9/11 story: Reporter remembers covering ground zero

Families and friends are remembering their loved ones lost and those who sacrificed their lives in the Sept. 11 attacks 20 years ago.

Thousands of people lost their lives that day — employees, first responders and loved ones.

We spoke to a reporter who covered the attack in the days following 9/11.

Frank Cipolla told us he used a handkerchief during coverage because there was so much smoke in the air. He said, while on the job, he had to put his emotions in a box to cover the story. But later, it came flooding back.

“I didn’t revise my images and my thoughts and what I had seen and had heard on 9/11 until about a year later, and it was very emotional,” Cipolla said. “I had to go back to that box, open it and process all of that.”

Cipolla said his friends who were also reporters had health impacts after inhaling all the smoke.

“So many of my friends have passed away from very aggressive cancers from all the stuff we were breathing on that sight,” Cipolla said. “Lot of us were breathing in stuff that would later kill us.”

Cipolla says, no matter the health impacts, journalists had a job to do and did the right thing by covering 9/11 on a daily basis.