september eleven

The morning of September 11,2001, was at first only unusual because of the exceptional brilliance of late summer. The clear weather held for days, as this nation and the world looked on uncomprehendingly at the unfolding devastation of terrorist attacks on two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Virginia, and the crash of a hijacked jet in south western Pennsylvania. The coordination of the attacks and the ensuing destruction and loss of life as well as the method of the attacks were unfathomable that day, and so they remain.

The first news reports simply stated that an airplane had hit one of the World Trade Towers, and building had a gaping, burning hole in it. It was 8.50a.m, on Tuesday morning. Soon it became clear that it was a fairly large jet had crashed into 1 World Trade Center, also called the south tower, and all tv stations then had their cameras trained on the towers. The panic in the building coupled with confusion outside and in the second building where some heard an announcement not to evacuate, soon became a general panic at 9.03a.m. As a second plane flew over the city into the second tower, there was an exploding of glass and fire out the other side. The clear image of the plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center, caught from various angles on camera, is imprinted on all of our minds.

The horror of the situation was very clear to those New York who were trying to escape or trying to help. Firefighters and police swarmed to the scene. Those in the twin towers and surrounding buildings had to decide what to do, and how to do it. People on streets watched small objects plummet from the building, which slowly realized to be bodies, either jumping or falling, some on fire. In the days following September 11, harrowing death emerged about what precisely was going on at that time - cellular' phone conversations to loved ones, scrambles down smoke-filled hallways and flights of stairs, snap decisions that saved or lost lives.

At around 9.45am, a third aircraft that had been on a course toward the White House turned and smashed into the Pentagon, the home of the National Military Command Center and symbol of American military might. News of this was just getting out when, at 9.58am, the most devastating aspect of the attacks unfolded. The north tower, the second one hit, began to collapse, as the floors exploded in glass and smoke, and fell one by one until the entire building collapsed in on itself as a torrent of debris and smoke billowed up and out from the site. Ash and dust coated people who were able to run ahead of the falling building and obscured lower Manhattan. It was an unbelievable sight of destruction that, even more than the sight of the second airplane, brought the reality and magnitude of this attack home. In less than two hours after the first plane strucked, both 110-storey buildings were gone.

As the dust cloud from the collapse of the first tower billowed out from New York, and the slow clearing revealed that the entire tower was gone, news of a fourth airplane crashing in Pennsylvania at 10.10am came across the airwaves and added to the panic thought that this was just the beginning. The collapse of the entire second tower in New York at 10.28am marked the end of the immediate effect of the attacks, but more than three months later Americans has still to lose the feeling of imminent danger and to recover a sense of security. This marks the loss of a usual way of life in America as so many commented on in the days following September 11.....