Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos were looking out over New York City on Wednesday, September 9, when they saw the lights that are tested ahead of the 9/11 memorial. On Live With Kelly, Consuelos said they had “a beautiful night last night” and that they saw the memorial as the beams were being checked.
Ripa said the sight remains “impactful” every year. The installation, known as The Tribute in Light, first debuted in 2002 and sends two blue beams into the sky each year to remember the loss of life in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The lights can reach four miles up and can be seen from as far as a 60-mile radius around lower Manhattan, making even a test hard to miss once it starts.
The moment landed with added weight because resurfaced footage of Live with Regis and Kelly from September 11, 2011, has been circulating online. That older clip brings back a grim broadcast history for Ripa and Regis Philbin: the show was filming minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower at the World Trade Center, and at first they did not know whether they were witnessing a terrible accident or something deliberate.
Ripa later called it “the worst thing I think I’ve ever seen in my life,” and said it may have been the “worst tragedy” ever to strike New York City. Philbin, after the second plane hit, said the incidents felt “deliberate.” That uncertainty is what makes the renewed attention now so stark: the memorial lights have become a fixed ritual, but the memory attached to them still carries the confusion and shock of that morning.
The lights are expected to return again as part of the annual remembrance, and the unanswered detail is the simplest one — why the test was happening on that night. For Ripa, though, the meaning was already clear. Even before the full display goes up, she knows what the blue beams are meant to hold.
