"Surviving September 11th: The Story of One New York Family" will appear on PBS stations nationwide beginning on Sept. 1, 2002. This remarkable documentary tells the dramatic story of what happened to three generations of one Brooklyn family -- grandmother, mother, and three-year-old daughter -- caught up in the evacuation of lower Manhattan following the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC).
The National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, jointly operated by the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and the Duke University Medical Center, and UCLA's Center for Community Health underwrote the film and were instrumental in shaping its content to depict traumatic experiences, post-traumatic stress reactions, and the process of recovery in all their complexity. They also influenced award-winning filmmaker David Kennard in the decision not to include any news footage of the catastrophic events of the day. "We want this to be a healing program," says Kennard, "not a program that repeats violent images."
Instead, the film allows family members simply to tell their stories. These illustrate with great poignancy what Kennard calls "the everyday routine heroics of families everywhere who must live in a dangerous and uncertain world." Although the family emerged physically unscathed, the traumatic events of the day -- and the individual meanings that those moments of terror, life threat, separation, and reunion held for each family member -- continue to reverberate through the family's life. According to UCLA's Dr. Robert Pynoos, co-Director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, the family's recovery depends partly on their being able to acknowledge and take seriously the individuality of each person's reaction to the trauma.
Mother Linda was in the process of dropping three-year-old daughter Jasmine off at the Trinity Place Preschool one block away from the World Trade Center when the first plane struck the North Tower. Linda had survived the WTC's 1993 terrorist attack, walking down 55 floors through a thick blanket of smoke to safety. Unbeknownst to Linda and Jasmine, when grandmother Josephine heard the news of the first plane crash, she rushed into Manhattan to rescue her granddaughter. Linda, Jasmine, and Josephine joined the hordes of people running from blinding smoke and dust in what was to become the largest school evacuation in U.S. history. When Linda heard "the incredible crashing sound" of the first building coming down, she began to suffer flashbacks to 1993. In the immediate midst of the catastrophe, she was uncertain of its scope: "it looked like the end of the world." Meanwhile Josephine was lost somewhere else in the crowd fearing that "never in a million years" would she "see [her] daughter and granddaughter again."
In its aftermath, 9/11 set off a cascade of changes in the family's life. Linda felt the stress of having to recover from her own horror while "keeping it together" for her daughter. Three-year-old Jasmine communicated her fears and fantasies about the events of the day indirectly through traumatic play. She engaged her mother in re-enacting over and over again the moments of impending disaster, terror and rescue. According to Pynoos, such play "is not just a repetition of a moment, there is relief in the moment of rescue. The child is trying to re-establish a sense of safety."
Husband Marshall, who was in a lockdown at the Riker's Island Prison where he works and so could not make it home until late in the evening of 9/11, felt excluded from the inner circle of survivors. And Linda found herself estranged from Marshall because he had not been home to comfort her. Realizing that they had to heal their own relationship in order to rise to the challenges of parenting Jasmine, they sought help through a group counseling intervention offered by a non-profit charity with which they were involved.
"The family in 'Surviving . . .' used the resources of family, friendships, community, faith, and faith-based institutions to heal themselves," said Duke University's John Fairbank, Ph.D., co-Director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. "They appreciated the seriousness of what they had been through, and the time required to recover."
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, coordinated by the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress at UCLA and Duke University, comprises 34 sites dedicated to raising awareness of the scope and consequences of child traumatic stress and ensuring that traumatized children and families receive the care and supports they need.
The Center for Community Health at UCLA is a leading research center in community health, with the mission to advance the understanding of and to improve the health, development, and quality of life for children, families, and communities in high-risk situations.
The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute is an interdisciplinary research and education institute devoted to the understanding of complex human behavior, including the genetic, biological, behavioral and socio-cultural underpinnings of normal behavior, and the causes and consequences of neuropsychiatric disorders.
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