Larry Silverstein
In a later address before Congress, the president declared, "As a symbol of America's resolve, my administration will work with Congress, and these two leaders, to show the world that we will rebuild New York City." The immediate response from World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein was that "it would be the tragedy of tragedies not to rebuild this part of New York. It would give the terrorists the victory they seek." However, by 2011, only one building, 7 World Trade Center, had been rebuilt. The buildings that have been rebuilt as of June 2018 include 7 World Trade Center, One World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, and 3 World Trade Center. The original twin towers took less than three years from start of construction to be finished and five years from the beginning planning stages. However, given the complexity and highly political nature of the rebuilding efforts, they are often cited as an example of a successful public-private collaboration and are taught as a case study in successful negotiations.
3 WTC, next to the new PATH hub, features K-shaped bracing; 4 WTC features a steel frame encapsulated in concrete, both left. 7 WTC, right, uses ultraclear low-iron glass for spectacular reflectivity. (Photograph by Joe Woolhead, courtesy of Silverstein Properties, left. Photograph courtesy of Silverstein Properties, right.)
Larry Silverstein
Silverstein has said in interviews that he usually spent his mornings in breakfast meetings at Windows on the World on top of the World Trade Center North Tower, and with new tenants in the building. However, the morning of September 11th, 2001, his wife insisted that he attend a medical appointment. Due to the appointment, he escaped almost certain death. All of the buildings at the World Trade Center, including buildings 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, were destroyed or damaged beyond repair on September 11, 2001. After a protracted dispute with insurers over the amount of coverage available for rebuilding World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5, a series of court decisions determined that a maximum of $4.55 billion was payable and settlements were reached with the insurers in 2007.
The insurance policies for World Trade Center buildings 1 WTC, 2 WTC, 4 WTC AND 5 WTC had a collective face amount of $3.55 billion. Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, Silverstein sought to collect double the face amount (~$7.1 billion) on the basis that the two separate airplane strikes into two separate buildings constituted two occurrences within the meaning of the policies. The insurance companies took the opposite view, and the matter went to court. Based on differences in the definition of "occurrence" (the insurance policy term governing the amount of insurance) and uncertainties over which definition of "occurrence" applied, the court split the insurers into two groups for jury trials on the question of which definition of "occurrence" applied and whether the insurance contracts were subject to the "one occurrence" interpretation or the "two occurrence" interpretation.
Almost as soon as the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, thousands of firefighters, police officers, construction workers, search-and-rescue dogs and volunteers headed to Ground Zero to look for survivors. Because they didn’t know how many people were trapped alive in the wreckage, firefighters and other rescue workers had to search carefully through the unstable piles of rubble for air pockets, called “voids,” where they might find people who had been unable to escape from the collapsing buildings. To be safe, they didn’t use any heavy equipment at first. Some dug with their bare hands, while others formed bucket brigades to move small amounts of debris as efficiently as possible.
An aerial view of Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
U.S. Customs/Getty Images
The first trial resulted in a verdict on April 29, 2004, that 10 of the insurers in this group were subject to the "one occurrence" interpretation, so their liability was limited to the face value of those policies, and 3 insurers were added to the second trial group. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on one insurer, Swiss Reinsurance, at that time, but did so several days later on May 3, 2004, finding that this company was also subject to the "one occurrence" interpretation. Silverstein appealed the Swiss Re decision, but lost that appeal on October 19, 2006. The second trial resulted in a verdict on December 6, 2004, that 9 insurers were subject to the "two occurrences" interpretation and, therefore, liable for a maximum of double the face value of those particular policies ($2.2 billion). The total potential payout, therefore, was capped at $4.577 billion for buildings 1, 2, 4, and 5. An appraisal followed to determine the value of the insured loss.
Silverstein's lease with the Port Authority, for the World Trade Center complex, requires him to continue paying $102 million annually in base rent. He is applying insurance payments toward the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site.
In March 2007, Silverstein appeared at a rally of construction workers and public officials outside of an insurance industry conference to highlight what he describes as the failures of insurers Allianz & Royal and Sun Alliance to pay $800 million in claims related to the attacks. Insurers cite an agreement to split payments between Mr. Silverstein and the Port Authority as a cause for concern.
Unfortunately, there were not many survivors to find: Two firemen were pulled from their truck in a cavity beneath some wreckage, and a few people were pinned at the edges of the pile. By September 12, workers had rescued all of the people who were trapped at the site. After that, the Ground Zero workers had a new and more heartbreaking mission: to sift carefully through the debris in search of human remains. The fallen buildings were unstable, and engineers worried that the weight of trucks and cranes would cause the wreckage to shift and collapse again, so the workers had to keep using the bucket brigades. Meanwhile, huge fires continued to burn at the center of the pile. Jagged, sharp pieces of iron and steel were everywhere. The work was so dangerous that many firefighters and police officers wrote their names and phone numbers on their forearms in case they fell into the hole or were crushed.
"Almost as soon as the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, thousands of firefighters, police officers, construction workers, search-and-rescue dogs and their handlers and volunteers headed to Ground Zero to look for survivors. Because they didn't know how many people were trapped alive in the wreckage, firefighters and other rescue workers had to search carefully through the unstable piles of rubble for air pockets, called "voids," where they might find people who had been unable to escape from the collapsing buildings. To be safe, they didn't use any heavy equipment at first. Some dug with their bare hands, while others formed bucket brigades to move small amounts of debris as efficiently as possible."
Jeff Johns was a Transit Authority foreman and a volunteer "rescuer," who was also a production assistant for director Lou Angeli. I guess that means they couldn't find a New York City fireman willing to go on camera.
"I remember, the first thing, was you couldn't believe it. You just couldn't believe it. It was beyond the scope of imagination. It wasn't a building, it wasn't two buildings, it was blocks. Walking was almost impossible. When all the steel had intertwined, a shovel would just bounce off---if it hits one piece of steel it's going to bounce off. The only way to do it is to force your hands down in there and put it in a bucket. That's how most of the buckets were filled. "The most dangerous job site I've ever seen in my life. Just danger everywhere. But, ah, below your feet was why you were there. "There were no direct orders, no one person or group in command. Those in the bucket lines were solemn and intently focused. "You would find yourself moving further and further, up, around and down in to the center of ah, what used to be the towers. When you made it to the absolute front there was about four or five maybe six guys. That was the circle of digging, that was the circle of prying, of ripping, of cutting. And when you got there to the front, you didn't want to leave. I mean, you're there! If you're going to make a difference, that's the place to be. So you stayed there for as long as you possibly could. And for me, I stayed there until my hands didn't work anymore."
