(Originally published by the Daily News on September 12, 2001. This was written by Dave Saltonstall.)
On a day of unspeakable horror for New York and the nation, terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon yesterday in the deadliest assault on the U.S. in its history.
“Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror,” President Bush said in an address to the nation last night.
The attacks involved four synchronized plane hijackings, two from Boston, one from Newark and one from Dulles International outside Washington. Each was bound for the West Coast, loaded with fuel for the cross-country flight, and they crashed within 90 minutes of one another.
Bush ordered the nation’s military to high alert and vowed to hunt down those responsible for the attacks in Washington and New York, where both towers of the World Trade Center collapsed into a swirling, lung-choking pile of rubble after burning for more than an hour.
Mayor Giuliani said city morgues were “ready to deal with thousands and thousands of bodies” today.
Killed in the debris were an estimated 300 city police officers, firefighters and emergency workers who rushed to the scene to help, only to be buried in the rubble of a complex long regarded as indestructible.
At the Pentagon, about 800 were killed after a Boeing 757 sped low across the Potomac River, clipping light poles as it went, and slammed into the building in a huge fireball.
“Freedom itself was attacked this morning,” a somber Bush said from Florida, before he was whisked to the safety of military installations in Louisiana, Nebraska and later the White House. “And I assure you freedom will be defended.”
Bin Laden eyed
By late last night, no one had claimed responsibility for the attacks. But U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they were focusing their attention on Osama Bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire indicted in the U.S. on charges of masterminding the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.
He is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan, with help from the Taliban, Afghanistan’s ruling Islamic militia. Taliban leaders said they regretted the assaults and claimed Bin Laden did not have the resources to mount them.
Meanwhile, Giuliani said that people still trapped in the rubble were calling police on their cells phones late into the night, desperate for help. Two Port Authority officers were pulled from an underground cavern around 11 p.m. during a dramatic rescue near the base of the twin towers, which by sundown had been brutally erased from the city’s famous skyline.
“Not since Pearl Harbor has our nation come under such a direct and horrific attack,” said Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y). “I am sure America will respond to this crime against humanity in a way that has always characterized our country: with unity and strength.”
Yesterday’s series of attacks began at 8:45 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11, which was hijacked from Boston with 92 aboard, slammed into 1 World Trade Center near the 90th floor, more than 1,000 feet in the air.
As hundreds of sirens wailed through the city toward the burning tower, some of the center’s 50,000 workers could be seen falling like rag dolls from the windows. They included a man and a woman holding hands.
“They were alive, you could see them screaming,” said Scott Schilling, 24. “People were falling, flailing in the air. It was horrible.”
Second tower attack
In the neighboring twin tower, meanwhile, the public address system was urging calm, telling workers to stay in their offices while firefighters battled the blaze next door.
“Tower 2 is secure,” came the message over the loudspeakers, prompting some who had begun evacuating to turn around and return to their offices.
Then the next plane hit, shortly after 9 a.m., and what might have seemed an accident became an unmistakable chain of terrorist attacks that, in an instant, forever changed the way New York and the nation view its famous sense of invincibility.
With thousands of workers still in 2 World Trade Center, United Airlines Flight 175, also en route from Boston to Los Angeles, pierced the tower like a bullet, leaving a huge, fiery exit wound on the back side.
The whole, chilling moment was caught on videotape, providing a news clip that will likely be repeated thousands of times in the coming days.
At 9:28 a.m., just as news of the twin attacks rippled across the city’s jammed phone lines, a third hijacked jet – identified as American Airlines Flight 77 en route from Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles – crashed into the Pentagon, the heart of America’s military complex and a building long regarded as among the most secure in the world.
The hijacked plane hit the outermost ring of the building in a section housing top Marine Corps and Navy personnel.
Pentagon burns
“This is a full assault on the United States of America,” said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, as he stood before the crumpled Pentagon, which still was burning more than six hours after the plane crash.
