September 11, 2001

The 911 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people and injured over 6,000 others. It caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. In the following years, thousands of other people have died due to cancer and respiratory diseases cause in the aftermath of the attacks.

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“It was a partly sunny day as I recall. I was living in Capitol Heights Md. I had not been up too long and was just messing around with a new 32 inch TV I had bought a couple days ago. It wasn’t turned on because I was trying to connect it my speaker system. The phone ranged and I picked it up. It was my brother. “Turn on the TV!! Do you see whats going on in New York?” I turned on the TV and was shocked. One of the towers was on fire. I asked my brother what happened!! He told me a plane had crashed into it. There was a brief silence as disbelief took over. I carefully eyed the somewhat grainy picture. I didn’t have cable at the time and was using a store bought antennae.  I’m not bragging, just saying. I had thrown out the coat rack when I bought the new TV. As my brother and I talked about the implications and the toll in human life the accident must have caused, to our utter shock another plane had entered the TV screen and crashed into the other tower. We were at a lost for words as the announcer took over our conversation and we hinged on his every tiny description of the event unfolding in front of us. The telephone ring on my brothers end. It was Metro. He had been called by his supervisors to come to work as soon as possible. I told him to be careful and the phone went silent. I was less than a foot away from the TV, as if by being closer I would somehow get more information or see something I hadn’t seen before, when the news came in that a second plane had crashed into the Pentagon, and that a third plane had been possibly hijacked in Pennsylvania. It was going down on the East Coast. I called my daughters mother to make sure the kids were okay. She was leaving work. The District government had sent everyone home and the schools were being let out. I went downstairs and turned on the kitchen TV. For the next two days, I would be sitting in front of a TV watching the world as we knew it change.”

September 11, 2001:

• 7:59 am – American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 with 92 people aboard, takes off from Boston’s Logan International Airport en route to Los Angeles.

• 8:14 am – United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 with 65 people aboard, takes off from Boston; it is also headed to Los Angeles.

• 8:19 am – Flight attendants aboard Flight 11 alert ground personnel that the plane has been hijacked; American Airlines notifies the FBI.

• 8:20 am – American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C. The Boeing 757 is headed to Los Angeles with 64 people aboard.

• 8:24 am – Hijacker Mohammed Atta makes the first of two accidental transmissions from Flight 11 to ground control (apparently in an attempt to communicate with the plane’s cabin).

• 8:40 am – The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alerts North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) about the suspected hijacking of Flight 11. In response, NEADS scrambles two fighter planes located at Cape Cod’s Otis Air National Guard Base to locate and tail Flight 11; they are not yet in the air when Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower.

• 8:41 am – United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 with 44 people aboard, takes off from Newark International Airport en route to San Francisco. It had been scheduled to depart at 8:00 am, around the time of the other hijacked flights.

• 8:46 am – Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 crash the plane into floors 93-99 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building.

• 8:47 am – Within seconds, NYPD and FDNY forces dispatch units to the World Trade Center, while Port Authority Police Department officers on site begin immediate evacuation of the North Tower.

• 8:50 am – White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card alerts President George W. Bush that a plane has hit the World Trade Center; the president is visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida at the time.

• 9:02 am – After initially instructing tenants of the WTC’s South Tower to remain in the building, Port Authority officials broadcast orders to evacuate both towers via the public address system; an estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people are already in the process of evacuating.

• 9:03 am – Hijackers crash United Airlines Flight 175 into floors 75-85 of the WTC’s South Tower, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building

• 9:08 am – The FAA bans all takeoffs of flights going to New York City or through the airspace around the city.

• 9:21 am – The Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels in the New York City area.

• 9:24 am – The FAA notified NEADS of the suspected hijacking of Flight 77 after some passengers and crew aboard are able to alert family members on the ground.

• 9:31 am – Speaking from Florida, President Bush calls the events in New York City an “apparent terrorist attack on our country.”

 

• 9:37 am – Hijackers aboard Flight 77 crash the plane into the western façade of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing 59 aboard the plane and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the building, including my neighbor who lived two doors down.

• 9:42 am – For the first time in history, the FAA grounds all flights over or bound for the continental United States. Over the next two-and-a-half hours, some 3,300 commercial flights and 1,200 private planes are guided to land at airports in Canada and the United States.

• 9:45 am – Amid escalating rumors of other attacks, the White House and U.S. Capitol building are evacuated (along with numerous other high-profile buildings, landmarks and public spaces).

• 9:59 am – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

• 10:07 am – After passengers and crew members aboard the hijacked Flight 93 contact friends and family and learn about the attacks in New York and Washington, they mount an attempt to retake the plane. In response, hijackers deliberately crash the plane into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing all 40 passengers and crew aboard.

• 10:28 am – The World Trade Center’s North Tower collapses, 102 minutes after being struck by Flight 11.

• 11 am – Mayor Rudolph Giuliani calls for the evacuation of Lower Manhattan south of Canal Street, including more than 1 million residents, workers and tourists, as efforts continue throughout the afternoon to search for survivors at the WTC site.

• 1 pm – From a U.S. Air Force base in Louisiana, President Bush announces that U.S. military forces are on high alert worldwide.

• 2:51 pm – The U.S. Navy dispatches missile destroyers to New York and Washington, D.C.

• 5:20 pm – The 47-story Seven World Trade Center collapses after burning for hours; the building had been evacuated in the morning, and there are no casualties, though the collapse forces rescue workers to flee for their lives.

• 6:58 pm – President Bush returns to the White House after stops at military bases in Louisiana and Nebraska.

• 8:30 pm – President Bush addresses the nation, calling the attacks “evil, despicable acts of terror” and declaring that America, its friends and allies would “stand together to win the war against terrorism.”