NEW YORK – By all accounts, and for many, the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 was just a normal day. It was Tuesday. People were going to work and children were going to school. In the matter of an instant, the world as we knew it changed forever.
The first official sign that something was wrong occurred at 8:40 a.m. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) notified defense officials that a Boeing 767 – American Flight 11 en route from Boston to Los Angeles, had been hijacked.
At 8:43 a.m., the FAA suspected that another Boeing 767 – United Flight 175 also en route from Boston to Los Angeles, had been hijacked.
Three minutes later, their worst fears were realized when at 8:46 a.m., American Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.
Seventeen minutes later, as numerous media outlets scrambled to report the first incident, another plane, United Flight 175, approached and crashed into the South Tower.
A nation watched in horror as flames and smoke quickly billowed from both buildings.
Initially, many thought the first plane crash was simply an accident. But when the second tower was hit, the reality set in that the nation was under attack.
As firefighters and emergency personnel gathered in the lobby of Tower One to usher people to safety, the sporadic sound of crashing glass could be heard by people exiting and working in the building. Firefighters later learned that people desperate to escape the flames on the upper floors were jumping to their deaths. One rescue worker said, “every time we heard that sound, you knew a life was gone.”
A New York City medical examiner later said 200 people died this way, and their deaths were ruled as homicides rather than suicides, because the “circumstances forced” them to jump.
At 9:31 a.m. President George Bush officially informed Americans there was an “apparent terrorist attack on our country,” he said.
The final attacks occurred at 9:40 a.m., when a Boeing 757 – American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington bound for Los Angeles, crashed into the Pentagon, and 10:07 a.m., when a second Boeing 757 – United Airlines Flight 93, from Newark to San Francisco, crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The hijackers on that flight were headed to Washington D.C. when the passengers tried to gain control of the airplane.
When the smoke and carnage cleared from each attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) reported that 2,975 people were dead.
What happened on what is now known as 9/11, is a day that many will hardly forget.
The acts of 19 hijackers and the organizations behind them awakened in many a fear on an unprecedented scale. And 10 years later, Americans are still feeling the effects of that fear.
It also stirred an awareness because the ensuing investigation of those terrorist attacks was the most massive in the history of the FBI.
The attacks led to far-reaching changes in the organization, which quickly made prevention of terrorist strikes its overriding priority and the FBI deliberately set out to be more predictive in addressing all major national security and criminal threats.
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks, a number of memorials will be held on Sunday, Sept. 11, but likely none more moving than the dedication of the 9/11 Memorial at the site of the World Trade Center Complex in New York.
The dedication will be held for the victims’ families for the purpose of honoring the lives of those who were lost in 2001 and in the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993.
The Memorial’s twin reflecting pools are each nearly an acre in size and feature the largest manmade waterfalls in North America. The pools sit within the footprints where the Twin Towers once stood and the names of every person who died in the 2001 and 1993 attacks are inscribed into bronze panels edging the Memorial pools. Those names are a powerful reminder of the largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil and the greatest single loss of rescue personnel in American history.
The National 9/11 Memorial and Museum, also located at the World Trade Center site, is currently under construction and is slated to open in time for next year’s anniversary.
The events of 9/11 have had far reaching effects, but museum officials said they hope all will recognize the consequences of terrorism on individual lives, the courage of those who risked their lives to save others, and the triumph of human dignity over human depravity which affirms an unwavering commitment to the value of human life.
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