Joel Hanley

Contribution from Joel Hanley, former staff writer, Risk Waters

Oli Bennett (left) and Paul Bristow outside Madison Square Garden in April 2001 (photo by Joel Hanley)

When a friend rang me in the Risk Waters newsroom to ask if I’d seen what was happening in New York, I confessed I hadn’t, and rushed to our sole Reuters terminal in the corner of the room to see the latest. It wasn’t long before it dawned on us that the World Trade Center North Tower was the venue for a conference our company was running, with several of our friends and over a hundred delegates attending. Against a backdrop of growing concern, an email soon arrived from a senior executive with the relieving news that one of the team at the event had called to say they were being evacuated. We did not know at the time that the supposed escape route was to the few storeys above the 106th floor.

Being journalists, and without televisions in the office, we went downstairs to the pub to watch the drama. It chills me to this day that we congregated there to watch the tragedy unfold, slowly realising that any chance of escape was unlikely. While the leadership team sent people home, many of us stayed together in the pub until late, fruitlessly trying our phones to check on our friends. Risk Waters was a young company, full of twentysomething writers, conference producers and salespeople, a close-knit and sociable group, many in relationships that last till this day. Some of us – still friends 25 years on from 9/11 – know what a formative and important night that was in our lives. One of the things that strikes me today about the events of the time is how slowly news travelled: not everyone had a mobile phone, and SMS texting was hardly quick, with group chats a decade away. In those days, if a channel switched to rolling news, it was important. From 2pm in London that day – and for the next few days – that was all we seemed to see.

As our then boss Peter Field has recounted elsewhere, the not-knowing was difficult. As posters of the missing went up around what was soon called Ground Zero, we hoped for our friends, and fielded calls through the night on our makeshift hotline for concerned relatives of delegates. But, really, we didn’t know much more than anyone else.

We lost so many lovely, funny colleagues from the London office: Karlie sat behind me daily, an incredibly sunny presence; Elisa, whose Australian brogue and go-getting attitude could motivate anyone; Sarah and Michele from the events team, whose leadership drove our conference business; Simon, who published our biggest titles with smiling professionalism.

There were others of course and, being an international company, we lost more from around the world, who meant so much to us, such as Neil and Dinah, who’d been my surrogate parents during my secondment in Hong Kong the previous year but had recently moved to the US.

Personally, the loss I felt most was my two best friends there, Oli and Paul, two Brits who’d not long before moved to New York. I treasure the grainy photos I have from my holiday with them there a few months before the attacks. They were making their homes in Manhattan and Brooklyn respectively, excited young men venturing out in the world’s most exhilarating city.

None of us at the company at the time can forget the magnitude of that tragedy, and we have found solace over the years in each other and the joyful memories we have from before that time. Part of our friends’ legacy must be the togetherness and resilience that so many of us acquired half a lifetime ago.

Whenever I am in New York, I go to the 9/11 Memorial and find those 16 names engraved on the same panel of the North Pool. It’s a comfort to see they’re all still together.

If you would like to view all the articles in our 9/11 commemoration, click here