The weather forecast for New York that Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was perfect. A beautiful day in midsummer will turn into one of the darkest days in the history of the United States.
Around eight in the morning, while many were rushing to their offices on Wall Street dominated by the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC), 19 mostly Saudi jihadists close to the terrorist network Al-Qaeda had already passed security checks at airports in Boston, Washington- Dulis and Newark.
They were armed with small knives and cutters that were still allowed in cabins at the time and boarded four passenger airports for California, with the mission to hijack them and attack the very heart of the world's first power.
Joseph Dittmar, 44, an insurance professional based in Chicago, arrived on the 105th floor of the WTC's South Tower for an 8:30 a.m. meeting. The meeting in the windowless room was delayed when the lights started to flicker and went out. It was 8:46.
An American Airlines Boeing 767 that took off at 7:59 from Boston to Los Angeles, with 92 passengers including the five hijackers, had just hit the north tower, between the 93rd and 99th floors.
The worst seconds of my life
Dietmar and his colleagues realized this only when they reached the window on the 90th floor, after they were told to leave the meeting room, writes Hina.
"It was the worst 30-40 seconds of my life (...) looking at those big black holes in the building, red flames like I've never seen in my life and clouds of gray and black smoke. I saw people thrown into the abyss... scary , terrible. I was very afraid," he said, barely holding back tears.
Many next to him watched what was happening "as if hypnotized". He didn't want to stay a second longer and headed down the stairs, which saved his life.
At the base of the towers, Chief Michael Lomonaco emerged from the underground WTC mall. At the last minute, he decided to stop by the opticians to change the lenses of his glasses, before going up to the 107th floor of the North Tower to his prestigious restaurant "Windows on the World".
The mall then shook strangely. Arriving on the surface, Lomonaco watched in horror at the top of the north tower in flames.
"I could see people waving white tablecloths in restaurant windows," he recalls. "It was terrible."
He thought some accident had happened. Dietmar and thousands of people in New York thought the same, where television stations were already broadcasting the event live.
American President George W. Bush learned about the "accident" during a visit to an elementary school in Florida.
America is under attack
In the south tower, Dittmar and his colleagues were informed over the loudspeaker that there was no need to evacuate: their building was not hit, they were safe, they were told.
Ditmar ignored it and continued to descend. Arriving at the 78th floor, his colleagues invited him to enter the elevator and go down to the ground floor. He didn't listen and continued up the stairs.
"Somewhere between the 74th and 75th floors, the staircase started to rock violently. It separated from the wall, the stairs were rocking under our feet like a wave, there was a heat wave, there was kerosene."
Ditmar speculated with two colleagues about what could have happened. It didn't occur to them that another plane, United Airlines Flight 175, also hijacked by jihadists, had just crashed into their skyscraper, right above them, between the 77th and 85th floors.
It was 9:03. American President George W. Bush, who was reading the story to students in Florida, learned from his chief of staff that "America is under attack."
The president ended the visit. In a short statement, he said that it was a terrorist attack, Hina recalls.
They knew they weren't coming back
Ditmar and his colleagues continued to descend. On the 31st floor, they met firefighters and rescue teams who were climbing to higher floors.
"You could see in their looks that they knew they weren't coming back," he said.
He reached the ground floor after about 50 minutes, the ground was full of steel wires, cement and blood stains. "We knew what it was," he said.
The images of people, of living flames falling into the abyss, will be among the worst of the day.
They went out into the street and walked for a few minutes before they heard behind them the deafening noise of the south tower they had just left being demolished. And almost immediately the "cry" of thousands of New Yorkers.
It was 9:59 a.m. when Al Kim, 37, an emergency crew member from Brooklyn, arrived at the WTC to help evacuate the injured to the Marriott Hotel, which was located between the towers.
He escaped death at the last moment. "I couldn't breathe anymore, there was so much smoke in the air. I remember covering my mouth with my shirt. I couldn't even see my hands in front of my eyes," he told AFP after visiting the 11/XNUMX Memorial Center for the first time this summer, a few steps from the place where he almost died.
The heat caused by the collapse of the tower burned his nostrils and eyebrows. His body was completely covered with a thick layer of ash.
The safest place in the world
The drama was not only unfolding in New York.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) closed US airspace at 9:25 a.m. for the first time in history.
That was too late for American Airlines Flight 77. In the hands of five kidnappers, he was already on his way to Washington.
In the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US Department of Defense not far from Washington, Karen Baker (33) thought she was in the "safest place in the world".
