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Show Page ft f HI- DAIIV HI:RALD. (www Mark ThcHcnild.ccmi.Pnivo.LUh.'ruc4lay. September 11.21)01 UNDER ATTACK: A NATION IN CRISIS TERROR I Continued from A I structure. The White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol were evacuated along with other federal buildings in Washington and New York. Authorities in Washington Washing-ton immediately began deploying troops, including an infantry regiment. The Situation Room at the White House was in full operation. And authorities went on alert from coast to coast, U.S. and Canadian borders were sealed, all air traffic across the country was halted, and security was tightened at strategic installations. "This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, K-Neb. In June, a U.S. judge had set this Wednesday as the sentencing date for a bin Laden associate for his role in the bombing of a U.S. embassy in Tanzania that killed 213 people. The sentencing sen-tencing had been set for the federal courthouse near the World Trade Center. No one from the U.S. attorney's office could be reached Tuesday Tues-day to comment on whether the sentencing was still on. In the West Bank city of Nablus, thousands of Palestinians Pales-tinians celebrated Tuesday's attacks, chanting "God is Great" and distributing candy to passers-by. American Airlines identified identi-fied the planes that crashed into the Trade Center as Flight 11, a Los Angeles-bound Angeles-bound jet hijacked after takeoff from Boston with 92 people aboard, and Flight 77, which was seized while carrying 64 people from Washington to Los Angeles. In Pennsylvania, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh with 45 people aboard. United Unit-ed said another of its planes, Flight 175, a Boeing 767 bound from Boston to Lx)s Angeles with 65 people on board, also crashed, but it did not say where. The fate of those aboard the two planes was not immediately known. Evacuations were ordered at the United Nations in New York and at the Sears Tower in Chicago, ls Angeles mobilized its anti-terrorism division, and security was intensified around the naval installations installa-tions in Hampton Roads, Va. Walt Disney World in Orlando, Orlan-do, Fla., was evacuated. At the World Trade Center, Cen-ter, "everyone was screaming, scream-ing, crying, running, cops, people, firefighters, everyone," every-one," said Mike Smith, a fire marshal. "It's like a war zone." "I just saw the building I work in come down," said businessman Gabriel loan, shaking in shock outside City Hall, a cloud of smoke and ash from the World Trade Center behind him. Nearby a crowd mobbed a man on a pay phone, screaming at him to get off the phone so that they could call relatives. Dust and dirt flew everywhere. Ash was 2 : -: . r-. -. : i -j I - - .... 1 J,- I- -. -I.--' jfk'.:., .- "" t t, .. , iv.- . v -J. - .; 1 fi I'- -; 5-. A- M " Vt- -' ' WILL MOHRi&The Asucialcd Prca Burning: names and smoke pour from a building at the Pentagon today after a direct, devastating hit from an aircraft. to 3 inches deep in places. People wandered dazed and terrified. The planes blasted fiery, gaping holes in the upper floors of the twin towers. A witness said he saw bodies falling and people jumping out. About an hour later, the southern tower collapsed with a roar and a huge cloud of smoke; the other tower fell about a half-hour after that, covering lower Manhattan Man-hattan in heaps of gray rubble rub-ble and broken glass. Firefighters Fire-fighters trapped in the rubble rub-ble radioed for help. "I have a sense it's a horrendous hor-rendous number of lives lost," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani Giu-liani said. "Right now we have to focus on saving as many lives as possible." "Today we've had a national tragedy," Bush said in Sarasota, Fla. "Two airplanes air-planes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country." He said he would be returning immediately immedi-ately to Washington. The crashes at the World Trade Center happened minutes apart, beginning just before 9 a.m. Heavy black smoke billowed bil-lowed into the sky above one of New York City's most famous landmarks, and debris rained down on the street, one of the city's busiest work areas. When the second plane hit, a fireball fire-ball of flame and smoke erupted, leaving a huge hole in the glass and steel tower. John Axisa, who was getting get-ting off a commuter train to the World Trade Center, said he saw "bodies falling out" of the building. He said he ran outside, and watched people jump out of the first building. Then there was a second explosion, and he felt heat on the back of neck. WCBS-TV, citing an FBI ill ' J V ' .: Q - II A J.I i-.-.r MMIH, r' - - - --i - j -- Tragedy: President Bush, right, and Florida Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan observe a moment of silence this morning in Sarasota, Fla., for victims of the terrorist attacks. agent, said five or six people jumped out of the windows. Witnesses on the street screamed every time another anoth-er person leaped. People ran down the stairs in panic and fled the building. Thousands of pieces of what appeared to be office paper drifted over Brooklyn, about three miles away. Several subway lines were immediately shut down. Trading on Wall Street was suspended. New York's mayoral primary election Tuesday was postponed. post-poned. All bridges and tun nels into Manhattan were closed. David Reck was handing out literature for a candidate candi-date for public advocate a few blocks away when he saw a jet come in "very low, and then it made a slight twist and dove into the building." Terrorist bombers struck the World