Slate helps explain the collapse of the WTC buildings, which i absolutely could not fathom earlier in the day.
by krisis
comm
ABC – A short piece on the four planes involved in today’s tragedy confirms some chilling details. First, telephone contact was made from each of the four planes to family and airline operations crew on the ground. A phone call from a stewardess on the first plane gave report of multiple hijackers who were wielding small box-cutting knives. She did confirm the seat number of one of the attackers and said many of the other attendants had been injured. Reports from two of the other planes confirm the multiple hijackers and the use of small utility knives. The plane out of Newark that crashed in midstate PA reached as far as Ohio before altering its flight path. There are unconfirmed reports that someone from the cockpit called the FAA and requested that the plane alter their flight path so that they could come down in Washington; perhaps from as far away as Ohio the pilots were not overtaken in the same fashion that it is speculated in the other cases. There is still no word about the circumstances surrounding the eventual crash southeast of Pittsburgh.
All four planes were lightly booked for today. All of them were Boeings capable of seating upwards of one or two hundred passengers. Total casualties from the planes themselves seems to be confirmed at 266, which in comparison to commercial airline crashes in recent years is astoundingly low.
As pointed out by Tony, this page currently features what is perhaps the level best personal site coverage of today’s events, and i would urge you to pay it a visit; in the end i am only one journalism student trying to get the facts straight just for myself, and any continuing coverage i provide will more be an assessment of the media than anything else because in the face of such a tragedy that is the only place where i feel i can make any kind of effect. Please refer to the CNN chronology, which at this hour seems to be the most complete. Also, i was referred by an unidentified reader to Stratfor.com, which seems to be an excellent aid to trying to piece together today’s events.
As a result of the extensive damage to both World Trade Center buildings, they both collapsed some time before noon. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was briefly trapped in an adjacent building during the collapse. MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield and her crew forcibly entered an apartment building along with emergency personnel to escape the cloud of debris that was quickly expanding from the collapse. Ashley has said repeatedly that the force of the dust cloud was such that she couldn’t even breathe through her clothing, and that it was difficult to breathe even when she was inside of the building.
At 9:49am for the first time in US history all flights were grounded by the FAA. 50 domestic flights remained in the air, although at this time they have all landed. 18 international flights were being redirected at the time. As of right now there will be no commercial air traffic in the United States until after noon tomorrow.
President Bush had been in Florida at the beginning of the day but he soon took the air in AirForce1 and landed around 12:30pm at a military base in Barksdale, Louisiana. The first lady had been set to make her policy debut before Congress today, but was quickly whisked away to an undisclosed location this morning when news of the attacks reached Washington. At some point in Louisiana President Bush spoke to cameras, but to my knowledge this footage has not been made available nationally; so far we have only seen his first address from this morning.
I’m attempting to construct a timeline.
This morning at least four commercial airline flights were hijacked, though it remains unclear at what point in their itinerary their paths were diverted. The flights were American Airlines #11 (Boston to LA) and #77 (Dulles to LA) as well as United Airlines #93 (Newark to SF) and #175 (Douglas in VA to LA). The contact numbers for the airlines are 1-800-245-0999 and 1-800-932-8555, respectively. Flight #11 was on it’s regular flight path until it took a sharp turn in upstate New York. A flight path indicator shows that it made a beeline for New York City. Despite initial reports that may have been to the contrary, three of the planes were Boeing 757 and 767’s.
At 8:42 AM there was an explosion that was the result of a plane colliding with one of the World Trade Center Towers. Immediately people were told to evacuate, but in the unaffected building the evacuation order was rescinded and people returned to their offices. Under a half hour later (roughly 18 minutes) a second passenger airplane appeared on the skyline and collided with the second largely unevacuated tower. This was broadcast nationally on live network television.
Shortly thereafter (before 10:15am) a third airplane slammed into the Pentagon, entering in it’s E-ring, and penetrating into the 4th and 5th corridors of the C & D rings. Debris spread as far as the E ring. No specific office in the Pentagon appears to have been targeted. There have been scattered reports of a car bomb at the State Building and an attack on Camp David, but to this point they remain unconfirmed. However, a plane carrying 38 passengers, 2 pilots, and 5 flight attendants crashed in midstate Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh. My local Fox affiliate reported that someone inside the plane called local county dispatchers and claimed that they had been hijacked shortly before the crash. There is still little speculation on where this flight had been headed or if the unplanned grounded was a result of a herioc act by the crew. There are no reported survivors.
All told the plain crashes themselves involved over 260 casualties.