To commemorate the attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, EarthCam has released an incredible timelapse that spans 20 years and is made up of more than 13.3 million photographs.
The six-minute video spends the first sixty seconds showing a stream of short timelapses as they were captured in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, colloquially referred to as 9/11, as well as the recovery and demolition efforts, which spanned more than eight months. The video then switches to the start of construction of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center as well as the construction of the memorial and museum built to honor those killed in the attacks.
EarthCam says this is the longest-running timelapse project in its history and includes never-before-seen images. Some of those include photographs captured by EarthCam CEO and Founder, Brian Cury, who placed a webcam at Ground Zero just days after the attacks to share a livestream of the recovery efforts.
Eventually, the EarthCam team developed new robotic cameras, which it used to document the rebuilding process on the 16-acre site in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. Over the next 20 years, a photograph was taken every few minutes from more than 100 angles.
‘This is an emotional milestone for EarthCam, as the history of the company has been so intertwined with this site,’ said Brian Cury, CEO and Founder of EarthCam. ‘We’re grateful to many partners, friends, and to the extraordinary team at EarthCam whose dedication and passion supported this effort over the past 20 years, so that we may share this historic archive and honor the lives lost due to the September 11th attacks.’
All of the more than 13.3 million images captured, as well as the original camera Cury put in place in 2001, have been donated to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.. 9/11 Memorial President and CEO Alice M. Greenwald says ‘We appreciate EarthCam’s unprecedented contribution of 20 years of historic images, which have meticulously recorded the rebuilding that transformed this sacred space […] This creative time-lapse both honors the legacy of those who were killed and embodies hope for the future, as we see these remarkable new structures that surround the Memorial as evidence of lower Manhattan’s resilience and renewal.’
Additional archives and resources of the September 11 attacks can be found on the National September 11 Memorial and Museum website. EarthCam also has a livestream from Shanksville, Pennsylvania, U.S. where the Flight 93 Memorial — Tower of Voices stands to honor ‘the heroic passengers and crew members of United Airlines Flight 93,’ one of the other two planes that were hijacked on that tragic day. The fourth plane hijacked was American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the west wall of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, U.S.