Written by Anonymous - you believe there was not a bucket brigade and the photo's were staged ???? you are retarded ,the fact is that the bucket brigade was made up of volunteer's we got nine people out alive but they made us stop so the PRESIDENT could come and then they brought in huge bulldozers and cranes and completely destroyed any chance of finding any more survivors , I am talking about the survivors from the first collapse not the firefighters caught in the second one I have been waiting 8 years for the truth about this and other things at ground zero to come out . I know because I was there and I know that a lot of the guys that were there with me are now dead but some of us are still alive and we know the truth and we know that what was done there was a disgrace and a cover up and we can proove it .
In fact, the site was awash in harmful fumes and toxic dust. Especially in the days immediately after the towers fell, when investigators estimated that only 20 percent of the workers at the site had masks that would protect their lungs, the air was filled with diesel exhaust, pulverized cement, glass fibers, asbestos, silica, benzene from the jet fuel and lead. On September 11 alone more than 300 workers sought treatment for eye and respiratory problems caused by the pollutants in the air. Soon the official workers at Ground Zero received masks and other protective gear, but volunteers and other workers–like the day laborers and undocumented workers who were hired to clean the dust from nearby office buildings–simply covered their faces with bandannas and hoped for the best.
The Sphere sculpture is almost reminiscent of a fallen space aliens ship as a battalion chief steps over the twisted pile of steel to meet and communicate with another comrade who rests his left hand against a white pole with a sunken American flag attached above..
Eventually, the pile stabilized enough that construction crews could start using excavators and other heavy equipment. Ironworkers hung from tall cranes and cut the buildings down, one reporter said, “like trees.” Structural engineers worked to reinforce the giant concrete “bathtub” that formed the two-by-four-block foundation of the buildings and protected it from flooding by the Hudson River. Crews built roads across the site to make it easier to haul away the debris. (By May 2002, when the cleanup officially ended, workers had moved more than 108,000 truckloads–1.8 million tons–of rubble to a Staten Island landfill.) But the site was still dangerous. Underground fires continued to burn for months. Every time a crane moved a large chunk of debris, the sudden rush of oxygen intensified the flames. Downtown Manhattan reeked of smoke and burning rubber, plastic and steel.
A relief worker furthest left ponders his thoughts on a white bucket of debris as he imagines the towers before the collapse and what they have become..
Orio Joseph Palmer
Orio Joseph Palmer (March 2nd, 1956 – September 11th, 2001) was a Battalion Chief of the New York City Fire Department who died while rescuing civilians trapped inside the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. Palmer led the team of firefighters that reached the 78th floor of the South Tower, the floor where the plane had struck the building. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, audio and video recordings prominently featuring Orio Palmer have played an important role in the ongoing analysis of problems with radio communications during the September 11th attacks.
Palmer had three children. He graduated from Cardinal Spellman High School in The Bronx, New York in 1974. He held an associate degree in electrical technology. According to John Norman, Palmer was very fit and ran marathon races. Historian Peter Charles Hoffer wrote that Palmer was "in superb condition". Reporter Michael Daly wrote, "The 45-year-old Palmer was one of the department's rising stars, renowned for his smarts and nerve and decency, as well as his physical fitness." He was married to Debbie Palmer, and had three children, Dana, Keith and Alyssa. Palmer finished the New York City marathon as well as a dozen half-marathons and a couple of triathlons. Orio was also the first FDNY member to be awarded the department's physical fitness award five times.
He was said to be one of the "most knowledgeable people in the department" about radio communication in high-rise fires, and authored a training article for the department on how to use repeaters to boost radio reception during such emergencies. Palmer was also published in a number of nationally distributed firefighting magazines as well as the internal FDNY newsletter. He also taught FDNY promotional classes at night while working toward his own bachelor's degree in Fire Engineering from John Jay College.
Chief Hayden (left) and Chief San Filippo, FDNY.
Footage of Palmer was used in the CBS film 9/11, and later in the HBO film In Memoriam: New York City, 9/11/01. The video footage was shot by French documentary filmmaker Jules Naudet at the North Tower. It shows Palmer conferring with Deputy Chief Peter Hayden and Assistant Chief Donald Burns at the North Tower. The South Tower had just been hit. The men discuss how to respond to the two towers, and the communications problems they faced. The sound of a falling body hitting pavement outside reverberates. According to Michael Daly, "Palmer stood steady and calm, an air pack on his back, a red flashlight bound with black elastic to his white helmet, a radio in his left hand. His face showed only a readiness to do whatever was needed." The men decided that Burns and Palmer would proceed to the South Tower.
The Memorial Firefighter Climb sees firefighters from around New Zealand and the United States come together to remember, with the date of 9/11 chosen to coincide with the worst firefighter tragedy in recent history. The Memorial Climb allows us to pay our respects to those lost in a tragic world event and the many Kiwi firefighters who’ve lost their lives in the line of duty. It is also an important way that we can give back and honour our firefighters and the incredible work they do in our community every day and for our charity partner Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand,” says Matt Ballesty, Assistant General Manager, SKYCITY Auckland. The event personally honours each firefighter, with the names of the 343 firefighters from the New York Fire Department and all 59 names of New Zealand firefighters lost read out, followed by a prayer and powerful haka. Each firefighter carried a special tag with the name of an individual firefighter lost in the line of duty, dedicating their climb to the memory of that person. Two Chiefs from the New York Fire Department attended the event as representatives, Chief Peter Hayden and Steven San Filippo. Both played pivotal roles in the 9/11 response, with Chief Peter Hayden as first responder manning the FDNY’s command post in the North Tower.
