9/11 Attack – How Many Died?
On September 11, 2001, 19 Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial planes. Two of the planes were flown into the Twin Towers in New York City, while one was crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington, DC and the fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
More than 22 years after 9/11, 40% of the victims remain unidentified, despite the painstaking process of using DNA to match body fragments. Two more FDNY firefighters died from 9/11-related illnesses this week.
The North Tower
When the North Tower collapsed on September 11, 2001, it was one of two deadly attacks that shocked a nation. The other, the South Tower (tower 2) of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, fell less than 90 minutes later. Nineteen Islamic jihadists hijacked four fuel-loaded US commercial airliners, turning them into guided missiles. They crashed two into the Twin Towers in New York City and a fourth plane, supposedly headed for either the White House or the U.S. Capitol, was heroically diverted by passengers and crash-landed outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Fires swept through the impact zones of both buildings, killing occupants immediately. Because Flight 11 crashed between floors 93 and 99, all escape routes above that point were blocked. Safety experts say it would have been impossible for people trapped on those upper floors to escape, especially given that the stairwells had been blown through and blocked by debris. Despite this, there were a number of survivors trapped on the 92nd floor of WTC 1.
The South Tower
Less than 15 minutes after the first plane slammed into the Pentagon, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into floors 75 to 85 of the South Tower. At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed; more than 800 people inside were killed.
Unlike the North Tower, which suffered extensive damage to its impact zone and rendered elevators unusable from the impact area downward, the South Tower had three stairways open above the crash zone. One of those, stairway A, remained unobstructed from top to bottom.
USA TODAY spent months analyzing this event, matching floor plans and architectural drawings to the accounts of survivors and victims. Contrary to a widely held misconception, no NYPD helicopter predicted the collapse of either tower in real time. That’s partly because the stairways were already overcrowded with people trying to escape the fire and smoke. Those who walked down the stairs would be trapped as the building fell. They would die from a lack of air and from inhaling toxic gases and particles.
The Pentagon
On September 11, terrorists used hijacked commercial airplanes to target the nerve center of the military. Two of the planes plowed into both towers of the World Trade Center in New York, while the third, American Airlines Flight 77, struck the western face of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A fourth plane, believed to be headed for the White House or the Capitol, was heroically diverted by passengers and crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The Pentagon would have been significantly more damaged if not for a series of happenstances, including the fact that renovation work was underway, focusing on strengthening and improving the building’s defenses. Bomb-blast windows were installed in the area of the building hit by Flight 77, and sprinklers prevented the fire from spreading quickly.
By the time of the attack, the Pentagon was home to nearly all of America’s military services. The disaster killed 184 people at the Pentagon and more than 2,700 in New York and Pennsylvania. Countless others suffered injuries and long-term health problems.
The Flights
Almost 3,000 people died when 19 members of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda hijacked four planes. Two were flown into the World Trade Center’s North and South Towers, another was crashed into the Pentagon and the fourth ended up in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
It was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. The victims were civilians at and above the impact zones of the planes as well as firemen, police officers and Port Authority employees working on the ground.
The attacks came as a shock, even though Usama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization had given plenty of warning that it intended to kill Americans in large numbers. US intelligence agencies struggled to adapt to the new type of terrorism.
Despite these failings, the response to 9/11 was quick. The US declared a War on Terror and invaded Afghanistan, which remains rife with conflict today. The attacks also led to new legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act that increased domestic security and helped disrupt terrorist funding.
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