Posted on: Sunday, August 13, 2006
TV specials revisit 9/11, five years later
By Aaron Barnhart
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
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"America Rebuilds II: Return to Ground Zero" follows the reconstruction at Ground Zero and shows New Yorkers struggling to reach consensus on how to memorialize the victims of the World Trade Center.
PBS
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'COUNTDOWN TO GROUND ZERO'
5 and 9 tonight 'The Miracle of Stairway B' 5 and 9 p.m. tomorrow History Channel
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MORE SEPT. 11 SPECIALS
" On Native Soil: The Documentary of the 9/11 Commission Report," Court TV, Aug. 21 "Nova," PBS, Sept. 5 "The Path to 9/11," ABC, Sept. 10-11 "Koppel on Discovery," Discovery, Sept. 10 "America Rebuilds II: Return to Ground Zero," PBS, Sept. 11 "Dust to Dust: The Health Effects of 9/11," Sundance, Sept. 11 Check TV listings for air times.
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As he lay under a heap of what remained of the World Trade Center's north tower on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Capt. Jay Jonas considered his options.
"At one point, I said, 'Well, we have all of our ropes with us. We can rappel down this elevator shaft, find a subcellar in the World Trade Center, find a path to the train station, and walk to Hoboken, N.J.,' " Jonas recalled.
The plan was instructive. It showed that the battle-hardened men of Ladder Company 6 remained clear-headed and focused only minutes after surviving the building's collapse.
And it showed they had no idea what had just happened: Namely, that except for themselves and a few others huddled in a corner of a stairwell, everyone and everything in the North Tower had been crushed to bits.
Their story is told in "The Miracle of Stairway B," airing tomorrow on the History Channel. It's part of a wave of television specials airing in the next month to mark the fifth anniversary of the attacks.
Other programs based on the events of that day:
"Countdown to Ground Zero," airing today on the History Channel, recounts the lead-up to the attacks and provides minute-by-minute detail of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, from a variety of perspectives.
"On Native Soil: The Documentary of the 9/11 Commission Report," airing Aug. 21 on Court TV, focuses on the events of the day and includes interviews with survivors' families and members of the government commission that investigated the attacks. Narrators are Kevin Costner and Hilary Swank.
A planned Sept. 5 broadcast of PBS' "Nova" will look at the lessons the people who build high-rises have learned from the collapse of the twin towers. It features Leslie Robertson, who engineered the World Trade Center, as he applies the lessons of Sept. 11 to his current project: building the world's tallest skyscraper in Shanghai.
"The Path to 9/11," airing Sept. 10 and 11 on ABC, is a four-hour docudrama that re-enacts key portions of The 9/11 Commission Report. The cast includes Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton and Donnie Wahlberg.
"Koppel on Discovery," Ted Koppel's first major effort since joining the Discovery Channel, will look at the balance between liberty and security in post-9/11 America and ask whether civil liberties are being infringed upon in the name of fighting terrorism. It will air Sept. 10 on Discovery, followed by a live "Nightline"-style town meeting moderated by Koppel.
"America Rebuilds II: Return to Ground Zero" airs Sept. 11 on PBS. Four years after "America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero," it shows New Yorkers still struggling to reach consensus on how to memorialize the victims of the World Trade Center while allowing new commercial ventures to go forward on the site.
"Dust to Dust: The Health Effects of 9/11," Sept. 11 on the Sundance Channel, documents cases of rescue workers who became seriously ill afterward and are suing for compensation. It examines whether the government was fully candid about the health risks of particles released by the collapse of the skyscrapers.