First FDNY Fire Chief To Respond On 9/11 Shares His Memories
FDNY Chief Orio Palmer - 9/11 Phone Calls from the Towers
September 9/11 FDNY Radio Audio
After the first plane struck the North Tower at 8:46 am, Chief Palmer helped organize operations there. Soon after the second plane hit the South Tower at 9:03 am., Palmer moved into that building with Chief Burns. Although most elevators had been rendered non-operational, Palmer found a working one and took it to the 41st floor, which was halfway to the impact zone, which spanned the 77th to the 85th floors. About 14 or 15 minutes before the South Tower collapsed, a group of people who had survived the plane's impact began their descent from the 78th floor. As they departed, Palmer sent word to Chief Edward Geraghty that a group of 10 people, some of whom exhibited injuries, were heading to an elevator on the 41st floor, the only one left working by the plane's impact. However, on its last trip down, the car became stuck in the shaft. Inside the elevator was a Ladder 15 firefighter who reported that he was trying to break open the walls. It is unclear whether the group of 10 had reached that elevator before it left the 41st floor, but those who listened to the tape said it was most unlikely that they had enough time to escape, by the elevator or by stairs.
From the beginning, firefighting was a calling for DNY Asst. Chief of Department and Citywide Commander Donald J. Burns. / Courtesy Michael Burns.
Just 20 people survived the towers' collapse. A total of 2,996 people were killed, including the hijackers.
Chief Edward Geraghty -
Edward F. Geraghty‚ 45‚ battalion chief‚ FDNY‚ Battalion 9. Following in the family tradition‚ Geraghty joined the FDNY shortly after graduation from St. John’s University. On the job‚ he had been head of the training academy and‚ on September 11th‚ oversaw several firehouses that responded to the disaster.
A father of three‚ he was a dedicated family man‚ an avid runner‚ a eucharistic minister‚ and a key organizer for hometown charities. As he rose through the ranks‚ friends recall that the 23-veteran was always a fireman at heart. Sadly died on September 11th 2001.
A memorial garden for FDNY Asst. Chief of Department and City-Wide Commander Donald J. Burns. / Courtesy Michael Burns
When an audiotape of communication with the firefighters was released, it revealed that firefighters did not anticipate the building's collapse. Palmer, issuing an order to one of his subordinates, was recorded seconds before the building collapsed. Peter Charles Hoffer described Palmer's professionalism during the final moments of his life: "Listening to Palmer and his comrades on the recovered tape, one can hear the urgency of men working at high efficiency, but there was never a hint that the clock was running out on them."
Transcripts of Palmer's last broadcast were published in 2002. The actual recordings were made public in 2005, as the result of a lawsuit filed by The New York Times and families of some of the firefighters killed on September 11. Monica Gabrielle of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign commented on the release of the tapes: "Today we are one step closer to learning what happened on 9/11 in NYC — where we excelled, where we failed." According to The Times of London, "Chief Palmer made it to the impact zone on the 78th floor of the south tower before the building collapsed. Once there the battalion chief reported 'Numerous 10–45s, Code Ones' — fire department code for dead people." When new tapes were made public in 2006, Palmer's brother-in-law, FDNY Lt. Jim McCaffrey, stated, "It was emotional sitting with my wife and sister-in-law, listening to the tapes. You're hearing him right at that point prior to the collapse, about the things he saw on the 78th floor. Before that, we didn't even know he got higher than the 40th floor."
Panicked New Yorkers run for there lives as WTC South collapses to the ground below, A huge plume of thick grey smoke explodes out from the tower and engulfs everything in it's path.
After 9/11, a person looks at memorial messages people have written on butcher block paper at Union Square. (Photo by ©2001 Robert A. Ripps)
Doomed to die, World Trade Center office workers and others hang out of broken windows as they gasp for clean air, No where to go as the stairwells are blocked and the elevators destroyed.. There only hope a miracle..
In 2004, The 9/11 Commission Report relied on analysis of the North Tower lobby conversations between Palmer, Peter Hayden and Donald Burns in the film shot by Jules and Gedeon Naudet to better understand what was and was not working on the fire department's communications in those critical minutes. The report stated that, "Of particular concern to the chiefs—in light of FDNY difficulties in responding to the 1993 bombing—was communications capability. One of the chiefs recommended testing the repeater channel to see if it would work." Peter Hayden, who survived, later testified, "People watching on TV certainly had more knowledge of what was happening a hundred floors above us than we did in the lobby.... [W]ithout critical information coming in... it's very difficult to make informed, critical decisions".
The 9/11 Commission carefully analyzed the FDNY radio communications that day, and reported that the battalion chief (Palmer) was able to maintain radio communication that "worked well" with the senior chief in the lobby of the South Tower during the first fifteen minutes of his ascent. A message from a World Trade Center security official (Rick Rescoria) that the impact was on the 78th floor was relayed to Palmer, and he decided to try to take his team to that level. Beginning at 9:21 AM, Palmer was no longer able to reach the lobby command post, but his transmissions were recorded and analyzed later. He reached the 78th floor sky lobby, and his team not far behind him were able to free a group of civilians trapped in an elevator at 9:58 AM. Palmer radioed that the area was open to the 79th floor, "well into the impact zone", and reported "numerous civilian fatalities in the area". One minute later, at 9:59 AM, the South Tower collapsed, killing everyone still inside, including Palmer and FDNY Marshal Ronald Bucca. Michael Daly concluded that Palmer, "an uncommonly brave fire chief who was one of the department's most knowledgeable minds in communications perished never knowing of warnings telephoned by at least two callers less than 30 stories above him." Although they lost their lives themselves, Palmer and his crew had played an "indispensable role in ensuring calm in the stairwells, assisting the injured and guiding the evacuees on the lower floors."
After his death, the FDNY's physical fitness award was renamed the Orio Palmer Memorial Fitness Award in his memory after September 11, 2001.
In 2002, a portion of East 234th Street between Vireo and Webster Avenues in the Bronx was renamed "Deputy Chief Orio J. Palmer Way."
At the National 9/11 Memorial, Palmer is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-17.
9/11 Survivor Janice Brook's Emotionally Recalls The Day's Shocking Events 20 Years Later | GMB
In an early-morning ceremony on May 10, 2014, the long-unidentified remains of 1,115 victims were transferred from the city medical examiner's to Ground Zero, where they would be placed in a space in the bedrock 70 feet below ground, as part of the 9/11 Museum. Reaction to the move was split among the families of the 9/11 victims, with some hailing the decision, and others protesting the location as inappropriate. Among the latter was Orio Palmer's brother-in-law, FDNY Lt. James McCaffrey, who demanded a ground-level tomb as a more dignified location. Said McCaffrey, "The decision to put the human remains of the 9/11 dead in this basement is inherently disrespectful and totally offensive." McCaffrey stated that the remains deserves a place of prominence equal to that of the Memorial's trees and pools, and opined that the ceremony was held early in the morning due to opposition to the decision.
