Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 will be marked in history books.
Four U.S. airplanes were hijacked. Three of the four hijacked planes ended in disastrous crashes into American landmarks; all four ended in massive fatalities and casualties.
At 8:45 a.m., eastern-standard time, American Airlines Flight 11 flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Confusion and hysteria had no time to settle in before people attempted to flee the building and almost-certain death. Firefighters and rescue teams attempted to save survivors inside the building.
Minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center and exploded. From the Trade Tower, people had already jumped out of windows more than 100 stories up, plummeting to their deaths, as opposed to waiting inside the burning building.
Just when people were trying to escape danger, media coverage was being broadcast all over the world.
President George W. Bush, while beginning to give an education speech in Florida, announced that these flights were “apparent terrorists’ attacks.” Immediately after the announcement, the Federal Aviation Administration halted all flight operations at U.S. airports.
At 9:43 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 hit the ground next to the Pentagon and slid into the building. The remainder of the building began to be evacuated immediately.
At 10:10 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, Penn., southeast of Pittsburgh. It is believed that this plane was on its way to Camp David.
By lunchtime, both the south and north towers of the World Trade Center, along with a portion of the Pentagon, had collapsed. All federal buildings in Washington, D.C., along with others across the nation, had been evacuated. Later in the evening, the 47-story Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex collapsed.
“Today, our nation saw evil,” Bush said in a four-minute speech to the nation Tuesday evening.
The death estimate is unannounced, but on a typical day the Trade Center alone is filled with 50,000 workers.
Americans were glued to television screens all day to find out what had happened, how America could be the victim of such acts of terrorism and who had created them.
After the shock of terrorism, the economy virtually shut down for the remainder of the day. Flights were canceled for the day as the FAA shut down the nation’s airports. In Washington, Congress, the Supreme Court and most departments and agencies closed down. Federal courthouses and offices and businesses were closed nationwide or put on tight security. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are not expected to open before Friday.
Wednesday morning, Pope John Paul II opened his weekly address with a statement condemning Tuesday’s attacks, saying, “Evil and death will not have the last word.”
Although the tragedy was still too close to the minds of most Americans, one small discovery was made. Nine survivors were pulled from the rubble in New York. Six were firefighters, and three were police officers.
Philip Purcell, chairman and chief executive officer of the brokerage firm Morgan Stanley said, “a vast majority” of the 3,500 staff members who worked in two of the World Trade Center buildings, including one of the twin towers, got out safely after hijackers crashed two planes into the towers.
However, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani warned that the death toll would be grim. “The numbers we are working with are in the thousands,” Giuliani told reporters at a briefing Wednesday morning.
CNN reports that the FBI has taken several people into custody in Boston and in Florida. Authorities also are checking passenger manifests from the crashed airplanes to see if they include anyone who attended flight schools in the U.S. or who used facilities that have airline simulators.
On Wednesday, Americans learned that the Pentagon might have been a second-choice area to crash that plane. CNN Senior White House Correspondent John King reported that the White House says that there was “reasonable and credible information” to believe that the White House and Air Force One were possible targets of the terrorist attacks.
The White House says that this is why the president did not immediately return to Washington on Tuesday. The White House also said the plane that crashed into the Pentagon may have been originally destined for the White House.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said that airline flights diverted after Tuesday’s attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were authorized to finish their journeys. However, other flights remained grounded.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the four planes involved in Tuesday’s events were hijacked by between three and six individuals per aircraft, armed with knives and box cutters and in some cases made bomb threats. Ashcroft said a number of suspected hijackers were trained as pilots in the United States, and he characterized the investigation as perhaps the most massive ever undertaken in U.S. history.
The president labeled Tuesday’s attacks as “acts of war” and said the United States now faces a different enemy than ever before in its history. “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will prevail,” Bush said.
In response, officials of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic rulers of Afghanistan, are appealing to the United States not to attack their country. The country is where suspected Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden is presumably based.
Later Wednesday evening, rescue workers and journalists were evacuated from the devastated area around the World Trade Center, due to a partial collapse of the nearby One Liberty Plaza. The 54-story building houses the Nasdaq stock market’s new headquarters.
While no one has been able to pinpoint the identity of the terrorists, Bush spoke with confidence in his speech to the nation on Tuesday night: “We will find these people. They will suffer the consequences of talking on this nation. We will do what it takes.”
