The video: Dave Berkebile was sitting in his living room on Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field two and a half miles away, near Shanksville, Pa. Berkebile — who died in February — grabbed his videocamera and headed outside to film the rising smoke and describe what he saw, according to his widow, Cathy, who released the video over the weekend. (Watch it below.) "This is the remains of an airplane crash," Berkebile says as the blue sky fills with smoke. "Probably they had a terrorist bomb on board, blew up." This is the earliest known video of the crash, says Donna Glessner, who is gathering oral histories for the National Park Service. "No one else has a video of that smoke cloud."
The reaction: This video doesn't show much besides smoke — "not that you'd want to" see more — but Berkebile's calm narration "is riveting in its own way," says Max Read at Gawker. What's really remarkable about the video, says Mediaite, is that "in the modern world of viral crowdsourcing," where videos and photos of even the most mundane events find their way online at lightning speed, new footage from 9/11 is surfacing after 10 years. Watch to see if it was worth the wait:
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