Finally, in an attack apparently gone awry, a fourth hijacked aircraft – United Airlines Flight 93, en route from Newark to San Francisco – crashed southeast of Pittsburgh shortly after 10 a.m. with 45 passengers and crew aboard. All were presumed dead.
Unconfirmed reports from at least two government sources suggested that the Pittsburgh flight may have been brought down by a pilot winning a struggle with a terrorist.
Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) said after a Marine Corps briefing that Flight 93 apparently was headed for Camp David, the presidential retreat in the mountains of Maryland, 85 miles to the southeast.
The secluded hideaway is site of the Camp David accord, the peace pact negotiated by Israel, Egypt and the U.S. 23 years ago this week. Others noted the day’s ominous date, 9-11, the national code for help.
When the plane attacks ended, the devastation was beginning anew in New York. About 10:30 a.m., the top of 2 World Trade Center collapsed, sending tons of burning debris and glass to the streets below. Minutes later, 1 World Trade Center fell.
Mountains of soot tore through the city’s narrow downtown streets like giant tornadoes, blanketing everything in an inch or more of dust as office workers tried desperately to race ahead of the wave.
Day turned into night – and then into hell – as the wave enveloped thousands of people. An unknown number may have suffocated. By last night, streets around the towers were littered with briefcases, eyeglasses and shoes.
“A lot of the vehicles are running over bodies because they are all over the place,” said Emergency Medical Service worker Louis Garcia after reports of bodies buried beneath 2 feet of soot on streets around the Trade Center.
Thousands of other New Yorkers, many covered in the heavy ash that rained from the top floors of the 1,250-foot towers, stood staring in disbelief as the buildings thundered to the street.
In their place rose two plumes of thick gray smoke that were visible for miles, an eerie reminder that hung in the air for hours.
Firefighter’s fright
Firefighter Tom Boccarossa, 43, from Engine 205, was standing outside the building when the first tower collapsed.
“I got tossed and buried,” he said outside NYU Downtown Hospital, dressed in a plastic johnny and his shorts – the only clothes he had left. “I crawled under a car. I couldn’t see. It was totally black. I thought my life was over.
“He added: “The rest of my company is inside. I don’t know if they’re dead or alive.”
Mike Carter, vice president of the firefighters union, estimated that half of the 400 firefighters who first reached the scene may be dead.
“We have entire companies that are just missing,” Carter said. “We’re going to have to bury a lot of people.”
Lawyer Joel Graber had narrowly escaped the first collapse – “It was a black tidal wave of soot that roared down Cedar St.” – when the second one hit. “That’s when I figured I was at the end,” said Graber, who managed to find refuge in a Pakistani restaurant. “I saw people falling down, having seizures, exploding in tears.”
Carol King, who works for the city’s corporation counsel at 100 Church St., had just come out of the subway when she saw a wall of soot coming toward her.
“I was blinded,” said King, who lives in Queens. “Out of nowhere a gentleman helped me out. We stayed down [in the subway] and we found a little room. He would go out and get people and bring them back into this room. One of the people was a blind man with a Seeing-Eye dog. He was my angel.
“If he hadn’t come by when he did,” she added, “I might have been dead.”
Shortly after 5 p.m., yet another building collapsed, 7 World Trade Center, which had been burning for much of the afternoon. It housed the city’s vaunted emergency command center.
“The windows started popping at first, and then the whole thing kind of started to wave, like it wasn’t solid at all,” said Abbey Tedrowe, 25, a teacher who watched from nearby.
A London-based Arab journalist said yesterday that followers of Bin Laden warned three weeks ago that they would carry out a “huge and unprecedented attack” on U.S. interests.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said he received a warning from Islamic fundamentalists close to Bin Laden but did not take the threat seriously.
Bin Laden all but promised to strike U.S. targets in a widely published “memo” in June to all his alleged “field operatives.”
