, she could no longer see the city, only a great darkness. The ash remained there for several days.

Aunaste said she understood what had happened only after reaching home and turning on the television. It was 11:10, she recalled, and her then-husband also returned from work. “Our entire life stopped. We thought only one thing: the world has changed,” she said.

She said the experience would never leave her memory and compared it to the death of a close relative. What moved her most, she said, was that there were funerals every day, with Americans being buried to the sound of Irish music.

Later, when people were no longer being found under the rubble, a news programme showed a dog being recovered. Aunaste said it was a police dog that had entered a building with rescuers to save people. A thousand men stopped working as the dog was carried out, she said.

When Aunaste returned to New York in 2019, she visited the memorial to those killed. She described it as an exceptionally impressive place with striking architecture and said it showed that the spirit of life was ultimately greater than hostility.