11- 9 -01

NYTIMES.com

It was the day when the unreal became the unimaginable. Sept. 11, 2001, the crystalline morning when planes dropped from the skies and toppled the World Trade Center and punctured a hole in the Pentagon, was a demarcation point that shattered the security of the country and introduced a nebulous and virulent enemy previously unfamiliar to most citizens. Nearly 3,000 people died that morning, the vast majority of them in the gnarled rubble of the Lower Manhattan towers, others at the Pentagon and in a rural Pennsylvania field. A numbed country with red-rimmed eyes came to understand the ugly menace of terrorism.

The echoes of that horrific day have radiated outward in myriad directions, indelibly altering peoples’ concept of what it means to feel safe in the modern world. Investigations were undertaken into how something of such magnitude could have happened, and conspiracy theorists trotted out diverging notions. A war on terror was set in motion that gravitated from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq. The long-running and problematic Iraq war has opened fissures in the nation and abroad, and advanced to the forefront of political dialogue.

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Fact Box

Timeline from 9/11 Commission Report

8:46:40 — American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the WTC’s North Tower (Note: National Institute of Standard Technology report says 8:46:30.)
9:03:11 — United Airlines Flight 175 flies into 2 WTC [the South Tower] (Note: N.I.S.T. report says 9:02:59.)
9:37 — American Airlines Flight 77 hits the west wall of the Pentagon
9:58:59 — South Tower collapses
10:03:11 — United Airlines Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania
10:28:25 — WTC’s North Tower collapses

Time from impact to collapse:

1 World Trade Center: 102 minutes
2 World Trade Center: 56 minutes

Number of dead: 2,992

World Trade Center: 2,759 (includes 10 hijackers and 157 passengers and crew members)
Pentagon: 125 (includes 5 hijackers and 59 passengers and crew members)
Flight 93: 44 (includes 4 hijackers)

First responders killed at the World Trade Center:

New York Police Department: 23
Fire Department of New York: 343
Port Authority Police: 37
Emergency Medical Service: 3

The flights

American Airlines Flight 11
From: Boston, Mass. (Logan Airport)
To: Los Angeles, Calif.
Number on board: 92
Crashed into North Tower of World Trade Center

United Airlines Flight 175
From: Boston, Mass. (Logan Airport)
To: Los Angeles, Calif.
Number on board: 65
Crashed into South Tower of World Trade Center

American Airlines Flight 77
From: Washington, D.C. (Dulles Airport)
To: Los Angeles, Calif.
Number on board: 64
Crashed into the Pentagon

United Airlines Flight 93
From: Newark, N.J.
To: San Francisco, Calif.
Number on board: 44
Crashed into rural Pennsylvania (southeast of Pittsburgh