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Terrorism Hits America

Update: Trade Center Building 7 collapses

This was issued at 5:20 PM Eastern Standard time
Sept. 11-- At about 5:20 PM EST Trade Center Building 7 has collapsed. Reasons for the collapse are that the massive amounts of debris falling on Building 7 from the result of the World Trade Center towers collapsing. To learn more about the attacks on The World Trade Center continue reading on below.
   
   
 

This Report was posted at 4:00 PM EST
Sept. 11 —  In the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, two hijacked jetliners slammed into New York’s World Trade Center Tuesday morning, toppling both 110-story towers where thousands of people had just arrived for work. An hour later, a third plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. “The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible,” President Bush vowed as the White House, the Capitol and other federal buildings in Washington were evacuated. More Information is below.
Two hijacked jets topple World Trade Center in
NYC; Pentagon also hit
 

Another slightly smaller plane approaches the World Trade Center 18 minutes after the first collision.

 

        MILITARY JETS patrolled the nation’s skies and the FAA grounded all civilian aircraft until at least Wednesday — but not before another plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
       The images of devastation struck at the heart of two of the nation’s most prominent symbols of power and commerce.
       In New York, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani estimated at least 2,250 peopled had been injured, many seriously. He would not estimate the number of deaths but 
a city police source said it could be in the hundreds or thousands.
       Bush, who was in Florida at the time of the attacks, did not return to Washington but flew on Air Force One first to the Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La., and then to Offutt Air Force base outside Omaha, Neb., where he was taken to an underground bunker.
       The commander in chief announced from Barksdale that the U.S. military was on “high-alert status.”
       “Freedom itself was attacked this morning and I assure you freedom will be defended,” he told the nation in a brief statement. “Make no mistake. The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly actions"

The plane turns towards the building then slams into the World Trade Center's south tower.

 

       Suspicion for the attacks immediately fell on Osama bin Laden, a Saudi terrorist thought to be living in Afghanistan. An Arab language newspaper in London recently said he had been planning an unprecedented attack on the United States.
       A spokesman for Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban condemned the attacks and denied bin Laden was behind them, saying the sophistication of the coordinated assault required the expertise of a government. 
       Authorities in Washington immediately called out troops, including an infantry regiment. The U.S. and Canadian borders were sealed and security was tightened at strategic installations.
       “This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don’t think that I overstate it,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.
ATTACKS MINUTES APART
     In New York, the aircraft struck minutes apart, starting fires and sending smoke billowing out of the skyscrapers.
       Crews were evacuating people when the first tower collapsed, trapping rescuers and workers. Much of lower Manhattan was later evacuated.
       The first crash happened shortly before 9 a.m. ET. The top of the south tower later collapsed onto the street below.

       The two burning towers send thick smoke and ash throughout lower Manhattan.
“I was on the 81st floor of 2 World Trade Center,” Felipe Ayala told MSNBC. “I ran down to 78 — the main concourse — and met wife and coworkers. … I was asked to go back upstairs because it was safe … I left my wife and returned to the 81st floor. I was looking out the window with a co-worker when the entire room just collapsed on me. I can’t find my wife and I’m looking around for her.”
       Kenny Johannemann, a janitor, described seeing a man engulfed in flames just after the first explosion. He grabbed the man, put the fire out, and dragged him outside. Then Johannemann heard a second explosion — and saw people jumping from the upper stories.
       “It was horrendous; I can’t describe it,” Johannemann said as he stood outside the building.
       Shortly after 9 a.m., a second aircraft was seen crashing into the other tower. Broadcast cameras already watching the scene filmed the second plane as it exploded in a huge fireball.
       MSNBC.com reporter Martin Wolk, who was inside one of the towers, said the lights flickered and there was a loud bang. People panicked and started to flee the building.
       When they reached the lobby, smoke started to fill the building and people could see debris falling. “It was sheer pandemonium, people were screaming and crying, afraid to go outside because of the falling debris,” Wolk said. “We looked up and it looked like the top 20 floors were in flames.”
       At the Pentagon, the nerve center of the nation’s military, one wall of the hexagonal building was destroyed when a hijacked commercial plane crashed into the adjacent helipad. At least 29 casualties were reported.
       Across the country, high-rises like Chicago’s Sears Trade tower were evacuated as a precaution, and all Major League Baseball games were canceled nationwide.
       Buildings were also being evacuated in London.

About an hour after the World Trade Center was first hit, a fire erupted in the Pentagon -- located just outside Washington -- after a plane hits the Defense Department headquarters.
 

