Rare 9/11 Footage Nearly Lost Forever, Found 23 Years Later

On September 11, 2001, 24-year-old Japanese man Kei Sugimoto filmed the attack on the World Trade Center from a rooftop about 3 kilometers away. Twenty-three years later in 2024, he rediscovered the deteriorating tapes and published the footage, preserving a visual record that came close to disappearing forever.

Sugimoto filmed from the rooftop of 64 St. Marks Place in the East Village, roughly 3 kilometers (under 2 miles) north of the Twin Towers. The video was captured using a high-end consumer Sony VX2000 mini-DV camcorder fitted with a teleconverter lens, resulting in a remarkably clear and zoomed-in view for 2001 amateur standards.

Historians and archiving enthusiasts noted that this is the only known footage capturing the collapse of the towers exclusively from the north perspective. Most other widely available angles were captured from the south, east, or across the Hudson River.

Sugimoto originally assumed the incident was a standard building fire, but realized it was a terrorist attack after witnessing the second plane strike. Though he saw the second impact, he did not catch it on camera; he ran to grab his gear immediately afterward to document the unfolding event.

The resulting video lasts about 6 minutes and 16 seconds, providing a crisp, continuous look at the massive smoke plumes billowing from the structures before recording the step-by-step collapse of both towers.

Sugimoto initially tried to hand his tape over to the police on the day of the attacks, but they declined to take it. He subsequently stored it away and forgot about it. More than two decades later, while cleaning out his home, he rediscovered the old physical tapes. Recognizing that magnetic tape degrades and corrupts over time, he decided to digitize the files for historical archival purposes and uploaded them to his personal YouTube channel. The footage quickly amassed millions of views, sparking global conversations about how much undiscovered historical material may still reside in people's attics and closets.