September 11, 2001 Attacks

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• American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north side of the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46:30 am local time (which was Eastern Daylight Time, or 12:46:30 UTC).
   
• United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower at 9:02:59 am local time (13:02:59 UTC), an event covered live by television broadcasters from around the world who had their cameras trained on the buildings after the earlier crash.
   
• American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37:46 am local time (13:37:46 UTC).
   
• United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in southwest Pennsylvania just outside of Shanksville, about 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Washington, DC, at 10:03:11 am local time (14:03:11 UTC), with parts and debris found up to eight miles away. The crash in Pennsylvania is believed to have resulted from the hijackers either deliberately crashing the aircraft or losing control of it as they fought with the passengers.

No one survived in any of the hijacked aircraft.

The fatalities were in the thousands, with 2,976 people killed, including 246 on the four planes, 2,605 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. Among the fatalities were 343 New York City Fire Department firefighters, 23 New York City Police Department officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers.

In addition to the 110-floor Twin Towers of the World Trade Center itself, five other buildings at the World Trade Center site, including 7 World Trade Center and the Marriott Hotel, and four New York City Subway stations were destroyed or badly damaged. In total, on Manhattan Island, 25 buildings were damaged and all seven buildings of the World Trade Center Complex had to be razed. Later, an eighth building, the Deutsche Bank Building across Liberty Street from the World Trade Center complex had to be demolished as well, due to the uninhabitable, toxic conditions inside the office tower. Communications equipment such as broadcast radio, television and two-way radio antenna towers were damaged beyond repair. In Arlington County, a portion of the Pentagon was severely damaged by fire and one section of the building collapsed.

Some passengers and crew members were able to make phone calls from the hijacked flights. They reported that multiple hijackers were aboard each plane. A total of 19 were later identified by the FBI, four on United 93 and five each on the other three flights.

The precise identity of the 19 hijackers was initially uncertain. For example, the BBC reported 14 days after the attack that four of the 19 were alive based upon the initial identification supplied by the FBI.

The hijackers reportedly took control of the aircraft by using box-cutter knives to kill flight attendants and at least one pilot or passenger. The 9/11 Commission could only establish that two of the hijackers had recently purchased Leatherman multi-function hand tools, but some form of noxious chemical spray, such as tear gas or pepper spray, was reported to have been used on American 11 and United 175 to keep passengers out of the first-class cabin. Bomb threats were made on three of the aircraft, but not on American 77. According to the Commission Report the bombs were probably fake.

In the fourth aircraft, black box recordings reportedly revealed that--after discovering on their phones that planes had been deliberately crashed into buildings- crew and passengers attempted to seize control of the plane from the hijackers, who then rocked the plane in a failed attempt to subdue the passengers.

According to 9-1-1 tapes, one of the passengers, Todd Beamer, had asked for the operator to pray with him before the passengers attempted to retake the aircraft. After praying, he simply said, Let's roll. (The 9/11 Commission stated that Beamer later said Roll it, most likely referring to a drink cart being used as a battering ram. This was, however, a separate incident, which took place after he had hung up on the operator. It is evidenced by cockpit recorders) The term Let's roll would later become the war cry for those fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Soon afterward, the aircraft crashed into a field near Shanksville in Stonycreek Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03:11 am local time (14:03:11 UTC). There is a dispute about the exact timing of the crash as the seismic record indicates that the impact occurred at 10:06 am. The 9/11 Panel reports that captured al-Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said that Flight 93's target was the United States Capitol, which was given the code name the Faculty of Law.

The attacks created massive confusion across the United States. During the course of the day, unconfirmed and often contradictory reports were aired and published. One of the most prevalent of these reported that a car bomb had been detonated at the US State Department's headquarters, the Truman Building in Foggy Bottom, Washington, DC. This erroneous report, picked up by the wire services, made it in a number of newspapers published that day. Another report went out on the AP wire, claiming that a Delta 767 - Flight 1989 - had been hijacked. This report, too, turned out to be in error; the plane was briefly thought to represent a hijack risk, but it responded to controllers and landed safely in Cleveland, Ohio.

At the World Trade Center, faced with a desperate situation of smoke and burning heat from the jet fuel and ignited building contents, an estimated 200 people jumped to their deaths from the burning towers, landing on the streets and rooftops of adjacent buildings hundreds of feet below (a reaction to the attacks similar to the effects of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire). In addition, some of the occupants of each tower above its point of impact made their way upward toward the roof in hope of helicopter rescue. No rescue plan existed for such an eventuality. Fleeing occupants instead encountered locked access doors upon reaching the roof. In any case, thick smoke and intense heat prevented rescue helicopters from landing.

1,366 people were at or above the floors of impact in the North Tower: according to the Commission Report hundreds were killed instantly by the impact, the rest were trapped and died later.

As many as 600 people were killed instantly or trapped at and above the floors of impact in the South Tower. Only about 18 managed to escape in time from above the impact zone and out of the South Tower before it collapsed. The captain of Flight 11, John Ogonowski, is said to have been killed by hijackers before the impact. There were a number of reports, some contradictory, from callers aboard the hijacked aircraft that suggest the hijackers killed multiple persons aboard the planes before impact.

As the suburbs around New York City learned of the destruction so close to home, many schools closed for the day, evacuated, or were locked down. Other school districts shielded students from watching television because many of their parents held jobs in the World Trade Center towers. In New Jersey and Connecticut, private schools were evacuated. Scarsdale, New York schools closed for the day. In Greenwich, Connecticut, about 20 miles north of the city, hundreds of school children had direct ties to victims of the attacks. Greenwich and nearby New Canaan, two of the wealthiest towns in the area, had more residents killed than any other town.

According to the Associated Press, the city identified over 1,600 bodies but was unable to identify the rest (about 1,100 people). They report that the city has about 10,000 unidentified bone and tissue fragments that cannot be matched to the list of the dead. Bone fragments were still being found as late as April 2006 as workers prepared the damaged Deutsche Bank Building for demolition.

Cantor Fitzgerald LP, an investment bank on the 101st-105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 685 employees, considerably more than any other employer. Marsh Inc, located immediately below Cantor Fitzgerald on floors 101th-93th (the location of Flight 11's impact), lost 295 employees, including one on Flight 175. Additionally, Marsh lost 37 consultants.

Approximately 400 rescue workers, most of them of the NYFD, died when the towers collapsed.

The fatalities included 8 children, 5 of ages 3, 8, 11, 11, 11 on American 77, 3 of ages 2, 3, and 4 on United 175.

Almost all the fatalities were non-military personnel, except some of the 125 victims in the Pentagon.

Survivors

According to the 9/11 Commission, approximately 16,000 people were below the impact zones in the World Trade Center complex at the time of the attacks. The vast majority survived, by evacuation before the towers collapsed; fewer than 200 died.