9/11 Stories: Former FDNY Tim Brown
A firefighter with New York City Fire Department for 18 years, who had been at the forefront of the rescue efforts following the 1993 World Trade Center attack, Tim Brown knew what it was to face danger. But nothing prepared him or his colleagues for the harrowing events of 9/11. Mr Brown's story of that day is one of "heroes and horrors," he says. He helped evacuate hundreds of workers safely from the South Tower before it collapsed 56 minutes after United Airlines 175 crashed between floors 77 and 85. But many of his colleagues did not make it out. Mr Brown lost more than 100 friends, including his two closest colleagues Captain Terry Hatton and Captain Patrick Brown, in the Twin Towers attack. He describes the 20th anniversary as "like a monster", a milestone he is keen to see the other side of. "All these firefighters and police officers knew they were going into this very difficult situation, and that they would likely not be coming back," he tells ITV News. "We talked about it. My best friend Terry had hugged me, and he kissed me on the cheek, and he said to me, 'I love you brother. I may never see you again'. "And then he turns, and he went to the stairwell with his men.
FDNY firefighters carry fellow firefighter, Al Fuentes, who was injured in the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Matt Moyer | Corbis News | Getty Images
"All these firefighters and police officers knew that there was a very good chance that they were going to die that day, and they still did it, they still went up the stairwells, and they still saved people who they did not know and then gave their own lives. "In the Bible it says that's the greatest example of love that a human could show another human. And it was displayed by the hundreds of September, law enforcement officers and the firefighters of New York. There are many images from that day that are engraved on his mind, from those people trapped in lifts to the firefighter he saw crushed to death by a woman who had been forced to jump. While the horrors of 9/11 will live with him for ever, so will the heroes. "There were lots of examples of love. And as everyone knows, systems of unity, were literally worlds came together here at Ground Zero to help each other to love each other to support each other. And it was a very patriotic time, and very sadly I feel like those times are gone." He now dedicates his time to ensure his friends, and the nearly 3,000 others who were killed that day are never forgotten.
9/11 - The Pentagon Strike - American Airlines Flight 77
For those who survived the initial impact of two passenger jets that slammed into the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, the nightmare was just beginning. The simplest of escape routes were the stairwells.
To get out of twin towers, you had to take 2,071 steps to descend from the highest floor. But as they desperately tried to flee the smoke and flames, some found themselves trapped in stifling, overcrowded stairwells, descending at an agonising pace. "Once we hit [floor] 69, it was just ... a step a minute," survivor Arthur Lee would later recall. The stairwells became a bottleneck as people trying to escape squeezed past firefighters running up towards the point of impact. Hundreds of Americans on 9/11 who survived the initial impacts from the two hijacked aircraft perished for want of a safe exit. The stairwells were a critical factor in the death toll that day. There were too few, too close together and with walls too weak to withstand the fire. That nightmare scenario has furiously driven safety experts for the past two decades to push for vital changes to US building safety codes.
With many of the elevators no longer working after the jets hit, stairs became the only path to freedom for thousands trapped in the twin towers on 9/11. Up or down, left or right, panicked choices determined the chances of survival for people, unaware the odds were already stacked against them in buildings designed to maximise profit, not safety. Office doors were jammed shut, lifts destroyed and stairwells plugged with drywall that stopped people from escaping..
Advocates for post-9/11 building safety have spent the past two decades trying to prevent another nightmare in stairwells. "It's a lonely battle, fighting all these big, powerful groups," said Glenn Corbett, an expert in fire protection. "Because money talks and it's big money." Professor Corbett teaches security, fire and emergency management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and advised the National Construction Safety Team that investigated the collapse of the World Trade Centre towers. A volunteer New Jersey firefighter, he was driving into the city that morning when he saw the north tower burning and changed directions to get to his firehouse. He told the ABC that since 9/11, he and fellow fire safety advocates had pushed for design changes in high rise buildings that should be "no brainers" for maximising evacuations from fires. Time and again, they faced pushback from building industry groups, reluctant to give up valuable floor space. "This was all about money. Space costs money," he said.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York
When the World Trade Centre opened in lower Manhattan in 1973, its twin towers were each 110 storeys high. While they were under construction, New York City's building codes for high rises changed to allow fewer stairwells in the towers, halving the number required from six to three. Keen to maximise open space without columns or other obstructions, the building designers placed the stairwells together in the same central area of the huge, 4,000-square-metre floors, around 20 metres apart. When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower at 8:46am it sheared through floors 93 to 99 and all three of the building's stairwells in this area were destroyed. Hundreds of people above the impact site were trapped with no way out. They were killed when the tower collapsed. At 9:03am, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower, through floors 75 to 85, but this tower had a major difference, a 'sky lobby' around floor 78, with space to transfer between elevators and stairwells set further apart. Here, one stairwell in the south tower survived the impact, and offered a vital means of escape for those on the upper floors. Professor Corbett believes both towers should have held a fourth stairwell, based on building codes for occupancy rates, but the buildings' owner, the New York Port Authority, was exempt from complying with the city's building codes.
Decades before the tragedy of the World Trade Centre, public safety expert Jake Pauls was advocating for wider stairwells in high rise buildings. Nicknamed "a warrior on egress" by fellow safety campaigners, Dr Pauls has more than five decades of experience in public health consulting, with a focus on stairway safety and usability in major evacuations. Seeing the disaster unfold on 9/11, he wanted answers on whether more lives could have been saved. "It lit a fire in my belly," he said. Now 78, and still shuttling between Canada and the US working on safety committees, Dr Pauls told the ABC the stair width in the twin towers in 2001 was based on an antiquated measurement going back to pre-World War I standards. The narrowness of the stairwell hindered both escape and rescue. Building codes dictated that stairs must be at least 111.8 centimetres wide to theoretically allow two people to pass each other.
