It has been 20 years since four planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and left a lasting impact not only on those affected but the nation and the world.

Over 400 first responders died on September 11, 2001, among them were three women, Port Authority Captain Kathy Mazza, EMT Yamel Merino and NYPD Officer Moira Smith.

"There just doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason about who made it and who didn’t. You made a left and you lived; you made a right and you died," said Chief Terri Tobin. These women shared their stories of their loss and the trauma that they endured. Many of them have physical and mental lasting injuries. They carry the impact 20 years later, every. single. day.

TJ Hargrave was 38 when the plane hit the North Tower. He called his wife Pat from his office and said, “Something terrible has happened. We’ve got to get out of here. We’re running out of air.” She heard people screaming. She said, “T, do you want me to call 911?” He said, “No, just call me back on my cellphone.

She never reached him.

The Casalduc family honoring Vivian Casalduc, a microfiche clerk for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. Her daughter Angelic said “The night before 9/11, my mom told me she wasn’t feeling well and I said, “Don’t go to work if you’re sick.” The next morning, she wasn’t there to meet me at our usual subway stop—we used to meet up along our commute and ride into the city together. I thought maybe she’d stayed home, but I called my brother and he told me she’d gone in earlier.

When she got to her job in Midtown, that’s when I heard about the towers. “I ran outside, and when I got to the area, the South Tower had just come down. People were running around screaming. It was smoky and foggy. I saw people jumping, people falling—it was complete chaos.”

“My mom worked on the 28th floor of the North Tower. It wasn’t one of the highest floors and people were able to get out. Later on, a co-worker of hers told us they’d seen my mother coming down, but she’d gone back in to help somebody.”

Colonel Danny Pummill was working in the Pentagon on 9/11. As the new guy, he was sent to make copies for a meeting. He went to his desk to get the papers and that's when the roof came down on his head. He raced down the hall and went to the office to tell everyone to get out. Everyone who had been in the conference room with him died.

Debra and her daughter Hali outside of Zabar’s market. Hali lost her dad, Steven Geller, a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald who worked in the North Tower. “Shopping at Zabar’s with my dad was really special. He knew everyone’s names and they knew his. It set such a good example of how to treat people. The man behind the fish counter mattered as much to my dad as his bosses at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Hali explained, “When the planes hit the World Trade Center, I was 12 years old, in class on the Upper West Side. I was in denial at first. As a kid, you’re going to have dreams of the person you love walking through the door again.”

The Speisman family who lost, Robert Speisman, an executive VP at Lazare Kaplan International. His daughter Tara explained how her father rearranged a work trip to stop in Georgetown to see her since she was homesick while studying there. She was in sociology class on the morning of September 11 when information started coming in. “My dad had just left for his flight that morning, and at first, I didn’t think I had any reason to worry.”

“There was a shelter-in-place order in D.C., but since we were college kids, we ignored it and went up to the rooftop. We didn’t actually see the explosion happen, but we could see smoke coming from the Pentagon. Then we went down and turned on the news and I saw a crawl that said, “American Airlines Flight 77 is missing.” That’s when I knew. And of course this isn’t rational, but my first thought was, “I made him come!”"

“And yet those last two days with my dad were an incredibly special time. Before that, when I was still living at home, we had a pretty typical father-daughter relationship. But that trip was the first time we were able to spend time together as adults, as buddies. And he was so proud of me. That’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”