The Events of the Day of 9/11

Listen here: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/hwts-252-the-day-of-the-9-11-attacks--61332243

Today’s topic is the events of the day of 9/11. Because our episode happened to drop on the anniversary, we felt it important to discuss its history, but as we worked to put together the why and how of these events, we realized that, despite our feeling that this is only recent memory, we have listeners who were not aware of the events at the time or maybe hadn’t even yet been born. And so, we decided to review the essentials of that day. In the weeks to come, we’ll have episodes discussing both what led to these attacks and the subsequent responses.

            At 8:46 am on 11 September 2001, in the moment American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, few, if anyone, thought it was an act of terrorism. It looked like an accident, a terrible accident to be sure, but one for which the Trade Center’s architects had actually planned. First responders moved quickly to the site, knowing they had a difficult job ahead and that it was likely many people had already been killed, but they knew that the building was designed to stay standing, at least long enough to evacuate it. However, the designers had not anticipated a plane being intentionally crashed into the buildings, the scenario in their head was something like a tired pilot losing their way in fog at the end of a long flight; they did not imagine planes with full fuel tanks being used as bombs. In this scenario, the very design features that were meant to make sure it stayed upright, particularly the centrally placed elevator shafts, contributed to the buildings’ failure. The buildings were reinforced against fire, of course, but the kind of fire that might break out in an office building. Such a fire wouldn’t produce temperatures hot enough to weaken steel, but burning jet fuel can do just that. The steel holding up a structure, particularly as one as large as the Trade Center, does not need to melt to weaken enough to cause it to collapse.

            Any idea that it was an accident disappeared less than twenty minutes later, when United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower at 9:03 am. It was obvious now that this was a planned attack. Two more planes had been hijacked that morning, American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93. The former crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 am. The latter was directed at either the White House or the Capitol, but the hijackers were overtaken by passengers and crew, and was crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at two minutes after ten am.

Just a few minutes earlier, the South Tower had collapsed. Though it had been hit second, that plane was going much faster and did more immediate structural damage. The North Tower collapsed a half hour later, taking with it the Marriot Hotel that sat between the towers. These collapses sprayed burning debris across the nearby area, causing damage and fires in several buildings. One of these was Tower Seven of the WTC complex. Shortly after it had been evacuated along with the rest of the buildings near the towers, a fire was observed; but, knowing it had been fully evacuated, first responders prioritized finding survivors in the collapse site over putting out that fire. It was allowed to burn unattended for over seven hours, resulting in its collapse at 5:20 that evening. Tower Seven was one of five other buildings in the World Trade Center complex that were destroyed due to damage caused by the collapse of the North and South Towers. Three other nearby buildings were also destroyed due to collapse damage and most of the buildings for blocks around required some level of renovation or reconstruction before they could be reoccupied. The part of the Pentagon where the plane hit collapsed at 10:50 am.

In the meantime, the airspace of the United States was completely shut down. All commercial aircraft were ordered to land at the nearest airport at 9:45 am. The Canadian government also grounded all flights save those for military and emergency personnel. The grounding did not, of course, include Air Force One, which carried President George W. Bush as he returned from an event in Florida. At 10:20 am, the President gave permission to assume that any unauthorized planes still in the air were hostile and should be shot down. A Korean Air flight over Alaska was almost shot down shortly after, due to communication and translation problems that led air traffic control to believe it had also been hijacked.

By the time President Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office at 8:30 that evening, the CIA had already determined the attack was likely the work of al Qaeda, a terrorist group under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, who had also been involved in other attacks against American targets, including the 1993 WTC bombing. He did not discuss this in this address, but the information was passed to news media shortly after. Within a day, the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had invoked Article Five of its charter, the mutual defense clause. Member nations later joined the US in its retaliatory invasion of Afghanistan. This is the only time Article Five has been invoked.

With the exception of the collapse of Tower Seven, the immediate destruction was over just two hours after it began. However, for the family and friends of the nearly three thousand people killed on that day, and those of the thousands of soldiers sent to Afghanistan and Iraq in its wake, the horror can never be over.