Stairwell A
Below the points of impact, the stairs saved thousands of people, with about 14,000 occupants of the lower floors making it out alive. The death toll would likely have been much higher that day, but for one crucial factor: The time of attack. Investigators estimate the buildings were only half full when the first plane struck at 8:46am. Had the attack taken place later, the overcrowding they saw in the stairwells during the evacuation would have been catastrophic, with thousands more trapped as the towers collapsed. More than 400 first responders died on 9/11, including firefighters running into the stairwells and buildings unable to see or hear what was happening inside, and racing headlong to their deaths. There were no video cameras in the stairwells and radio communications had broken down, leaving them unable to coordinate rescue efforts or receive warnings to evacuate. Accounts from survivors paint a grim picture of how the vacuum of information inside the towers compounded the death toll. Even with the sole stairwell in the south tower (A) remaining passable, the occupants above the point of impact didn't get the information they needed to make the right choice.
The tremendous force and power the towers produced when they collapsed blew body parts out and over Lower Manhattan..
When emergency operator recordings were released of distress calls that day, large numbers of victims had called for help from their mobile phones, only to be told to stay put and "defend-in-place". The overwhelming majority complied. Professor Corbett believes that if information from survivors who had made it down the stairs had been relayed to those still in the building with a quick call to their phones, many more may have made it out alive.
The US approved 23 building and fire code modifications in 2008, following investigations into the World Trade Centre disaster. But safety advocates view the changes as a mixed success. They included measures to improve fire resistance in building materials, to reinforce structures against collapse, and add blast-resistant walls to elevator and stairwell shafts — all designed to help buildings stay intact long enough to get people out.
"We can't design for all scenarios but we can design buildings in a way that buys time," said Karl Fippinger from the International Code Council (ICC), a non-profit that develops building codes in the US.
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High-rise buildings were required to improve radio coverage systems to ensure emergency crews can communicate with each other inside, and with personnel outside. Dr Pauls' proposal for video cameras in stairwells was not adopted. A requirement for an extra stairwell did get through, but only in buildings above 128 metres, more than 40 storeys high. "There's nothing magical about that number and those safety features could and should be looked at for smaller high rises," Professor Corbett said. The width of stairways would be increased by 50 per cent, but only in a building code that does not cover most of the new high rise buildings being built across the United States today, including New York City. While ICC codes are broadly adopted around the US, they are a minimum standard for building and fire codes and it's up to states and local jurisdictions to decide what to enforce. Asked whether today's modern buildings could better withstand an attack like that inflicted on the twin towers on 9/11, Professor Corbett is unsure. "Our old-school high rises like the Empire State Building are built like the Rock of Gibraltar," he said. Karl Fippinger said the ICC will continue pushing the building industry to go above minimum safety codes. "Twenty years later, building codes do reflect the sacrifice of the people who went before us, who perished on 9/11," he said. "We owe them a debt of gratitude for their sacrifice."
In 2011 Sean Egan was commissioned by American Ambassador Dan Rooney to create a sculpture to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Sean immediately thought of the story of, ‘Miracle on Stairwell B’and from this drew his inspiration to create his sculpture, which is a visual representation of one of the few ‘good news’ stories that came from the tragic events of September 11th, 2001.
The sculpture was commissioned by the US Embassy in Dublin with financial assistance from Waterford City Enterprise Board, Waterford City Council and Waterford Area Partnership. The launch took place at the Bishop’s Palace in Waterford City in the presence of the Mayor of Waterford Cllr. Pat Hayes and Michael Walsh, Waterford City Manager. The piece, ‘Miracle on Stairwell B’ is a visual representation of one of the few ‘good news’ stories that came from the tragic events of September 11th, 2001.
Sean Egan (L)
A group of FDNY officers were one of the first respondents to the north tower (the first to be hit) in New York on 9/11. They immediately started climbing stairwell B in intense heat and carrying 50lb of equipment. They were on their way up when they first heard and realized that the second tower had been hit and was collapsing. Chief officer Jay Jonas instinctively knew that it would not be long before their tower also collapsed, and made the decision to exit the tower. On the way down they found a woman, Josephine Harris, with a police officer. Jay Jonas had to decide to risk his, and his men’s lives, by trying to help them, or to leave and save themselves. Of course, (despite Josephine’s protests) they elected to carry her out, but this slowed them down significantly. When they reached the fourth floor they thought they felt fresh air, but it was really the building starting to collapse, so Jay Jonas radioed in their position. And that is just what it did, collapse all around them. The searchers, even though they knew their position, could not locate where stairwell B was. Eventually though, one of the fire officers called Mickey Krossregained consciousness, looked up and saw daylight. He reached up his hand through the rubble and heard the words “We’ve found someone”.
Bill Butler (right), along with fellow Ladder 6 firefighters Salvatore D’Agostino (from left), Matt Komorowski, Chief John Jay Jonas and Mike Meldrum, helped Josephine Harris down the stairs of the burning North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.
It is this moment in time that Sean has recreated, where the hands of Mickey Kross and the search team member are just about to touch. Josephine Harris survived and became known as the ‘Angel of stairwell B’. The fire officers survived because, in rescuing Josephine, they were in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, most of the officers above and below the fourth floor died in the collapse of the north tower. Josephine lived until January 2011 and was given a full official fireman’s funeral. On Sunday, September 11, 2011 U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Daniel M. Rooney and his wife Mrs. Patricia Rooney held a Ceremony of Peace and Reflection at the RDS Dublin to mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks,at which Sean unveiled his sculpture "Miracle on Stairwell B". At the ceremony Ambassador Rooney said “Though we are ever mindful of our losses, our deep and painful losses, today we together look forward to the future. We look forward to a better and brighter future. We stand together, today in this place of remembrance, and every day looking forward to a time without fear, without war.”
With more time and simple tools like crowbars, rescue workers might have freed people who simply could not get to stairways. In the north tower, at least 28 people were freed on the 86th and 89th floors by a small group of Port Authority office workers who pried open jammed doors. Those self-assigned rescuers died. In both towers, scores of people lost chances to escape. Some paused to make one more phone call; others, to pick up a forgotten purse; still others, to perform tasks like freeing people from elevators, tending the injured or comforting the distraught. The farther from the impact, the more calls people made. In the north tower, pockets of near-silence extended four floors above and one floor below the impact zone. Yet remarkably, in both towers, even on floors squarely hit by the jets, a few people lived long enough to make calls.
