Eddie Branquinho, son of Dona Benvinda, a historical figure from Beja, was a detective with the Newark Police in New Jersey when the United States was hit by the September 11, 2001 attacks. The day after the attacks, he joined groups of firefighters and police officers who entered the ruins of the World Trade Center looking for survivors. Twenty-five years later, Branquinho, now retired and living in Florida since 2010, continues to hold vivid memories of that experience. In an interview given to Jornal de Notícias, recovered by Lidador Notícias, he described the human dimension of the tragedy: "There was a hand, which we removed from the rubble, still holding a photograph."
Among the images Eddie Branquinho brought back from the World Trade Center, the one that has endured most powerfully across time was a hand found among the rubble that was still holding a photograph. Faced with the magnitude of what had happened, he recalled that "we all felt so small." What he found could hardly fit within the images the world saw on television: there were documents, personal belongings and human remains among tons of steel and concrete. For Branquinho, the passage of time has not truly created distance from those days, stating: "For me, it was yesterday."
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 members of Al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial aircraft, two of which struck the Twin Towers in New York, a third hit the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers' reaction. 2,977 people from more than 90 countries died. Twenty-five years later, the New York Fire Department has recorded over 600 members who died due to health problems related to September 11 and the rescue operations, with 10,562 members having at least one certified physical condition related to exposure to the World Trade Center.
September 11 profoundly changed the way states view terrorism and security, with reinforced airport controls, greater information sharing between security services and expansion of electronic surveillance. The American response opened a new cycle of military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. A quarter of a century later, it is possible to recognize advances in terrorism prevention and response capacity, but it remains difficult to conclude that the world has found answers to all the questions that were born that morning.
