9/11/07

The September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as 9/11—pronounced "nine eleven") consisted of a series of coordinated terrorist[2] suicide attacks by Islamic extremists on that date upon the United States of America.

That morning nineteen terrorists[3] affiliated with al-Qaeda[4] hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. Each team of hijackers included a trained pilot. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners (United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11) into the World Trade Center in New York City, one plane into each tower (1 WTC and 2 WTC), resulting in the collapse of both buildings soon afterward and irreparable damage to nearby buildings. The hijackers crashed a third airliner (American Airlines Flight 77) into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Passengers and members of the flight crew on the fourth aircraft (United Airlines Flight 93) attempted to retake control of their plane from the hijackers;[5] that plane crashed into a field near the town of Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania. In addition to the 19 hijackers, 2,974 people died as an immediate result of the attacks, and the death of at least one person from lung disease was ruled by a medical examiner to be a result of exposure to WTC dust.[6] Another 24 people are missing and presumed dead. The victims were predominantly civilians.

The attacks
A sequential look at United Flight 175 crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center
Four commercial airliners were hijacked en route to California from Logan International, Dulles International, and Newark airports. Each of the airliners had a jet fuel capacity of nearly 24,000 U.S. gallons (91,000 liters).[7] Two of the airliners were flown into the World Trade Center, one each into the North and South towers, one was flown into the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767-200[8] wide-body aircraft, crashed into the northern side of the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) at 8:46:30 a.m. local time (Eastern Daylight Time, 12:46:30 UTC), hitting at the 94-98th floors.[9]
United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767-200,[10] crashed into the 78-84th floors of the South Tower at 9:02:59 a.m. local time (13:02:59 UTC), an event covered live by television broadcasters and amateur filmers from around the world who had their cameras trained on the buildings after the earlier crash.[11]

American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757-200,[12] crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37:46 a.m. local time (13:37:46 UTC).

United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757-200,[13] crashed in a field in southwest Pennsylvania just outside of Shanksville, about 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Washington, D.C., at 10:03:11 a.m. local time (14:03:11 UTC). The crash in Pennsylvania resulted from the passengers of the airliner attempting to regain control from the hijackers.[14]

Three buildings in the World Trade Center Complex collapsed due to structural failure on the day of the attack. The south tower (2 WTC) fell at approximately 9:59 a.m., after burning for 56 minutes in a fire caused by the impact of United Airlines Flight 175, and the north tower (1 WTC) collapsed at 10:28 a.m., after burning for approximately 102 minutes. A third building, 7 World Trade Center (7 WTC) collapsed at 5:20 p.m., after being heavily damaged by debris from the Twin Towers when they fell.[15][16]

During the hijacking some passengers and crew members were able to make phone calls using the cabin GTE airphone service.[17][18] They reported that several hijackers were aboard each plane.

The terrorists reportedly took control of the aircraft by using knives and box-cutter knives to kill flight attendants and at least one pilot or passenger, including the captain of Flight 11, John Ogonowski.[19]

Some form of noxious chemical spray, such as tear gas or pepper spray, was reported to have been used on American 11 and United 175 to keep passengers out of the first-class cabin.[20] Bomb threats were made on three of the aircraft, but not on American 77. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, the bombs were probably fake. The 9/11 Commission established that two of the hijackers had recently purchased Leatherman multi-function hand tools.

On United Airlines Flight 93, black box recordings revealed that crew and passengers attempted to seize control of the plane from the hijackers after learning through phone calls that similarly hijacked planes had been crashed into buildings that morning. According to the transcript of Flight 93's recorder, one of the hijackers gave the order to roll the plane once it became evident that they would lose control of the plane to the passengers. Soon afterward, the aircraft crashed into a field near Shanksville in Stonycreek Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03:11 a.m. local time (14:03:11 UTC). Al-Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed mentioned in a 2002 interview with an Al Jazeera journalist that Flight 93's target was the United States Capitol,[1] which was given the code name "the Faculty of Law."[21]
The attacks created widespread confusion across the United States. All international civilian air traffic was banned from landing on US soil for three days; aircraft already in flight were either turned back or redirected to airports in Canada or Mexico. Unconfirmed and often contradictory reports were aired and published throughout the day. One of the most prevalent of these reported that a car bomb had been detonated at the U.S. State Department's headquarters, the Truman Building in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C. This erroneous report, picked up by the wire services, was reported on CNN and in a number of newspapers published that day. Soon after reporting for the first time on the Pentagon crash, CNN and other media also briefly reported that a fire had broken out on the Washington Mall. Another report went out on the AP wire, claiming that a Delta 767—Flight 1989—had been hijacked. This report, too, turned out to be in error; the plane was briefly thought to represent a hijack risk, but it responded to controllers and landed safely in Cleveland, Ohio.[22]

The Emergency Alert System was never activated in the terrorist attacks.[23]

