NEED TO KNOW
- Sandra Sully was presenting Ten Late News on September 11, 2001.
- At 10.46pm, the news came through that a passenger aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
- Sandra remained on air for the next five hours straight, reporting on the terrorist attack as it unfolded.
- 25 years on she tells New Idea that she’s never forgotten the experience .
- Sandra says she fears that today, the world is in a “worse place” than it was on 9/11.
Getting behind the desk for her shift on Ten Late News, this news presenter was ready for an ordinary evening of reporting.
Instead, for Sandra Sully, 9/11 began unfolding at 10.46pm, six minutes into that broadcast. The ‘ordinary’ plan for the broadcast was instantly discarded.
“I was told by a producer that a plane had just ploughed into the World Trade Center,” Sandra tells New Idea exclusively on the 25th anniversary of the world-changing event.
“I think we might have been in the middle of a story … I just said, ‘have we got pictures?’ and they said ‘yes, coming.’”
The moment she saw the spine-chilling footage of the American Airlines passenger plane levelling out before it ploughed into the first of the Twin Towers, Sandra knew it was terrorism. A few moments later, she was the first journalist to share the news with Australia.
“The weight of it was significant and profound. I was really cognisant of trying to find the right language,” she says.
“I mean how do you explain the magnitude of something like that, and the likely ramifications. I felt inadequate – there’s no rehearsal… and I don’t think anyone, to this day, really appreciates that 25 years ago, it felt like the beginning of World War III, and we were watching it unfold live.”
As she was on air another plane hit the second tower and scenes of horror and devastation filled the screen as both buildings exploded, eventually crumbling to the ground.
Sandra was also receiving reports of plane crashes at the Pentagon and near Washington.
“It was so surreal,” Sandra says, remembering how initially it was just her and her producer on the ground, scrambling to make sense of what was going on.
“The wire services had frozen. The place was empty and at one point my executive producer said ‘keep talking. I’ll be back.’ He had to go and wake up the network.”
Sandra credits the gravity of the situation as what grounded her, keeping her seemingly calm for the next five hours on air.
“I had no choice but to get through it in the best way I could. To this day I still don’t really know how I did it,” she says.
“We watched the horror and drama unfold. We saw things that night that most Australians never saw … groups of people holding hands on window ledges and jumping to their deaths. That never leaves you.
“For the next four days after, I was completely numb. I never shed a tear. I didn’t sleep. I was completely numb.”
The attacks killed 2,977 people and injured thousands.
They went on to spark the US invasion of Afghanistan, and later Iraq.
For Sandra, being in the chair that night inextricably tied her to 9/11 moving forward.
She travelled to New York on the one year anniversary to interview the firefighters involved.
“They were the brave souls that walked up the stairs as everyone was rushing down them before the building collapsed,” the journalist says.
“To meet them was an honour and a privilege.”
As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 looms, Sandra’s biggest fear is that the aftershocks of the horrifying event have calmed and, far from learning from it, the world is on the precipice of another disaster.
“The world today is in a worse place than we arguably were then,” she says.
“It’s frightening now to feel that I could be doing the same thing in any bulletin at any time because the world is that unstable again.”
“Sadly, history does repeat itself and we don’t seem to learn. That is the uncomfortable truth for me.”
For almost 125 years, New Idea has been Australia’s most trusted source for celebrity news, royal updates, and real-life stories. We don’t just share the news – we live it, verify it, and stand by it. Read more about us, our history, and our contributors here.
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