At 10:05 a.m., the south tower of the World Trade Center collapses, plummeting into the streets below. A massive cloud of dust and debris slowly drifts away from the building.
HIJACKING DETAILS
       American Airlines and United airlines both said two of their planes had earlier been hijacked and crashed.
       American said its two aircraft were carrying a total of 156 people. One was a Boston-Los Angeles Flight, the other Washington-Los Angeles. An FBI source said the former, a Boeing 767, hit one of the trade center towers; the latter, a Boeing 757, hit the Pentagon.
       Two United airliners with a total of 110 aboard also crashed — a Boeing 757 outside Pittsburgh, the other in a location not immediately identified. The FBI source, however, said that flight, a Boeing 767, hit the trade center as well.
The crash near Pittsburgh was a Newark to San Francisco flight. An emergency dispatcher in Westmoreland County, Pa., received a cell phone call at 9:58 a.m. ET from		  

 
The second World Trade Center tower -- the north tower -- crashes into the streets of Manhattan, shedding debris throughout the area.

 

 
Onlookers at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York react to the scene about two miles away at the World Trade Center.
 a man who said he was a passenger locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93, said dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer.
       “We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!” Cramer quoted the man as saying. The man told dispatchers the plane “was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him,” Cramer said.
       Nationwide, crowds gathered around television sets in airports, bars, hotel lounges. The space station commander could see the smoke rising above New York.
       “My whole family’s from Boston, and two are always flying,” said Diane Morse, dialing her cell phone in tears in downtown Cleveland. “We always fly American.”
       The memory of Pearl Harbor was offered up again and again, with all its images of sneak attacks, national honor and war.
       “Someone is trying to make a serious statement and I hope we do likewise,” said Scott Gilmore at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
       
BIN LADEN TIES?
       Bin Laden is suspected in previous attacks on U.S. interests, including the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa, and had ties to last year’s bombing of a U.S. Navy ship in Yemen.
       A U.S. judge had set this Wednesday as the sentencing date for a bin Laden associate for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy in Tanzania that killed 213 people. The sentencing had been set for the federal courthouse near the World Trade Center.
       Washington had earlier offered a $5 million reward for bin Laden’s capture. And George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said this week that bin Laden was the most immediate and serious threat to U.S. security.
       The World Trade Center was the scene of an earlier terrorist attack: the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others. Terrorist Ramzi Yousef and three others were convicted of orchestrating the attack. Three other indicted co-conspirators remain at large
 

He Was on the 81st Floor of Two World Trade Center
By Tom Beller            Posted Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at 10:36 a.m. PT
At Thomas Street, about six blocks north of the World Trade Center, the nature of the crowd on the street changed. There was more urgency and less mirth, more police shouting, and amid the crowd was a guy who had been on the 81st floor on Two World Trade Center when the plane hit. It was just after 10 a.m. Two World Trade Center had just collapsed, and One World Trade Center stood smoldering behind him.

At first glance he looked like a snowman except instead of snow he was covered in gray, asbestos-colored ash. He was moving along with the crowd, streaming north up Broadway. His head and neck and shoulders and about halfway down his chest was covered in gray ash. You could make out a pair of bloodshot eyes, and he was running his hand over his head. A small plume of dust drifted off the top of his head as he walked, echoing the larger plume of smoke drifting off of One World Trade Center behind him.

"There were about 230 people on the 81st floor and I was one of the last ones out. We took the stairs. There was smoke, but it wasn't fire smoke, it was drywall smoke and dust. The fire was above us."

He was shaking. His eyes were red from dust and maybe tears. He didn't seem like the sort of man who cried. He had fair skin and sandy hair cut in a crewcut. His pants were chinos and he had on docksiders and his shirt was a check button-down.

He was walking along with the crowd, but his body language was a little different. Everyone, even those who weren't looking back, had about them a certain nervous desire to look behind them, to see, to communicate to their neighbor, but this guy had no interest in anything except getting away from where he had just been. It radiated from every muscle in his body. To get away.

"I was almost out. I got down to the lobby, right near the Borders bookstore. And then there was this explosion. I don't know, I just got thrown to the ground and all this stuff fell on top of me."

By now he had dusted his head off, and you could see his skin. It was pale and ashen, one of his eyes was very red. At first I thought maybe it was the dust and perhaps tears that had made his eyes bloodshot, but one eyes was badly inflamed.

He was joined by another man, blue oxford shirt and tie, mid-40s, lawyerly, who worked in the building across the street.

"I watched the whole thing. I saw the second plane hit, the explosion. No one told us to evacuate, and then the building just collapsed and I thought I better get out of here because my building could go too."

On Franklin Street the police were screaming: "There's a package! There's a package! Keep moving!"

They were herding everyone to the left, toward West Broadway. "Trust me! Let's go! People ,let's go, there's an unidentified package across the street!"

The view on West Broadway and Franklin was very good. One Tower, gray sky billowing, the sky darkening.

"I don't know what happened. I just hit the ground, don't know if something hit me or ..."

"It was the force of the building collapsing," said the lawyer.

"I got up and just started walking," said the ashen guy.

There was a huge rumbling sound accompanied by the sound of people shrieking. Everyone who wasn't already looking turned to see the remaining building start to crumble in on itself, a huge ball of smoke rising out from beneath it, a mushroom cloud in reverse. The whole street paused, froze, screamed, some people broke into tears, except for the ashen guy, who just kept walking.