Editor’s note, September 10, 2026: Days after the Twin Towers collapsed, on September 11, 2001, the official estimate was “New York has lost more than 5,000 people.” In time, it became apparent that this figure was mercifully lower, but still appalling. According to the city’s official 9/11 Health Site, “Nearly 2,800 people died, including 343 firefighters, 23 police officers, 37 Port Authority police officers, and more than 2,200 civilians.” (Mayor Mamdani has just released records revealing that officials lied to New Yorkers about the safety of air quality around Ground Zero after 9/11, saying, “Now, close to 25 years later, more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than were killed on the day itself.”)
In the days following the attack, the Voice sent reporters out to document the human stories behind the faces printed on the “missing” flyers that became ubiquitous around the city: Xeroxes and print-outs of photos, some sharply focused, others blurry or pixelated, all poignant and finally tragic — hardly any of them ever came home. As the editor noted on the first page of our five-page roll call of the missing — and deeply missed — “What follows are the stories of people listed as missing or killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, with whatever information was available. Debris and sorrow cloak the details. We have included what we could.”
These short descriptions tell us that the victims were a mix of parents, spouses, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, Good Samaritans, immigrants, public servants, hard workers, dreamers, and strivers.
New Yorkers, in other words. —RCB
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
By the Village Voice (bylines on the last page).
Originally published in the September 25, 2001, issue,
which was printed on September 18; delivery of that issue, like the one before it, was substantially delayed by the devastation, continuing billows of toxic smoke and dust, and ongoing recovery work downtown.
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