Trade Center in February 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others. "It's just sick. It just shows how vulnerable we really are," Keith Meyers, 39, said in Columbus, Ohio. "It kind of makes you want to go home and spend time with your family. It puts everything in perspective," Meyers said. He said he called to check in with his wife. They have two young children. In New York, "we heard a large boom and then we saw all this debris just falling," said Harriet Grimm, who was inside a bookstore on the World Trade Center's first floor when the first explosion rocked the building. build-ing. "The plane was coming in low and ... it looked like it hit at a slight angle," said' ' Sean Murtagh, a CNN vice , president, the network reported. " In 1945, an Army Air j Corps B-25, a twin-engine bomber, crashed into theli 79th floor of the Empire., State Building in dense fog. ' ' In Florida, Bush wasd reading to children in a -classroom at 9:05 a.m. when his chief of staff, Andrew-. Card, whispered into his ear. The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading. HeM addressed the tragedy about a half-hour later. & jtisft saw the top of Trade Two cme 4mm By HELEN O'NEILL AP Special Correspondent NEW YORK It was the scene of a nightmare: people on fire jumping in terror from the Trade Towers just before the buildings collapsed. col-lapsed. "Everyone was screaming, scream-ing, crying, running cops, people, firefighters, everyone," every-one," said Mike Smith, a fire marshal from Queens, as he sat by the fountain outside a state courthouse, shortly after the second tower collapsed. col-lapsed. "A couple of marshals mar-shals just picked me up and dragged me down the street." "It's like a war zone." Others compared it to Pearl Harbor as hundreds of people poured off the bridge on the Brooklyn side, covered cov-ered in gray dust and debris. Many wore respiratory masks, given out by the police and fire departments. Shirley Bates, who worked on the 88th floor of One World Trade Center, said she saw a woman on her floor with burns on her arms and legs and singed hair. As Bates and others were evacuated, they heard a second explosion. "Everything came like a tornado," she said. "People started running." Workers from Trade Center Cen-ter offices wandered lower Manhattan in a daze, many barely able to believe they were alive. Boris Ozersky, 47, computer com-puter networks analyst, was on the 70th floor of one of the buildings when he felt something like an explosion rock it. He raced down 70 flights of stairs, and outside, in a mob in front of a nearby hotel. He was trying to calm a panicked women when the building suddenly collapsed. "I just got blown somewhere, some-where, and then it was total darkness. We tried to get away, but I was blown to the ground. And I was trying to help this woman, but I couldn't find her in the darkness," Ozersky said. After the dust cleared, he found the hysterical woman and took her to a restaurant being used by rescue workers work-ers as a triage center. Clyde Ebanks, vice president presi-dent of an insurance company compa-ny was at a meeting on the 103rd floor of the 110-storey South Tower of the World Trade Center when his boss said, "Look at that." He turned and through a window win-dow saw a plane go by and hit the other building. He and his co-workers raced down the stairs. When they reached the 70th floor, they felt the building shake as the second plane hit. Later, in tears, his hair cov ered with gray ash, he added: "I worry about some of my co-workers." Jennifer Brickhouse, 34, from Union, N.J., was on the escalator heading for her 76th-floor office in the World Trade Center when she "heard this big boom. Everyone Every-one was going crazy. We all got out. The minute I got out of the building, the second building blew up. All this stuff started falling and all this smoke was coming through. "People were screaming, falling and jumping out of the windows," Brickhouse said. "I just saw the building I work in come down," said businessman Gabriel loan, shaking in shock outside City Hall, a cloud of smoke and ash from the World Trade Center behind him. "I just saw the top of Trade Two come down." Nearby a crowd mobbed a man on a pay-phone, screaming at him to get off the phone so that they could call relatives. Dust and dirt flew everywhere. Ash was 2 to 3 inches deep in places. "People were jumping out of windows," said an unidentified uniden-tified crying woman. "I guess people were trying to save themselves. Oh my God!" "I was in the World Financial Center looking out the window" said one woman. "I saw the first plane and then 15 minutes later saw the other plane just slam into the World Trade Center." Another eyewitness, AP newsman Dunstan Prial, described a strange sucking sound from the Trade Center Cen-ter buildings after the first building collapsed. "Windows shattered. Peo ple were screaming and div-' ing for cover. People walked f around like ghosts, covered in dirt, weeping and wandering wan-dering dazed." "It sounded like a jet or rocket," said Eddie Gonza-lez, Gonza-lez, a postal worker at a post office on West Broadway. "I looked up and saw a huge explosion. I didn't see the impact. I just saw the explosion." explo-sion." Morning commuters,?, heading into Manhattan, , were stranded as the Lin- ' coin Tunnel was shut down v to incoming traffic Many left their cars and stood on '-the '-the ramp leading to the tunnel, tun-nel, staring in disbelief at the thick cloud of smoke pouring from the top of the two buildings. On the streets of Manhattan, Manhat-tan, people stood in groups talking quietly or watching on television at ground-level network studios. pOOR |