Nearly 500 first-hand accounts from responders who lived through September 11, 2001, are now searchable online through the Library of Congress, timed to the attack's 25th anniversary. The collection includes 484 full-length video interviews conducted between April 2010 and September 2024, featuring responders, family members, advocates, and medical personnel describing what they witnessed, why they responded, what they endured, and how it reshaped their health, families, and lives.
The project traces back to Dr. Benjamin Luft, a physician at Stony Brook Medicine and director of the Stony Brook WTC Wellness Program, who began the interview project as he treated 9/11 responders in the years after the attacks, according to The BayNet. Luft has said his patients were witnesses to history. The Stony Brook World Trade Center Health and Wellness Program, based in Stony Brook, offers comprehensive integrative healthcare for 9/11-related conditions and monitors more than 16,000 responders for physical and mental health conditions.
Luft's initial donation to the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center, which houses the collection, came in December 2015 with 200 interviews, laying the groundwork for what would grow into the 484-video archive nearly a decade later, per Stony Brook University. The Library of Congress, the world's largest library and home of the U.S. Copyright Office, also serves as the main research arm of the U.S. Congress. The American Folklife Center separately houses the September 11, 2001, Documentary Project, which includes sound and video recordings, photographs, drawings, news clippings, written narratives, emails, and artifacts.
Stories of Survival, Loss, and Lifelong Struggle
Among the featured voices is Carol Paukner, an NYPD transit officer who survived the collapse of the South Tower while helping evacuate people from the World Trade Center. She suffered injuries that eventually forced her retirement but received the NYPD Medal of Valor. Paukner refused to leave Ground Zero despite her injuries, telling colleagues, “We're not leaving; that's our job,” a line that later gave Police Magazine the title for Dr. Luft's companion book about the interview project.
Tyree Bacon, a senior court officer and EMT, was trapped below street level when the building collapsed, and three of his colleagues died after entering the complex with him. Bacon rescued a severely burned woman from the South Tower, dragging her through rubble until they were both rescued. Ronald King, a construction supervisor and immigrant from Guyana, volunteered at Ground Zero, worked in the bucket brigade for months, and secured donated equipment for the recovery effort.
Robert Weisberg, a volunteer firefighter, worked at Ground Zero for nine months and struggled with PTSD for years afterward. He later hiked more than 1,850 miles of the Appalachian Trail and has since worked to raise awareness of mental-health challenges among first responders and veterans. Kayla Coughlin, the daughter of an NYPD officer, was six years old when her father was killed on 9/11; she found healing among other children of victims and went on to pursue a career in storytelling and documentary production.
A Searchable Archive Rooted in Therapy Sessions
The interviews were originally recorded at Stony Brook Medicine's WTC Wellness Program clinic starting in 2009, before formally becoming part of a federal archive, according to background compiled by EMS1. The online archive can be searched by responder names, hometowns, and occupations, and the collection has a full inventory available in its finding aid. Beyond the full interviews, the site features 42 additional compilations drawn from the full-length videos, alongside five thematic compilations that explore the day America was attacked, rescue, recovery and cleanup, the development of diseases and loss, resiliency, and family member perspectives. Corresponding transcripts accompany the video interviews.
Nicole Saylor, director of the American Folklife Center, said the interviews should help educate people about the lives of 9/11 responders. Out of the 484 interviewees, 45 responders participated in follow-up interviews years later, allowing researchers to study how their health, psychological state, and family dynamics evolved over time, according to the Library of Congress. While the Library of Congress provides public access for research and educational purposes, the underlying copyright remains held by Dr. Luft, meaning the public cannot create derivative works from the footage without express permission.
Echoes of a Wartime Archiving Tradition
The American Folklife Center's approach to documenting a national tragedy through ordinary voices follows a precedent set decades earlier. On December 8, 1941, folklorist Alan Lomax, then head of the Archive of American Folk Song, dispatched field collectors across the country to record public reactions to the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to the Library of Congress. The 9/11 collection continues that institutional practice of preserving first-person testimony during moments of national crisis.
The oral histories also formed the basis of earlier public works: the 2011 documentary film 9/11: An American Requiem and the companion book We're Not Leaving, both produced for the attacks' 10th anniversary to raise awareness of responder sacrifices, according to the Staller Center for the Arts. The documentary premiered at the Stony Brook Film Festival in 2011 and was selected for an encore anniversary screening this September.
An Ongoing Health Crisis Behind the Archive
The interviews arrive as the health toll among 9/11 responders continues to climb. As of June 2026, the federal World Trade Center Health Program serves 145,275 enrolled members, including 88,583 responders and 56,692 survivors, with cancer certifications among enrolled survivors rising more than 4,000% since 2015, according to figures reported via EIN Presswire. Cancer certifications in the survivor population alone rose from 694 in September 2015 to 28,913 in June 2026. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Trade Center Health Program publishes quarterly statistics showing enrollment numbers and members with certified conditions. According to a study indexed by the National Institutes of Health, a total of 24,148 survivors, or 64.6%, were certified for at least one WTC-related condition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that PTSD and lower respiratory distress are particularly impacted among WTC responders. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Trade Center Health Registry is the largest post-disaster exposure registry in U.S. history.
More than 70% of the FDNY's nearly 16,000 WTC Health Program members have been certified for at least one 9/11-related physical or mental health condition, and illness-related deaths among line-of-duty firefighters now far exceed the 343 lost on September 11, 2001, per the FDNY WTC Health Program. Federal law under the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act of 2015 and the Never Forget the Heroes Act of 2019 guarantees medical monitoring, treatment, and financial compensation for eligible responders through October 1, 2090. Congress moved to shore up that system further in February, passing the funding fix securing health care for the program after projected budget shortfalls had threatened clinical operations.
Taken together, the archive and the ongoing health statistics point to the same reality: for the responders whose voices now fill the Library of Congress's collection, September 11 did not end in 2001. It continues in clinics, in follow-up interviews, and in the rising certification numbers tracked each year by the very health program their sacrifices helped create.