When Kathy Mazza threw her line into the water, fish couldn’t resist. At least, it always seemed that way. Ms. Mazza didn’t get to fish as much as she would have liked in recent years, but she was known as the “family fisherperson” because of her chronic success.
When she was growing up and went fishing with her brothers, she was the one who came home loaded down with all the fish. “On our honeymoon, we went to Acapulco and we went deep-sea fishing,” said her husband, Christopher Delosh. “No one got anything, except her. She hooked a sailfish. It took her 90 minutes to reel it in, but she did it.”
Atlantic Sailfish
Officer Dominick Pezzulo was killed in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks while attempting to rescue the victims trapped in the World Trade Center.
As the South Tower collapsed, Officer Pezzulo and several other officers quickly ran to the building's elevator shaft. Only Officer Pezzulo and two other officers survived the initial collapse, but soon afterwords Officer Pezzulo was stuck by falling debris.
The two officers that survived say "Just remember me, I died trying to save you guys," were Officer Pezzulo's last words. He then fired a single shot into the air trying to let the others know where his friends were, and then died.
Officer Pezzulo had served with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department for 13 months. He is survived by his wife and two young children.
Captain Kathy Mazza, forty-six, was the first female commanding officer of the Port Authority Police Academy. On September 11, she joined her colleagues at the scene. When there was a bottleneck of people at the revolving doors in the North Tower, she shot out the floor-to-ceiling glass walls on the mezzanine. Her action allowed hundreds of people to escape. She was last seen with Lieutenant Robert Cirri as they were helping carry a woman down the stairs when the building collapsed.
Captain Mazza grew up in Massapequa, New York, with three brothers. After she graduated from Nassau Community College, she was an operating room nurse at two New York hospitals, the Long Island Jewish Hospital in Queens and St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, New York. In 1987, after ten years of working as a cardiothoracic nurse in the operating room, she enrolled in the Port Authority Police Academy. She patrolled JFK Airport for a year, worked in the central police pool for one year, then returned to JFK Airport for the next six years. She was promoted to sergeant in 1994 and was assigned to the Police Academy for three years and was promoted to lieutenant in December 1998 while at the academy. Her next assignment was the Staten Island Bridges/New Jersey Marine Terminals command. In April 2000 she became one of only two female captains in the Port Authority, which at the time had fourteen male captains.
In 1992, she had open-heart surgery to correct a quarter-size hole. A year later, she saved her mother’s life by recognizing what her mother’s chest pains meant – that her arteries were blocked.
During her career with the Port Authority, she supervised the agency’s first-aid programs and certified first responder and EMT training. She also taught emergency medical service programs at the Port Authority Police Academy. In 1999 the Regional Emergency Medical Services Council of New York City named Captain Mazza its Basic Life Support Provider of the Year based on her work on the use of portable heart defibrillators. The training program she initiated in 1997 for six hundred officers to use defibrillators in airports has saved at least thirteen lives.
Captain Mazza was married to Christopher Delosh for sixteen years. He is a police officer of the New York Police Department working at the 25th Precinct in Harlem. At a memorial service for emergency service workers, Mayor Guiliani said of Mazza, as reported by the New York Post: “She was a trailblazer with a career that was truly unique. She had an incredible desire to help people. She’s an American hero.”
8:00
North Tower, 107th Floor, Windows on the World, 2 hours 28 minutes to collapse
Windows on the World - World Trade Center, North Tower, Floor 107 - Nov. 4, 1999
"Good morning, Ms. Thompson."
Doris Eng's greeting was particularly sunny, like the day, as Liz Thompson arrived for breakfast atop the tallest building in the city, Ms. Thompson remembers thinking. Perhaps Ms. Eng had matched her mood to the glorious weather, the rich blue September sky that filled every window. Or perhaps it was the company. Familiar faces occupied many of the tables in Wild Blue, the intimate aerie to Windows that Ms. Eng helped manage, according to two people who ate there that morning. As much as any one place, that single room captured the sweep of humanity who worked and played at the trade center. Ms. Thompson, executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, was eating with Geoffrey Wharton, an executive with Silverstein Properties, which had just leased the towers. At the next table sat Michael Nestor, the deputy inspector general of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and one of his investigators, Richard Tierney. At a third table were six stockbrokers, several of whom came every Tuesday. Ms. Eng had a treat for one of them, Emeric Harvey. The night before, one of the restaurant's managers, Jules Roinnel, gave Ms. Eng two impossibly-hard-to-get tickets to "The Producers." Mr. Roinnel says he asked Ms. Eng to give them to Mr. Harvey.
“Inside the North Tower (107th floor): Windows on the World Restaurant + Wild Blue and The Greatest Bar on Earth. Please Note: The Kitchens, utility and conference spaces for the restaurant were located on the 106th floor.
Sitting by himself at a window table overlooking the Statue of Liberty was a relative newcomer, Neil D. Levin, the executive director of the Port Authority. He had never joined them for breakfast before. But his secretary requested a table days earlier and now he sat waiting for a banker friend, said Mr. Levin's wife, Christy Ferer. Every other minute or so, a waiter, Jan Maciejewski, swept through the room, refilling coffee cups and taking orders, Mr. Nestor recalls. Mr. Maciejewski was one of several restaurant workers on the 107th floor. Most of the 72 Windows employees were on the 106th floor, where Risk Waters Group was holding a conference on information technology. Already 87 people had arrived, including top executives from Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg, according to the conference sponsors. Many were enjoying coffee and sliced smoked salmon in the restaurant's ballroom. Some exhibitors were already tending to their booths, set up in the Horizon Suite just across the hallway. A picture taken that morning showed two exhibitors, Peter Alderman and William Kelly, salesmen for Bloomberg L.P., chatting with a colleague beside a table filled with a multi-screened computer display. Stuart Lee and Garth Feeney, two vice presidents of Data Synapse, ran displays of their company's software.
