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A police scooter sits in the rubble in lower Manhattan, in New York after two planes flew into the World Trade Center twin towers. (AFP photo)
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Terrorist attack collapses World Trade towers, shakes the nation
By Larry McShane, Associated Press, 09/11/01
NEW YORK -- In an unprecedented show of terrorist horror, the 110-story World Trade Center towers collapsed in a shower of rubble and dust Tuesday morning after two hijacked airliners carrying scores of passengers slammed into the sides of the twin symbols of American capitalism.
President George W. Bush, in a national address, said that "thousands of lives were suddenly ended" in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. A fourth hijacked plane crashed near Pittsburgh.
"The number of casualties will be more than most of us can bear," a visibly distraught Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said earlier. Among those killed in the deadliest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil were some of the first police officers and firefighters at the scene, he said.
More than 1,000 people were hospitalized. Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said rescuers had already determined there were some people alive in two buildings downtown -- a group that included some police officers. A police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday night that police had received phone calls from people trapped in the twin towers; the source gave no further details.
In one of the calls, a surviving civilian said he was trapped with a police officer, the source said. The officer was among those missing in the aftermath of the attack, the source continued.
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. ... We lost chiefs. ... We're going to have to bury a lot of people," Carter said.
Cardinal Edward Egan -- who administered last rites to a dozen victims -- said the firefighters and police were "dead in great numbers." Police department and union sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 78 police officers were missing, but Assistant Chief Tom Fahey said the number is not that high.
Emergency Medical Service worker Louis Garcia said initial reports indicated that bodies were buried beneath the two feet of soot on streets around the Trade Center.
"A lot of the vehicles are running over bodies because they are all over the place," said Garcia, a 15-year veteran who had two people die in his ambulance on the way to the hospital. A National Guard member, Angelo Otchy of Maplewood, N.J., encountered a series of grisly discoveries while searching for survivors at One World Trade Center.
"I must have come across body parts by the thousands," said Otchy, 26. "I came across a lady, she didn't remember her name. Her face was covered in blood."
Otchy finally left the area, overcome with emotion. He sat on a curb near the West Side Highway, his head drooping, looking for a cigarette.
Eight hours after the morning crashes, fire was raging at adjoining 7 World Trade Center, eventually causing its collapse at about 5:20 p.m. The evacuated building was damaged when the tower above it collapsed Tuesday morning.
Shortly after 7 p.m., crews began heading into ground zero of the terrorist attack to search for survivors and recover bodies. All that remained of the twin towers by then was a pile of rubble and twisted steel that stood barely two stories high, leaving a huge gap in the New York City skyline.
Giuliani said the rescue operation would continue through the night.
The attack on the lower Manhattan towers was part of a systematic terrorist spree that included another hijacked plane crashing into the Pentagon, prompting one U.S. senator to compare the incidents to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack that launched World War II. National security was quickly racheted up.
Terrorists directed the two planes into the towers in the middle of the morning rush hour, sending thousands of Trade Center workers fleeing for their lives, shutting down all of lower Manhattan, and drastically disrupting every aspect of city life from Wall Street trading to cell phone use to riding the subway.
All of Manhattan below 14th Street, including Wall Street, will remain closed on Wednesday, Giuliani announced at an evening news conference. City officials had opened a morgue in the area to handle the bodies buried in the rubble once the search and rescue teams move in.
Some of the estimated 20,000 workers in the building shortly before the 9 a.m. attack were seen leaping from windows to certain death, including a man and a woman holding hands. Some jumped from as high as the 80th floor as the planes exploded into fireballs, although it appeared the majority escaped before the buildings collapsed.
Initial reports had 150 of the victims in critical condition, Giuliani said. Another 2,000 "walking wounded" were taken to Liberty State Park in New Jersey for treatment, he said. Giuliani said it may take two days before a final figure of the dead and injured becomes known.
Among the dead were the Rev. Michael Judge, a Franciscan priest who served as a Fire Department chaplain, and three other high-ranking fire officials. One of them, Ray Downing, went to Oklahoma City with a group of New York City firefighters to help out following the terrorist attack there.
Hospital officials were preparing for the worst once rescue workers start going through the rubble. "It's a catastrophe of unparalleled proportions," said Bellevue hospital medical director Eric Manheimer.
As night settled, fires burned on beneath the rubble and smoke continued billowing into the night air. Firefighters were seen walking into the rubble with shovels and axes, apparently ready to dig for bodies. Others exited exhausted, their boots and clothes covered with gray ash.
Speculation about the attack quickly focused on terrorist fugitive Osama bin Laden.
"No one has been ruled out, but our initial feeling is that this is the work of bin Laden," said a high-ranking federal law enforcement official who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "He is top of our list at this point."
In Afghanistan, a spokesman for the hardline Taliban rulers denied that bin Laden had any role. But a London-based Arab journalist said followers of bin Laden warned three weeks ago that they would carry out a "huge and unprecedented attack" on U.S. interests.
President Bush ordered a full-scale investigation to "hunt down the folks who committed this act."
American Airlines initially said the Trade Center was hit by two of its planes, both hijacked, carrying a total of 156 people. But the airline later said that was unconfirmed. Two United airliners with a total of 110 aboard also crashed -- one outside Pittsburgh, the other in a location not immediately identified.
Thousands of 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 -- like a pair of enormous glass and steel dominoes -- collapsed and thundered to the streets.
In their place rose two plumes of thick gray smoke that were visible for miles, a grim reminder that hung in the air for hours.
Eyewitness Kenny Johanneman was inside One World Trade Center when the nightmare began. He helped rescue one burning man from an elevator before running outside, where he saw people plunging from the upper floors.
"It was horrendous," he said. "I can't describe it."
The attack, eight years after a car bomb in the towers' basement parking garage, focused on the top of the buildings. Clyde Ebanks, an insurance company vice president, was sitting in a meeting on the 103rd floor of the south tower when his boss said, "Look at that." He turned to see a plane slam into the other tower shortly before 9 a.m.
A few minutes later, the second plane slammed into his tower.
Ebanks managed to walk down to safety, emerging from the building with tears running down his face and ash in his hair. "I worry about some of my co-workers," he said.
Outside St. Vincent's Medical Center, paramedics stood in the street soliciting blood donations. Nearby, on the Brooklyn Bridge, thousands of people stood transfixed, staring in disbelief at the endless smoke.
Three inches of thick gray ash covered the streets around the destroyed buildings. City Housing Authority worker Barry Jennings, 46, was in a city command center on the 23rd floor of a neighboring Trade Center building during the second explosion.
He and city Corporation Counsel Michael Hess made it downstairs, where the lobby was just gone. "I thought I was dead," Jennings said. "It looked like hell."
In the West Bank city of Nablus, thousands of Palestinians celebrated Tuesday's attacks, chanting "God is Great" and distributing candy to passersby.
The White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol were evacuated along with other federal buildings in Washington and New York. The fiery crash collapsed one side of the five-sided Pentagon.
"This is the second Pearl Harbor," said U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. "I don't think that I overstate it."
The death toll on the crashed planes will likely surpass that of the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, which claimed 168 lives in what was the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil.
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