The 9/11 Trauma
The story
On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, four commercial airliners leaving from the East Coast and heading for California were hijacked mid-flight by 19 al-Queda terrorists.
The First Plane: At 8:46 AM, as people were arriving in their offices at the World Trade Center, the first of two planes—each a Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel—crashed into the 110-floor North Tower. The aircraft entered the tower intact.
The Second Plane: Sixteen minutes later, the second plane sliced through the South Tower, causing a massive explosion and showering its burning debris, including an engine, onto the streets below.
The South Tower collapsed 56 minutes later.
The North Tower collapsed an hour after that.
Several nearby buildings were heavily damaged but the sole church—Trinity, built in 1846— survived untouched.
The Third Plane was hijacked over Ohio and at 9:37 AM crashed into the western wing of the Pentagon.
The Fourth Plane was flown toward Washington, D.C., believed to be headed for the Capitol or the White House. Passengers, alerted to the earlier hijackings through calls from loved ones, fought back. Hijackers deliberately crashed the plane into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania, about 130 miles from the Capital, killing all 53 passengers and crew.
It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.
The statistics
Note: The numbers and statistics here are drawn from multiple sources. Whenever they varied, the most reliable / most recently available data were used.
NEW YORK CITY
Nearly 3,000 people were killed, 2,607 of them in the Twin Towers and surrounding area.
An estimated 200 trapped inside the burning towers jumped to their deaths.
Almost 10,000 were treated for injuries.
343 firefighters and 72 law enforcement officers died in what was the single deadliest incident in American history for firefighters and law enforcement officers.
Hundreds more died later—and continue to die—from long-term health effects, including volunteers exposed to the toxic waste and air of Ground Zero.
THE PENTAGON
The crash killed 125 people inside the Pentagon and all 59 passengers and crew.
SHANKSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA
The crash killed all 53 passengers and crew.
The deaths do not end there.
AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR
More than 8,000 American troops have died so far in the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan and deployments in Iraq and surrounding regions.