Windows on the World
Down in the lobby, 107 floors below, an assistant to Mr. Levin waited for his breakfast guest. But when the guest arrived, he and Mr. Levin's aide luckily boarded the wrong elevator, Ms. Ferer would learn, and so they had to return to the lobby to wait for another one. Upstairs, Mr. Levin read his newspaper, Mr. Nestor recalled. He and Mr. Tierney were a little curious to see whom Mr. Levin, their boss, was meeting for breakfast. But Mr. Nestor had a meeting downstairs, so they headed for the elevators, stopping at Mr. Levin's table to say goodbye. Behind them came Ms. Thompson and Mr. Wharton. Mr. Nestor held the elevator, so they hopped in quickly, Ms. Thompson recalled. Then the doors closed and the last people ever to leave Windows on the World began their descent. It was 8:44 a.m.
Windows on the Word - North Tower - Floor 107
Up, or down? Kelly Reyher stood in the crowded 78th-floor elevator lobby of World Trade Center 2 and pondered whether to retrieve his Palm handheld from his office, 22 stories above. It was just after 9 a.m. on September 11, 2001, and Reyher, a lawyer with Aon Risk Services, had been interrupted in mid-evacuation. Fifteen minutes earlier a Boeing 767 had flown into the North Tower, touching off a fireball that, across the 140 feet separating the buildings and through the windows on the 103d floor, still felt to one of Reyher's colleagues, Judy Wein, "like putting your head in an oven." Reyher and about 20 co-workers had set off down the stairs, then turned around after hearing an announcement that the South Tower was "secure" and workers could return to their offices.
Windows on the World
They had emerged on 78, one of two "sky lobbies" where workers transferred between express elevators to the street and local cars serving the floors above. At that moment a second 767 was banking over New York Harbor on a course that would lead it to within 100 feet of where Reyher was standing. To anyone who could have seen the disaster in the making, the right decision was self-evident: go down. Reyher, 41, watched as his colleagues piled into a car headed for the street. Then he punched the button to go up. Up or down, life or death. The two great fires in the sky touched off by the 9-11 terrorists swept everything before them--paper and plastic, concrete and steel, flesh and blood. At least 1,100 people were trapped on or above the floors where the planes struck--roughly from 78 and above in the South Tower, and 93 and up in the North. Some jumped to their death; others tried to reach the roof (which was locked) in hope of a rescue by helicopter (which authorities had ruled out anyway), or waited for emergency workers, who never reached them. But a tiny handful--fewer than 20, according to definitive surveys by USA Today and The New York Times--made their way down a smoke-filled and treacherous stairway in the South Tower to safety.
44th Floor Sky Lobby
Offices in the Towers..
What many of them recall is how dark it was afterward, and how still. There were, by various estimates, as many as 200 people crowding the sky lobby when the 767 smashed into the south face of Tower 2, flying in a steep bank that spanned seven stories. Wein, 45, was there with three colleagues from Aon and, in a separate group, Ling Young, 49, and Mary Jos, 53, college friends who worked together in the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. The blast wave from the plane's impact, channeled between the elevator banks, swept north up the central lobby where people were waiting, and leveled them. "I flew from one side of the floor to the other side," Young recalls. "When I got up I had to push things off me. I can't see because my glasses were filled with blood. I took them off, cleaned them very carefully, and I looked around and saw everybody lying there, not moving. It was like a flat land. Everybody was lying down."
With the initial impact, Wein went flying, too, and was airborne long enough to reflect on what a crummy, meaningless way to die this was. She landed on her right forearm, shattering the ulna almost beyond repair. Then, as the tower shuddered and snapped back to the vertical, she slid back across the floor in a jumble of debris, coming to a stop just short of an open elevator shaft through which she could see flames licking up from below. "I got up and walked to the people in my group, walking over bodies. They were all over. I sat down, and Howard [Kestenbaum], my boss, was flat on his back and motionless, and I believe he was not alive. I've known him for 23 years." She remembered that there was a communications desk in the middle of the floor and she went to find it, but it was gone, and the farther south she walked the more bodies she encountered. Men in suits sat amid the wreckage of marble walls and ceiling tile, crying softly. She walked back toward the north windows, where she could see papers fluttering from the burning North Tower, and she sat down on the floor to wait.
What she didn't know, and Young didn't know, was that they were only a few yards from safety. Of the three emergency stairs that ran down the South Tower, two were destroyed by the crash and useless from at least the 77th floor up. But one--Staircase A, the farthest from the impact, protected by the heavily reinforced machine room for the express elevators--was passable, although at times smoky and in places partially blocked by debris. "I didn't know where the staircase was," Wein says. "We were sitting there saying, 'Where is the staircase?' We were so close, but we didn't see it." But Jos, who had been separated from her friend Young, did know where it was. Jos has no memory of the impact itself, but remembers waking up a moment later, covered with the dust of crumbled wallboard. "I turn and look south toward the windows, and I see fire and my face feels like it is totally on fire," she says. "I turn back, and I feel like my back is on fire. I could hear nothing, absolutely nothing. The only people I saw were dead. But I remember a girl who worked for me would walk up to the 86th floor from 78, and there was a stairwell there. So I crawled to the stairwell." She was thinking, she says, of her husband, Dave, who had just retired and begun planning the house they were going to build on the North Fork of Long Island. "I just said, 'God, I can't die here. I can't leave him'." She stood up and pushed on the door to Staircase A. It opened.
Around the same time, others were discovering Staircase A. Six floors above the sky lobby, Richard Fern, 39, a technical-support manager for Euro Brokers, remembers watching people jump from the windows of the North Tower and thinking, it's about time I got out of here. He had just stepped into an elevator that would take him down to 78 when the second plane hit, tossing him against the wall of the car and knocking him to his knees. He got up and scrambled for the nearest exit, which turned out to be Stairway A. It was dark inside and he could smell smoke, but he could just make out a luminescent stripe on the steps, and there was never any doubt in his mind about which way to go: down. "I'm running and running, and all of a sudden there's a man and a woman looking up at me saying, 'You can't pass.' There was a wall down, and it was covering the staircase. I didn't even acknowledge them or say anything; I just lifted the wall a foot or so, and it popped onto the handrail and stayed there, and I went underneath. I hope they followed me." A little farther along he came to another section of collapsed wall, and this time he went over it, skidding and rolling down and landing on his feet. Farther down, the stairs were clear but still seemed to stretch endlessly. "When I got down to the 30s my legs just felt like lead. But I didn't take a break, not once. All I could think was 'Get out, get out'."
