The Current - Remembering the desperate search for the missing on 9/11

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Dr. Danielle Ofri was working at Bellevue Hospital in New York as the 9/11 attacks unfolded. Stuart Inglis was a Canadian graphic designer working there too. They remember how the friends and families of the missing started plastering the city with posters, as they desperately tried to find a trace of their loved ones.

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Stream now on CBC Jam. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. At Bellevue Hospital, in the heart of New York City, Dr. Danielle Ophrey and her colleagues were watching on TV as the disaster unfolded. That's where I first saw one of the towers fall, and I remember it was, I almost sank to my knees. I watched it go down, and it was, I've never seen anything like that happened before.

Dr. O'Frey was bracing for an influx of hurt, and wounded people. Meanwhile, not far away, Canadian Stuart Inglis was at his work in his graphic design studio, and when he heard what happened, he grabbed his camera gear and headed downtown, only to watch the South Tower collapse. It went down in front of me, and then the smoke came up the street. People were screaming and running away from it, and my adrenaline kicked in, and I just ran right into that smoke, knowing that people needed help. As the day wore on, it became clear that many, many people were missing and unaccounted for. Here are Dr. Danielle Ophrey and Stuart Inglis with the story of how so many New Yorkers

tried to find their loved ones. Well, there was a rumor that there were people in hospitals unconscious, and so this sparked the hope of loved ones that they may actually find their loved one. Tell me about who this is in the picture. This is my mother. She worked for Aon Risk Service. and she was on the 100th floor. I want to find out who are you looking for.

Hi, I'm looking for one of my best friends, Yvonne Bonomo. She's missing. She was a World Trade Center one. Floor 94. She's missing with 11 people. Bridget? Bridget, her sister. I walked outside and it was surreal.

At the time, Bellevue was under construction. So there was a construction wall that stretched an entire city block and it already become papered over. People were putting up posters of the missing. Two blocks down the road from us is the VA hospital. They were plastered there, and two blocks up there was NYU Hospital, and they were plastered there. But Bellevue had the biggest open space.

My studio was at 28th in Lex, and about two blocks away it was a makeshift headquarters to report a missing person. The whole neighborhood was covered in missing posters. A lot of these posters were homemade, you know, and handmade. And that actually gives it one of its moving characters. You can feel the love and the grief coming off the paper. It's really quite something. I just remember everyone was so happy in the photos and the contrast of the joy and of all ages and, you know, all nationalities and those personal details, their tattoos, the earrings they were wearing.

You know, people were so desperate to have anything possibly could identify their loved ones. I just went out and I just wanted to document it very neutrally. I didn't want to put my interpretation or anything. So I just photographed it. It was about three feet away, straight on. And I just went click all the way along all these posters. And ended up with about 300 shots. Tanya M. McDade, employed at Marsh Technologies located, Building 1 97th floor.

She started work at 7.30 a.m. She's African American, 25 years old, date of birth, Sissing Fireman, NY, F. D Squad 1, his name is Thomas, age 37, height's six feet, weight 200 pounds, eyes blue, tattoos. Please find our daddy written in like a child's handwriting. Picture of a man who's probably in his 30s and he's with his three children, young children. And they're at a birthday party. And it looks like the little ones is about to blow out the candles. And so everyone's smiling and it was a happy time.

I remember at the one-year anniversary, I guess somebody saved the posters. I remember looking through those posters a year later and like all those families just to have someone wrenched out of your life like that. And of course, I know that happens every day, everywhere in the world is always happening, but it's like they've evaporated. And, you know, how do you stitch that hole in your heart? I mean, obviously never goes away, but somehow you've got to stitch some of the edges together. Otherwise, you couldn't face another day. These make a remembrance of a person who was loved. New York collectively grieved with the missing posters.

You could go to these places and they were kind of sacred. It allowed someone's private grief and it allowed the rest of the city to share in that. Stuart English now lives in Toronto and is preparing to publish a book called Missing, a photographic document of the missing posters of September 11, 2001. Dr. Danielle Ophrey is a primary care internist at Bellevieve. View Hospital and is also the editor-in-chief of the Bellevue Literary Review. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m.

at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.