“Am I wearing a sign that says STUPID on it?” taunted Bin Laden in the memo. “We’ll hit them the way the Iranians blew up the U.S. base at Khobar, in Saudi Arabia. We’ll use layers of local operatives, who can’t be traced to any country.”
The nation shakes
Yesterday’s explosions rocked the nation like an earthquake, with aftershocks that reached from coast to coast. Major office buildings in New York and Washington closed; Congress was evacuated for the first time in its history.
On the Internet, talk of patriotism ran high, with many chat rooms urging Americans to wear red, white and blue today as a show of unity and to honor the victims.
Altogether, the four planes carried 266 people. There was no word on any survivors, or any real sense of what the death toll on the ground would be.
“I have a sense it’s a horrendous number of lives lost,” Mayor Giuliani said at one briefing.
The mayor announced that schools would be closed today as principals planned to bring in counselors tomorrow. He urged everyone to take off from work today and declared that Manhattan would be closed south of 14th St. to civilians to give workers a chance to clean up.
More than 1,100 people were treated at city hospitals, with 150 in critical condition, Giuliani said. Another 2,600 “walking wounded” were taken to Liberty State Park in New Jersey for treatment, he said.
Dozens more stumbled through the Battery Tunnel to Brooklyn, where ambulances were waiting.
Giuliani said it may take two days before a final number of the dead and injured becomes known.
Police and fire officials were estimating last night that the explosions had claimed the lives of 200 firefighters, 60 to 70 police officers and 30 emergency workers, but the final tally was expected to go higher.
FDNY leaders dead
Among the dead were William Feehan, the first deputy fire commissioner, who apparently died after being hit by debris. Also killed was Peter Ganci, the Fire Department’s chief of department, and the Rev. Michael Judge, a Franciscan priest who served as a Fire Department chaplain.
Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, his head bent down, his arms folded, appeared shaken by the loss of life.
Asked if he had lost a lot of men, he said only, “Yes.”
“We took some heavy losses today, and my heart goes out to the families,” said Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
Elsewhere, the U.S. assumed a war footing. The Canadian and Mexican borders were closed by the end of the day. The nation’s air space was shut down, and all planes grounded. The Sears Tower in Chicago was evacuated, as was the Space Needle in Seattle.
Federal facilities throughout the country were closed, making tasks as simple as buying a stamp all but impossible. The Postal Service, citing security concerns, said no mail would be collected from blue boxes today in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
Two arrested in Jersey
Late last night, New Jersey state police confirmed that two men had been arrested and detained for questioning. Officials characterized as inaccurate reports that a truckload of explosives had been found near the George Washington Bridge.
“Everything is under investigation now,” said Sgt. Mike McIntyre of the New Jersey state police. “They don’t know if it’s related to what happened today.
“Amid the horror and the devastation were countless stories of bravery and valor, as New Yorkers faced the seemingly insurmountable with characteristic grit.
The explosions were so big that papers from inside the World Trade Center were still landing in Brooklyn’s furthest reaches by midafternoon.
Maggie Springs, 63, of Coney Island plucked a singed business card from a company executive who worked on the 64th floor, and a summary of someone’s retirement account from Prime America, a shareholder’s service.
“People just started to grab the papers,” Springs said. “We wanted to help since everything over there has gotten misplaced.”
In a strange footnote, Lee Robertson, the structural engineer of the World Trade Center, talked about terrorism on high-rises at a conference in Frankfurt, Germany, last week, Chicago engineer Joseph Burns told the Chicago Tribune.
Of the World Trade Center, Burns reportedly told the conference, “I designed it for a [Boeing] 707 to hit it.”
Well into the night, scores of New Yorkers filed somberly into St. Patrick’s Cathedral to offer prayers and remembrances. Among them was Gov. Pataki and his daughter, Emily, who met with Edward Cardinal Egan.
“This is one of the darkest days in American history,” said Pataki as he emerged from the cathedral. “It’s important, as we do everything we can to respond to this tragedy, that we also stop and say a prayer, and reflect, and give a prayer for those who have lost their lives.”
