The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [12]
Even as they talked, controllers at New York Center were watching the radar blip that was Flight 175. “He’s not going to land,” one man exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “He’s going in …”
THE BOEING 767 roared in from New Jersey, looking for a moment as though it might collide with the Statue of Liberty. It rocked from side to side, then the nose pointed down. Fire marshal Steven Mosiello, already at the Trade Center, heard rather than saw it as it came ever “closer … louder and louder.” The Irish Times’s America correspondent, Conor O’Clery, watching the scene at the Trade Center through binoculars, saw the plane “skim” across the Hudson River.
On the 81st floor of the South Tower, Fuji Bank official Stanley Praimnath was at his desk, talking on the phone. Praimnath would recall how, in mid-sentence, for no apparent reason, “I just raised my head and looked to the Statue of Liberty. And what I see is a big plane coming towards me … I am looking at an airplane coming, eye level, eye contact, toward me—giant gray airplane … with a red stripe … I am still seeing the letter U on its tail, and the plane is bearing down on me. I dropped the phone and I screamed and I dove under my desk.”
Three floors up, on the 84th, Brian Clark of Euro Brokers had been consoling a woman colleague distraught at the sight of people jumping from the North Tower. He escorted her to the door of the ladies’ room, on the far side of the building, when: “Whomf! It wasn’t a huge explosion. It was something muffled, no flames, no smoke, but the room fell apart … For seven to ten seconds there was this enormous sway in the building … I thought it was over.”
It was 9:03. United Flight 175 had struck the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors, at an angle. Clark’s chivalrous action in helping a distressed colleague had saved his own life. It had taken him to the side of the building furthest from the point of impact. Praimnath found himself, still under his desk, covered in debris, peering out at what looked like part of the airplane’s wing. He began shouting for help and was soon extricated by Clark, who had headed down a passable stairwell. The two were to make the long descent to the ground and safety.
Many others who had been working in their part of the tower had died instantly. Those who survived the initial impact and headed up, rather than down, would not survive.
Fifty minutes had elapsed since the terror began.
For those fighting for their lives in the towers, those rushing to the rescue, those charged with orchestrating the air traffic still in the sky, and those responsible for the defense of the United States, all was now confusion and chaos—against a drumbeat of breaking news, the biggest, most stunning news in the lifetimes of almost everyone it reached.
FOUR
CNN HAD THE BREAK. ON THE HEELS OF A REPORT ABOUT MATERNITY wear, Carol Lin cut into a commercial within two minutes of the first strike.
“This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot … We have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center … Clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan.”
On Good Morning America, ABC’s Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson had been smiling through a serving of breakfast-time fluff. Then, four minutes after CNN, they launched into nonstop blanket coverage. Like all the other networks, ABC was confronting a major national story armed with a minimum of facts.
“Was it in any sense deliberate?” asked Sawyer, now serious-faced. “Was it an accident? … We simply don’t know.” Behind the cameras, assuming pilot error, one ABC staffer made a reference he was to regret —to “stupidity.” On the radio,