An Up Close Account of the Events of Sept. 11
By JOE FURANDO
Introduction:
On Sept.11, 2001, two airplanes struck the World Trade Center Complex, located in the heart of Lower Manhattan. The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, struck the North Tower at 8:46 am, and at 9:03 am United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower. Two other planes were hijacked alongside the former two, one of which, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the side of the Pentagon, a government building in Arlington County, Virginia, at 9:37 am. The other, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 am. The attack resulted in 2,977 fatalities, over 25,000 injuries, and persisting health consequences.
These events would go down in infamy as the most egregious terrorist attack in human history, and the lasting effects they would have on both the American populace and even the world at large would persist for decades to come.
Audio: Joseph Furando, an industrial organizational psychologist, was only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Transcript:
What I remember most is that on my way to a meeting actually downtown, in the S&P headquarters, not a block, I think, from where the towers once stood, we saw a group of people gathering on the southern side of the building and quietly standing sentinel, watching the Twin Towers on fire. We were incredulous, and shock and awe went through all of us. At the time, Joey’s mom was pregnant with him, and so my first thoughts were with my family, and honestly how I was going to get home back to New Jersey.
An interesting phenomenon happened, our phones and cell phones all went out as soon as the first tower collapsed. I quickly took the elevator, against the facility’s wishes, and went down to the street. On 6th Avenue, there’s push-cart salesmen with food and people milling around, and the Canadian Consulate right next door, across the street, and if you were to have gone down to the streets as those buildings were being destroyed, life continued in New York City as if nothing happened. In fact, I asked people if they were aware the Twin Towers had been struck, or if there was an accident since at that time we thought it was an accident, and no one understood what was going on, and no one really cared. Very different, two hours later, when we were led by the police to the west shore of the Hudson River to start our evacuation off the island of Manhattan. But, that’s how I lived through it. I fought my way home that day. My first thoughts were with my wife, Joey’s mom, and making sure she knew I was okay so it wouldn’t upset her.
The way we got our information honestly was really first person. We watched the entire event unfold. In fact, the second plane buzzed our building at an unusually low level, and we were sure once that second plane hit the buildings. We went from thinking there had been a terrible accident in the Twin Towers, to knowing it was a terrorist attack, and the level of vulnerability and the feelings of dislocation were enormous. We just didn’t know what to do. Here we were, in the safe cocoon of the United States of America, and we were clearly under attack. Those planes, we could tell, deliberately went into the buildings.
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“The events of 9/11 are forever etched in the minds of anyone old enough to remember the day. Those who were on the East Coast recall that it was a brilliant, clear morning. Then, at 8:46 am, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. In a meticulously planned attack, terrorists hijacked four airliners. They flew three of the planes into buildings: the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. They crashed the fourth plane in rural Pennsylvania. The attacks killed 2,977 people and injured thousands more. Today, many first responders are still dealing with adverse health effects from working in toxic conditions.”
“Nonetheless, 9/11 marked a historical turning point, with a profound impact on US foreign policy in the two decades since. Although the attacks did not usher in an era of global terrorism, they did usher in the so-called Global War on Terrorism, which profoundly affected what the US did in the world, how the world came to regard the US, and how many Americans came to see their country’s foreign policy.”