World Trade Center Lobby
Kelly Reyher was in an elevator on the 78th floor, the man who chose to go up when the smart people were heading down. But the colleagues who boarded an express elevator for the 45-second trip to safety never arrived downstairs. As for Reyher, he was knocked unconscious by the jolt and came to in a wrecked car in a burning shaft. He squeezed through a narrow gap between the doors, using his briefcase as a shield against the flames, and then, with his colleagues Keating Crown and Donna Spera, made his way down Staircase A to safety. And the very next day he drove far out on Long Island with his fiancee, Liz, and her 18-month-old daughter, Caitlin. It was as he watched Caitlin splashing in the pool that he cried for the first time, over the randomness of his survival, the preciousness of what he had nearly lost and the magnitude of the grief settling over the nation. And it is that which has stayed with him and sustained him through this terrible year, the laughing girl in the pool, a reminder of the moment when, on a sunny, terrible morning in New York, he somehow chose life.
World Trade Center lobby. Opening Day. March 1973. New York
In an extract from her memoir ‘Complicity, The United States v. The People of the United States’, Sharon Premoli shares her memory of the day the World Trade Center was attacked. Saturday 11 September 2021 17:04
You know what happened.
Twenty years ago, on what began as a splendid Tuesday, 11 September, 2001, at 8.46:30am, an American Airlines Boeing 767 passenger jet, Flight 11, travelling from Boston to San Francisco at 500mph, weighing about 12 tonnes, carrying about 24,000 gallons of fuel with 93 people on board, some of whose throats had already been slit by the suicide-terrorists, was hijacked and plunged into the 93rd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, like a gigantic hurtling meteor from outer space. It practically tore through the entire width of the building, straight across, from one side to the other. I was on the 80th floor, where I worked for Beast Financial Systems. In search of eternal martyrdom, the delusional Islamist terrorists methodically planned and successfully executed part one of a gruesome massacre, fuelled by ignorance, abiding hatred of western values and American interventionism. I had never been the victim of deadly force before, had no military training and could not even watch violence on television or in films. My frame of reference was several levels below where I found myself at that moment. Not that my life had been without pain and struggle, I was keenly aware of the dangers and violence all around us, but that was something that happened to other people, not to me. I was open, privileged and unscathed. Years of global travel for my work without any hint of risk or danger had inured me to a false sense of safety.
The scale of the impact and immediate explosion was unlike anything I could possibly identify. In seconds, my brain took over and did what it was designed to do: prepare me for the first phase of battle, because within that maze of complex circuitry most of us know little about, there is a fail-safe system dedicated to making us fight for our lives, as long as we are breathing. Adrenaline started pumping through my body and my breath got shorter and faster, but I had to function. Almost immediately after the impact and unknown to us, most of the plane’s 24,000 gallons of fuel rapidly emptied into a freight elevator shaft, coursing down 93 stories, passing us on the way to the basement, where it became a massive fireball, exploding upward into the north tower lobby. The immense power of the impact’s explosion affected most of the upper floors – all the way up to the top at 110, down past 78, where it blew out the very elevator I rode up in just an hour before, igniting everything all the way, past us, setting fire to the 77th floor. Luckier people waiting for an elevator were blown into the lobby of the Marriott Hotel intact and alive, while others tragically, were instantly incinerated standing at the bank of elevators where I had stood an hour before and where I would have been waiting at that very moment, had I not shown up early for a meeting that was cancelled. The fireball erased our marble lobby in a flash. It disintegrated like tinder in a raging forest fire.
The twin towers of New York’s original World Trade Center under construction, as seen from Jersey City in 1970. Photograph: Ed Ford/AP
Marriott Hotel guests fled onto the plaza in underwear and bathrobes. One man, struck by the plane’s debris, lost his arm while running away from the hotel. Passengers with their seatbelts still fastened fell from the sky along with body parts. Office papers floated like confetti from the cavernous hole created by the plane’s impact. Anyone on the ground walking too close to the building at that moment was badly injured or crushed by the falling debris and bodies. The carnage was instantaneous, everywhere and would endure for the next one hour and forty-five minutes without pause. Up on the 80th floor, we mobilised to evacuate, without a leader. No one seemed to have the critical information we needed to escape. I ran to our reception area with a colleague to check the hallway as an exit. The gravity of the situation was ratcheted up when we opened the door to find that the hallway walls had been blown off, forming a cement seal across our front door. The effect was like being stuck in an elevator between floors - the doors open, but to nothing but brick wall. We were now cut off from the company with which we shared the floor. It was reported that the flames down the hall on 80 were “10 feet high” but we didn’t know that we were trapped by fire and destruction from above and below, close to being sealed in a fiery tomb. I still continue to ask why and how did I survive?
The Marriot Hotel On September 11, 2001:
We ran to another exit in the back of the office that wasn’t blocked. That stairwell ended at 77 and the door onto that floor was locked. Unknown to us was that 77 was also on fire from the explosion. The raging fire behind it prevented the door from opening. There was no alarm although smoke and fumes were clearly present, the sprinklers didn’t work either. No one spoke to us through the building’s loudspeaker system as they had during drills. Back up to the 80th floor to get a key that we hoped would open the door to the 77th floor, but that key didn’t work. We were on our own. All building communications had failed. We were without an exit and didn’t know that time was running out, but by now, trauma had closed in on me.
Every inch of my body had been taken over by the chemical cocktail produced deep within my reptilian brain, the one that dominates, registers and quantifies the odds of survival in extreme danger. It calculates, interprets and delivers the possible outcome as soon as it knows, and it knows before your evolved brain can process what is happening. It focuses the mind, pounds the heart and infuses the body with adrenalin strength never experienced before. The will to live overtakes all systems because nothing else matters. The only thing I can remember about finally leaving the 80th floor is the Port Authority officer who miraculously found us and led us to 64. We had to stoop down to avoid the fire coming through the ceiling, but I have no recollection of how long it took to get all 17 of us to 64 or down which stairwell. I was looking for signs of hope. I wanted to live. My daughter still needed me. When we reached the 64th floor, a Port Authority office, there was a tinge of relief, but still no clarity as to the cause of this catastrophe or maybe I can’t remember. I had no idea about what was going on above the crash. In my mind, a bomb was the cause. As I walked from room to room, I could see many people trying to use the landlines, desperately calling home but they didn’t work.
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