9/11 ~ The World Trade Center ~ North Tower

At 8:46 am on September 11, 2001,  5 cowardly terrorists using their twisted version of the Muslim religion as justification for mass murder, flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center’s North Tower (1 WTC).

And our world, as we knew it, changed forever.

There were 87 passengers and crew on that flight. It is assumed that they were all killed instantly. However, the 1434 innocent people trapped in 1 WTC, unless they were in the impact zone, suffered for an agonizing 102 minutes and 5 seconds until the tower fell at 10:28:05 am.

No one on the floors above the impact zone survived.

Likely fearing there was no possibility of rescue and not wanting to suffer the painful death of smoke inhalation or burning alive, at least 100 people — possibly as many as 250 — jumped from the North Tower to their deaths. Many jumped in pairs and held hands until they could no longer do so. It is thought that these people jumped either as a way to exert the last bit of control they had over their lives — how they would die — or because they just wanted to breathe fresh air and escape the intense heat from the fires. Firefighter Daniel Thomas Suhr, who was on the street in front of the tower, was hit by a jumper and died. No air evacuation was attempted because of the dense smoke from the fires prevented a safe roof landing.

From USA Today:

“It took three or four to realize: They were people,” says James Logozzo, who had gathered with co-workers in a Morgan Stanley boardroom on the 72nd floor of the south tower, just 120 feet away from the north tower. “Then this one woman fell.”

She fell closer to the south tower, he recalls. Logozzo saw her face. She had dark hair and olive skin, a white blouse and black skirt. She fell with her back to the ground, flat, staring up.

“The look on her face was shock. She wasn’t screaming. It was slow motion. When she hit, there was nothing left,” Logozzo says.

From The 9-11 jumpers; they didn’t “jump”:

The jumping started shortly after the first jet hit at 8:46 a.m. People jumped continuously during the 102 minutes that the north tower stood. Two people jumped as the north tower began to fall at 10:28 a.m., witnesses said.

For those who jumped, the fall lasted 10 seconds. They struck the ground at just less than 150 miles per hour — not fast enough to cause unconsciousness while falling, but fast enough to ensure instant death on impact. People jumped from all four sides of the north tower. They jumped alone, in pairs and in groups.

Most came from the north tower’s 101st to 105th floors, where the Cantor Fitzgerald bond firm had offices, and the 106th and 107th floors, where a conference was underway at the Windows on the World restaurant. Others leaped from the 93rd through 100th floor offices of Marsh & McLennan insurance company.

 

Of the 1434 people murdered at the North Tower, 87 were passengers on Flight 11 and 121 were New York City firefighters and paramedics. I was unable to find any statistics on how many NYC and PAPD officers were killed in 1 WTC.

Tags: 9/11, featured, North Tower

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