A Day of Carnage and Chaos

The chaos of America’s terrible day began at 8:50 a.m. Tuesday when an American Airlines Boeing 767 plowed into Tower 1 of the World Trade Center.

Then 15 minutes later came the second blow. The 110-story Tower 2 was hit by another plane. And finally, there was the Pentagon.

In a matter of just a few minutes, the nation’s largest city and the nation’s capital had been plunged into an unimaginable disaster.

In New York, huge clouds of smoke billowed from the trade center as fire engulfed the two towers. Workers at the center began jumping from the 60th floor and higher, some with their legs in a bicycle motion as they plunged to their deaths.

Then came a crash and one tower was gone, altering the New York skyline in a matter of seconds. As the mass of steel and glass crashed to the ground, the reverberations sounded like thunder in the distance.

Streams of police moved back from where the building had once stood because their staging areas were being buried under debris.

Kevin McNeal was in his office on the eighth floor of Tower 1 when the plane struck. In the street afterward, he was covered with dust.

“My whole floor was destroyed,” he said. “I thought it was a bomb.”

On that same floor, Robert Liipiak was just opening his office door when the first plane struck, slamming him into his desk. Liipiak guided workers to the stairwell, but it was locked. For a few moments, they were trapped. Then police arrived to help them to the ground floor.

Robert Knowles was on the 54th floor when the first plane struck. As he was knocked to the ground, the windows of his office blew out.

“It snapped the desk out of the window like a piece of paper,” he said. “I was praying I wouldn’t get sucked out the window.”

Knowles said he managed to make it to the 30th floor, where progress in walking down the smoky stairwells slowed dramatically. Water from the sprinkler system was everywhere and the acrid smoke was so thick that breathing became difficult.

“It was really tough,” he said. “I was praying for people in wheelchairs.”

On the ground, there was panic as police and firefighters tried to rescue survivors through the blinding smoke that was everywhere.

In only minutes, the first tower began to topple and police cars began racing backward, away from the carnage. Behind them came a huge plume of smoke and debris rolling down the street.

Traffic did not move and people got out of their cars. Thousands gathered in the streets to stare at the flames and smoke. There was a sense of incomprehension.

Mark Asnin, a New York television photographer, had rushed to the buildings after the first fire alarm.

“We had no warning,” he said, his voice shaking. “Suddenly there was this tremendous explosion and it was like a tornado was coming, a big black cloud of dust and debris. The debris was blowing at our backs. I saw a photographer for the New York Post who got cut up. We had no time. We just dove under a fire truck. It was black, black, so black, and people were screaming for their lives.”

Reporter Susan Harrigan of Newsday was interviewing people when she saw the cloud of smoke racing down the street.

“I started to run. . . . Other people were running with me,” she said. “Everything turned black outside. All the lights went off. The air was thick with debris and ash.”

Directly across the Hudson River in Jersey City, N.J., stockbroker Jeffrey Lippert saw the second plane crash into tower 2.

“All I could think of was just how many people are dead,” said Lippert, who in 1993 narrowly missed being at the center when it was bombed. His wife, June, said the trade center buildings looked like “two giant smokestacks from some humongous factory. This is awful, just awful.”

With bridges, subways and tunnels suddenly closed to traffic, thousands began to slowly trek out of South Manhattan trying to figure out a way to get to their homes outside the area. The most viable options were water trams between New Jersey and Manhattan, but those soon were overwhelmed.

On a Manhattan-bound bus that was suddenly rerouted, Dana Monteleone, a project manager for an ad agency, was on her cell phone, getting news of the disaster and passing it on to others.

“I feel devastated,” she said. “To kill innocent people to prove a political point; I don’t understand the mentality of these extremists. It’s scary and it makes you see how vulnerable you are.”

In Washington, shortly after the second plane had crashed into the trade center, a third passenger jet plunged into a side of the Pentagon.

Navy Capt. Charles Fowler, assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was working on speech when he heard a deafening roar.

“You could feel the building shake,” said Fowler. “You knew it was a major explosion. I grabbed all my gear and grabbed the laptop and headed out.”

Fowler’s office wasn’t near the point of impact, but he said “tons of smoke was coming up from the wedge--lots of black and gray smoke.”

The complexion of the nation’s capital changed in a matter of minutes. With pale gray clouds mushrooming over the Pentagon, traffic ground to a halt on nearby roads.

The streets surrounding the National Mall were paralyzed throughout the morning as people frantically tried to move away from the federal buildings. No one knew if there would be other targets.

Federal workers raced down the steps into the nearby subway, only to be greeted by a flashing sign that warned: “Security Alert! The Metro is closed under further notice. Please try to call a relative or a taxi if you need a ride.” (By midday, the subway had reopened.)

But with phone lines jammed and no taxis to be found, many people tried to flee on foot, exchanging rumors about the attacks as they evacuated the city’s heart.

“We never thought this could happen,” said Mary Shea, 58, a program analyst at the FAA, as she stood outside the L’Enfant Plaza subway stop, trying to figure out what to do next. “What a shock, what a shock.”

Long lines formed around pay phones as people desperately tried to reach their families.

“My mom works at the Pentagon, my mom works at the Pentagon,” one man repeated over and over again, rocking back and forth on his feet, urging the stalled line to speed up.

Abigail Harrington, an employee at the district Dept. of Health, stood with a large group of people on 7th Street, peering anxiously down the road for a bus she hoped to catch. Her daughter was at school and she wanted to be with her.

“I feel horrible,” said Harrington, clutching her hands together. “I can’t reach my husband on his cell phone. I don’t know what’s going on. You never think that something like this can affect the world’s biggest superpower. It’s really, really scary. It really is.”

Some people walked around as if in shock, their hands over their mouths as they tried to absorb what happened in New York and at the Pentagon. “Can you imagine the people inside?” murmured one woman, with tears in her eyes.

Cheryl Lewis, 38, a communication specialist with the Defense Information Systems Agency, was in a training class at the Department of Transportation when a security guard came to her room and urged them to evacuate.

“Why are you just sitting here?” she said the guard told them. “Don’t you know what happened?”

Lewis said she does emergency operational planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that none of the exercises she had done prepared her for this day.

“It’s like I’m helpless,” she said. “Here we are and I can’t do anything.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Morning of Terror

This morning’s attacks (all times Eastern):

1. Hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 with 92 aboard out of Boston, bound for Los Angeles, crashes at 8:50 a.m. into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

2. Plane crashes at 9:08 a.m. into the World Trade Center south tower.

3. Plane crashes at 9:43 a.m. into the Pentagon in Arlington, VA.

4. United Airlines Flight 93 with 45 aboard, from Newark, N.J., bound for San Francisco, crashes at 10:10 a.m. about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Sources: Wire reports

*

Times staff writer J. Michael Kennedy contributed to this story from Los Angeles and staff writer Paul Lieberman from New York.

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This story was published this afternoon as part of a special 8-page extra edition wrap focusing on today’s tragic events. Entitled “Terrorism Hits the U.S.,” the wrap focused on the most important events of the day, the history of World Trade Center, terrorism and other safety concerns. It wrapped today’s second daily and was distributed to major single copy retailers and high traffic commuter areas by early afternoon.

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