As the crisis communications specialist walked back to her office, with coffee and croissants, that belief suddenly dissipated.
"Heard a loud 'boom' and felt an impact," he recalls. "At first we thought it was a bomb."
It was 9:37 a.m. when Flight 77 with 53 passengers and six crew members crashed into the west wing of the Pentagon.
Fight with the hijackers on the plane
The FAA order also came too late for United Airlines Flight 93, which was headed from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco. He was already over Ohio by then. The four hijackers, who were sitting in first class, broke into the cockpit in order to turn the plane towards Washington.
There were 33 passengers and seven crew members in it, whom the hijackers forced to move to the back of the plane. Many called relatives on their phones, learning in the meantime that two hijacked planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, writes Hina.
The group of passengers decided to attack the cockpit, but they waited for the plane to come over a rural area to move into action. Until one of them, Todd Beamer, on the phone with the operator on the ground said: "You ready? OK, let's go!"
The struggle lasted six minutes: while they tried to take control of the cockpit, the hijackers tried to cut off the oxygen supply with oxygen and tilted the plane so that the passengers lost their balance.
As the plane descended, one of the passengers, Edward Felt, managed to get 911 on the line from the toilet.
His call will be one of the last. The hijackers, aware that they would not reach Washington, decided to crash the plane.
Flying at a speed of 900 kilometers per hour, the Boeing 757, full of kerosene, exploded over a wooded area in western Pennsylvania, 250 kilometers from Washington. It was 10:03.
Gordon Felt, brother of Edward Felt, in upstate New York was just closing a summer camp for children with autism.
The associate told him about the drama happening at the WTC. Like millions of people in the country and the world, he rushed in front of the television, without thinking that the events would hit him directly.
When the swastika called him a little later to tell him that Edward was on flight 93 and there was no news of him, he tried to call his brother on the phone.
"Ed, when you land, call us, we'll take care."
Escape from Manhattan
On Wall Street, at 10:28, after burning for 102 minutes, the North Tower of the WTC collapsed.
With the sound of sirens wailing, people fled in front of a large cloud of debris and smoke that enveloped the neighborhood, and Mayor Rudi Giuliani called on fellow citizens to "remain calm and if possible leave Lower Manhattan."
Dozens of ships, ferries, fishing boats and yachts came to the rescue, evacuating up to 500.000 people. Thousands of others walked, sometimes for hours, fleeing toward the Brooklyn Bridge to the east or north of Manhattan.
Rescuers, arriving from all directions, searched for survivors in the ruins of the towers.
Just before the north tower collapsed, Al Kim and other rescuers managed to rescue firefighter Kevin Shea from the rubble. He was the only survivor of 12 colleagues from his brigade.
Chief Lomonaco tried to compile a list of workers who were in the restaurant at the time of the disaster. Many could not be contacted. It took him days to determine that there were 72 of them, out of a total of 450. None of them survived.
In the meantime, George Bush was sent to Washington by the presidential plane "Air Force 1", but he had to change his plan. The capital was not safe. He landed at a military base in Louisiana.
"Ground Zero"
Rescue teams and journalists began calling the ruins of the twin towers "Ground Zero". No one has yet dared to estimate the number of dead, although it was already clear that this was the largest coordinated terrorist attack in history.
Edward Felt received a new call from his swastika - there are no survivors on Flight 93. He had to break the news to his mother.
Joseph Dittmar, after spending several hours in a friend's apartment near Wall Street glued to the television, had only one thing in mind - to leave New York.
In the late afternoon, he boarded the crowded subway, which started running after an hour and a half delay, and then the train to Philadelphia.
There was complete silence in the train. Everyone was in shock.
When he arrived at his parents around 19 p.m., his mother hugged him. "My child, my child," she repeated to him, even though he was already a grandfather.
He collapsed from exhaustion and missed Bush's speech at 20:30 p.m.: the American president said that several thousand people had died.
Exactly 2.753 in the WTC, 184 in the Pentagon and 40 in Shanksville.
And he warned that in the hunt for the culprits, the US will not distinguish between terrorists and those who protected them.
"None of us will forget that day, but we will move on and defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world," he concluded.
Returning home, Karen Baker became aware of the magnitude of the disaster, hugging her husband and two young sons. "The tension brought them to the edge and they were sobbing. It was really hard to watch."
Al Kim didn't get back home to Brooklyn until around midnight. He showered, lay down for a few hours and left early in the morning.
"There was a lot to do, to go to funerals (...) There was no time to think."
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