As New York recovers from Superstorm Sandy, North Yorkshire documentary-maker Paul Berriff relives his memories of how the city dealt with its most devastating disaster.

SHORTLY after the planes flew into the twin towers on September 11, 2001, the fire-fighter co-ordinating the rescue of its occupants yelled at his crew and documentary-maker Paul Berriff to run. But not before Paul had filmed another five seconds of the first tower dismantling above him.

The Bedale-based producer/director had been filming a series called Animal Cops in New York, following around animal cruelty investigators, when he heard an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Whilst the streets were filled with people running away from the towers, he and his film crew ran towards the disaster scene, filming as they went.

“I stayed there for five seconds filming with my sound recordist, Loulou Machin attached to me by a cable, watching this amazing tsunami of debris coming towards us,” he said.

“It was so high it was taking time to come down. “Then I thought, ‘this isn’t looking good’ and I shouted at Loulou to run.”

The events that were unfolding around him would change the way people viewed the world forever. It was the beginning of the concept of the ‘war on terror’ and an uneasy feeling that globe’s previous status quo was gone for good.

Even before Paul Berriff had arrived in New York, he had built up a reputation for being a magnet for major world news stories, frequently finding catastrophic global events breaking around him.

Whilst filming a 13-part series with RAF search and rescue helicopters in 1988, the Piper Alpha oil rig exploded and he was amongst the first on the scene at the world’s worst ever oil platform disaster.

He has also survived a major helicopter crash in Scotland, leapt to safety from a sinking ship during a North Sea gale and has been blown off the side of a volcano in Nicaragua. He has also worked as a firefighter and a coastguard in his spare time.

But even by his standards this was a disaster like no other.

“As we were running my camera was still filming,” he said.

“It was pointed back looking at the building coming towards us. The next thing I remember was the camera leaving my hand in slow motion and then everything went black.”

He was knocked unconscious for half an hour, during which time the second tower also collapsed on top of him. To this day he still doesn’t know how he survived.

“My nose, ears and mouth were full of thick cement dust,” he said.

“I had to get all the dirt out of my mouth so I could breathe. I couldn’t hear or see.

“I was crawling down the street in pitch black, choking from the smoke and dust, not knowing what had happened.

“I remember putting my hand out and feeling the sides of a car.

“Cars only parked on the side streets which led down to the River Hudson. I thought if I followed the cars by touch I would reach the river and be able to breathe. By the time I reached the third car I felt a leg and a fireman’s tunic. I remember asking him if I could use his breathing apparatus but he didn’t answer, so I presumed he was dead.

“After ten or twenty metres like this I stood up and realised I could breathe and was going to live.”

He then remembered his sound recordist who had been at his side as they had fled and headed back into the disaster area.

He found her sound recording equipment and as he pulled out the cable found it was still attached to his intact camera under three foot of rubble.

“I couldn’t see her or anybody else. So I just stared at the street,” he said.

“ The scene in front of me I can only describe as “apocalyptic”. All the fire engines, police cars and ambulances were on fire and all the buildings surrounding me were.

“I could see bits of building embedded on the street in front of me.”

By chance, he then found his sound recordist in an apartment lobby. A firefighter had grabbed her as they fled and they had jumped into an underground garage.

Paul has since been told by police he was probably the first living person so close to the twin towers after their collapse. He also had the dubious boast of being the first person ever to use New York’s decontamination unit when he arrived at hospital for treatment to a head wound. At that point there were fears the terrorists had stuffed chemical warfare on the planes.

Of the 28 firemen that had been with Paul at the bottom of the twin towers, only about six survived. Those that had run in a straight line down West Street - as he did - survived, but those that ran off down streets to the left and right were killed.

A year after the event, the film-maker spent a year with the New York fire fighters and got them to talk about their experiences.

“I think because I had been through it too and experienced it with them, they knew I had an affinity with it and they just talked,” he said.

“ A lot of them hadn’t really talked about it with their family. Many hadn’t really dealt with it. Even after the year I spent with them, I felt when I left they were still in a daze.

“I’ve never seen anything, ever, that has traumatised people as much as that did.”

Now Paul Berriff is back in Bedale, close to his Yorkshire roots where he began as a photographer for the Yorkshire Evening Post in Leeds in the 1960s. He currently has an exhibition at Wensleydale Galleries in Leyburn of photographs he took of the Beatles when he was 16, which had lain forgotten in his attic until now.

The exhibition has reminded him of his love of photography after decades of shooting award-winning documentaries for the world’s major television networks. He was one of the main pioneers of the fly-on-the-wall style of documentary, after deciding documentaries would be more authentic without a voice-over explaining a narrative.

But now the film-maker has very much gone back to basics, lining up some photographic projects with his old manual vintage cameras, taking black and white pictures which he develops by hand and scans into his computer.

But the recent storms in New York have reminded him of his experiences of the city and given him faith that it will recover from its latest disaster, Superstorm Sandy.

Ground Zero was deluged with 28 foot of water during the recent flooding of the city.

“I think that Sandy is not the equivalent of 9/11, however I think that the aftermath is equally as bad as it involves so many dead,” he said.

“Although a lot of New York is suffering after Sandy, I do think they have the best emergency services in the world to cope with it.”