Fatalities
There were 2,974 fatalities, not including the 19 hijackers: 246 on the four planes (no one on board any of the hijacked aircraft survived),[24] 2,603 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon.[25] Among the fatalities were 341 New York City Fire Department firefighters, 2 New York City Fire Department paramedics, 6 private ambulance personnel, 23 New York City Police Department officers, and 37 Port Authority Police Department officers.[26] Lieutenant General Timothy Maude was the highest ranking person killed at the Pentagon[27] and John P. O'Neill was a former assistant director of the FBI who assisted in the capture of Ramzi Yousef and was the head of security at the World Trade Center when he was killed trying to rescue people from the South Tower.[28] An additional 24 people remain listed as missing.[29]

World Trade Center
Collection of photographs of those killed (excluding 92 victims) during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Prosecution exhibit from the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.
1366 people died who were at or above the floors of impact in the North Tower (1 WTC). According to the Commission Report, hundreds were killed instantly by the impact while the rest were trapped and died after the tower collapsed.[30]

As many as 600 people were killed instantly or trapped at or above the floors of impact in the South Tower (2 WTC). Only about 18 managed to escape in time from above the impact zone and out of the South Tower before it collapsed.

At least 200 people jumped to their deaths from the burning towers (as depicted in the photograph "The Falling Man"), landing on the streets and rooftops of adjacent buildings hundreds of feet below.[31] To witnesses watching, a few of the people falling from the towers seemed to have stumbled out of broken windows.[32] Some of the occupants of each tower above its point of impact made their way upward toward the roof in hope of helicopter rescue, however; no rescue plan existed for such an eventuality, the roof access doors were locked and thick smoke and intense heat would have prevented rescue helicopters from landing.[33]
Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., an investment bank on the 101st–105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 658 employees, considerably more than any other employer. Marsh Inc., located immediately below Cantor Fitzgerald on floors 93–101 (the location of Flight 11's impact), lost 295 employees, including one on Flight 175. Additionally, Marsh lost 38 consultants. Approximately 400 rescue workers, most of them of the FDNY, died when the towers collapsed.
According to the Associated Press, the city identified over 1,600 bodies but was unable to identify the rest (about 1,100 people). They report that the city has "about 10,000 unidentified bone and tissue fragments that cannot be matched to the list of the dead."[34] Bone fragments were still being found in 2006 as workers prepared the damaged Deutsche Bank Building for demolition. The average age of all the dead in New York City was 40.[35]

Fatalities (excluding hijackers)
New York City
World Trade Center
2,603 died and another 24 remain listed as missing[36][29]
American 11
88[37]
United 175
59[38]
Arlington
Pentagon
125[39]
American 77
59[40]
Shanksville
United 93
40[41]
Total
2,974 died and another 24 remain listed as missing.
The dead included 8 children: 5 on American 77 ranging in age from 3 to 11, 3 on United 175 ages 2, 3, and 4.[42] The youngest victim was a 2 year-old child on Flight 175, the oldest an 82 year-old passenger on Flight 11. In the buildings, the youngest victim was 17 and the oldest was 79.[43]

In the suburbs around New York City many schools closed for the day, evacuated, or were locked down. Other school districts shielded students from watching television because many of their parents held jobs in the World Trade Center towers. In New Jersey and Connecticut, private schools were evacuated. Children in schools of Maryland, those nearest to DC, were sent home. Scarsdale, New York, schools closed for the day. Greenwich, Connecticut, about 20 miles (32 km) north of the city, had hundreds of school children with direct ties to victims of the attacks. Greenwich and nearby New Canaan, two of the wealthiest towns in the area along with neighboring Darien, had more residents killed, as a percentage of total population, than any other Connecticut town. After New York, New Jersey was the hardest hit state, with the town of Hoboken sustaining the most fatalities.[35] All of the fatalities were civilians except some of the 125 victims in the Pentagon.[44]

Damage
The aerial view of the destroyed World Trade Center taken on September 23, 2001.
In addition to the 110-floor Twin Towers of the World Trade Center itself, numerous other buildings at the World Trade Center site were destroyed or badly damaged, including 7 World Trade Center, 6 World Trade Center, 5 World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, the Marriott World Trade Center and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.[45] The Deutsche Bank Building across Liberty Street from the World Trade Center complex was later condemned due to the uninhabitable, toxic conditions inside the office tower,[46] with deconstruction once scheduled for completion in September 2007.[47] The Borough of Manhattan Community College's Fiterman Hall at 30 West Broadway was also condemned due to extensive damage in the attacks, and is slated for deconstruction.[48] Other neighboring buildings including 90 West Street and the Verizon Building suffered major damage, but have since been restored. World Financial Center buildings, One Liberty Plaza, the Millenium Hilton, and 90 Church Street had moderate damage.[49] Communications equipment, such as broadcast radio, television and two-way radio antenna towers, were damaged beyond repair. In Arlington County, a portion of the Pentagon was severely damaged by fire and one section of the building collapsed.[50]