University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 78, No. 3, Ed. 1 Wednesday, September 12, 2001 Page: 2 of 6
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University Press • Wednesday, September 12,2001 • Page 2
Military-
Continued from page 1
La. Congressional leaders were Jed to
the safety of an undisclosed location,
and military aircraft were reported
patrolling the skies above the capital.
Natter placed naval installations
under his command on the highest
security condition. He is in charge of
188 ships, 1,223 aircraft, 37 shore sta-
tions and more than 125,000 sailors
and Marines and civilian employees.
The Atlantic Fleet provides combat-
ready forces to support American and
NATO commanders in regions of con-
flict throughout the world.
Navy officials would not give
details about security measures, but
Atlantic Fleet spokesman Mark
McDonald acknowledged that some
measures include banning anyone but
essential personnel at the naval base,
the world’s largest.
Around the country, fighters, air-
borne radar and refueling planes were
scrambled, according to an air nation-
al guard spokesman at Tyndall Air
Force Base, Fla.
The North American Aerospace
Defense Command was also on its
highest alert.
“We have all of our air sovereign-
ty aircraft — fighters, surveillance and
other support aircraft — ready to
respond,” NORAD said in a state-
ment.
The U.S. portion of the St.
Lawrence Seaway was also closed,
said Lynn Duerod, spokeswoman for
the Army Corps of Engineers in
Detroit.
Earlier this summer, all three
Army bases in Hampton Roads,
including Fort Eustis and Fort Story,
began restricting public access for
security reasons. The bases did so
under an order affecting major Army
installations around the country.
Bush-
Continued from page 1
“high-alert status.”
“Freedom itself was attacked this
morning and I assure you freedom will
be defended. Make no mistake. The
United States will hunt down and pur-
sue those responsible for these coward-
ly actions,” Bush said.
First lady Laura Bush spoke with
her husband by a secure military phone
line before he took off from Sarasota,
Fla.
Mrs. Bush and a handful of aides
were whisked by motorcade from
Capitol Hill, where she was to have tes-
tified to a Senate committee on educa-
tion, to a hide-out away from the White
House. There, the sequestered group
huddled around a single TV in their
hide-out and channel-surfed for the lat-
est news, according to one person in the
group.
Mrs. Bush also checked with her
twin daughters at college to make sure
they were safe.
Powell
Continued from page 1
tion of the charter,” he said, “because I
very much want to be here to express
the United States’ commitment to
democracy in this hemisphere.”
The session opened with a
moment of silence before representa-
tives of Venezuela, Colombia, El
Salvador and Canada all made state-
ments condemning the terrorists who
earlier in the day crashed two planes
into the World Trade Center.
Explosions also rocked the Pentagon
and the State Department and spread
fear across the nation.
“I will bring to President Bush
your expressions of sorrow and your
words of support,” Powell said. “You
can be sure that America will deal with
this tragedy in a way that brings those
responsible to justice.”
“Terrorism, as is noted, is every-
one’s problem,” he added, “and there
are countries represented here who
have been fighting terrorism for years
and have seen horrible things happen
in your countries. It is something we
must all unite behind.”
Attack-
Continued from page 1
was behind them, saying he does not
have the means to carry out such
well-orchestrated attacks. Bin Laden
has been given asylum in
Afghanistan.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the
Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said
he received a warning from Islamic
fundamentalists close to bin Laden,
but did not take the threat seriously.
“They said it would be a huge and
unprecedented attack but they did
not specify,” Atwan said in a tele-
phone interview in London.
In the West Bank city of Nablus,
thousands of Palestinians celebrated
the attacks, chanting “God is Great”
and handing out candy.
In New York, Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani said about 600 of the injured
were taken to area hospitals, 150 of
them in critical condition. It could
take weeks to dig through the rubble
for victims.
American Airlines initially
identified the planes that crashed
into the Trade Center as Flight 11, a
Los 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.
Law enforcement officials,
speaking on condition of anonymity,
said it was Flight 77 that hit the
Pentagon.
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 peo-
ple aboard. United said another of
its planes, Flight 175, a Boeing 767
bound from Boston to Los 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.
United’s pilots union said
United Flight 175 crashed into the
Trade Center. But the airline had no
immediate comment.
An emergency dispatcher in
Westmoreland County, Pa., received
a cell phone call at 9:58 a.m. from a
man who said he was a passenger
locked in the bathroom of United
Flight 93, said dispatch supervisor
Glenn Cramer.
“We are being hijacked, we are
being hijacked!” Cramer quoted the
man as saying. The man told dis-
patchers the plane “was going down.
He heard some sort of explosion and
saw white smoke coming from the
plane and we lost contact with him,”
Cramer said.
Evacuations were ordered at
the United Nations in New York and
at the Sears Tower in Chicago. Los
Angeles mobilized its anti-terrorism
division. Walt Disney World in
Orlando, Fla., was evacuated, and
Hoover Dam on the Arizona-
Nevada line was closed to visitors.
In New York, hours after the
attacks, huge clouds of smoke bil-
lowed from the ruins, obscuring
much of the skyline.
The two planes blasted fiery,
gaping holes in the upper floors of
one of New York’s most famous
landmarks and rained debris on the
streets.
About an hour later, the south-
ern tower collapsed with a roar and a
huge cloud of smoke; the other
tower fell about a half-hour after
that, covering lower Manhattan in
heaps of gray rubble Mid broken
glass. Firefighters trapped in the rub-
ble radioed for help.
“All this stuff started falling and
all this smoke was coming through.
People were screaming, falling, and
jumping out of the windows,” from
high in the sky, said Jennifer
Brickhouse, 34, of Union, N.J., who
was going up the escalator into the
World Trade Center.
On the street, a crowd mobbed
a man at 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 wan-
dered dazed and terrified.
“I have a sense it’s a horrendous
number of lives lost,” Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani said.
“Right now we have to focus on
saving as many lives as possible.”
The death toll on the crashed
planes alone could surpass that of
the Oklahoma City bombing on
April 19, 1995, which claimed 168
fives in what was the deadliest act of
terrorism on U.S. soil.
“Today we’ve had a national
tragedy,” Bush said in Sarasota, Fla.
“Two airplanes have crashed into
the World Trade Center in an appar-
ent terrorist attack on our country.”
He said he would be returning
immediately to Washington.
John Axisa, who was getting 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.
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. All bridges *
and tunnels into Manhattan were
closed.
David Reck was handing out lit-
erature for a candidate 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 fam-
ily. It puts everything in perspec-
tive,” Meyers said. He said he called
to check in with his wife. They have
two young children.
In 1945, an Army Air Corps B-
25, a twin-engine bomber, crashed
into the 79th floor of the Empire
State Building in dense fog.
In Florida, Bush was 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.
He addressed the tragedy about a
half-hour later.
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Jordan, Kasey A. University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 78, No. 3, Ed. 1 Wednesday, September 12, 2001, newspaper, September 12, 2001; Beaumont, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth500890/m1/2/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lamar University.