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6-9-2002 Scotsman
How four flights converged on one path to change world by Gethin Chamberlain IT IS 8:45am in New York City. Battalion Commander Richard Picciotto has picked up bagels for his firecrews and is wading through the paperwork on his desk. On the 81st floor of the south tower of the World Trade Centre, Stanley Praimnath is at work in the offices of Fuji Bank. In the neighbouring north tower, waiter Jan Maciejewski is serving the customers drawn to the Windows on the World restaurant by the views out across Manhattan and New York bay. Later, what people will remember about this moment is that the sky is clear and blue. A minute passes. On the 105th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Centre, Seth Morris is on the phone to his wife Elizabeth. He has been at work for hours, heading in early to avoid the rush hour. He looks up and his last words amount to little more than an exclamation of horror. Then the phone goes dead. It is a little over four hours earlier, in South Portland, on America's northern seaboard. Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari have just paid $149 to settle their bill and checked out of room 432 of the Comfort Inn . At the Park Inn in Newton, Massachusetts, and the Airport Marriott in Newark, other men are also settling their bills and heading out into the dawn of a Tuesday morning. It is 11 September, 2001. Atta, 33, and al-Omari, 29, get into their hire car and head for Portland International Jetport in Maine. At 5:53am, a camera captures them passing through security; the men have knives in their bags, but a guard in shirt sleeves waves them through. They board a flight to Boston's Logan International airport, where they use a Visa card to buy two one-way tickets to Los Angeles on board an American Airlines Boeing 767, flight number AA11. By 7:50am, they are seated in business class . Atta takes out his mobile phone to make one last call to Marwan al-Shehhi, who has just boarded United Airlines Flight 175, another Boeing 767 ahead in the queue to take off from Boston to Los Angeles. It is now 7:58am. Flight UA175 taxis on to the runway . Four minutes after the plane takes off, flight AA11, with 81 passengers and two pilots and nine flight attendants on board, follows. Flight AA77 is leaving Dulles, Washington, for Los Angeles, with 62 people on board. Among the passengers is Barbara Olson, a political commentator for CNN and wife of the US solicitor-general. There are two pilots and four crew. ON BOARD AA11, the flight attendants are getting ready to serve breakfast, but Atta and his companions have their minds on other things. Rising from their seats, they produce their knives and head for the cockpit. Pilot John Ogonowski manages to alert those on the ground by pressing the "push to talk" button on his radio. Controllers hear a voice threatening Mr Ogonowski: "Don't do anything foolish. You're not going to get hurt. We have more planes, we have other planes." The plane changes course and heads for New York. Madeline Amy Sweeney, 35, a mother of two, is one of nine flight attendants on board flight AA11. As Atta and the others seize control, she phones American flight services manager Michael Woodward on the ground at Logan. "This plane has been hijacked," she tells him. Two flight attendants have been stabbed, she adds. "A hijacker also cut the throat of a business-class passenger, and he appears to be dead." It is 8:28am. On board UA175 Jesus Sanchez, 45, an off-duty flight attendant from Hudson, Massachusetts, is sitting alone in economy class, making small talk with the flight attendants. Sitting next to him is Timothy Ward, an executive from San Diego's famous Rubio's Restaurant. Nearby is Leslie Whittington, a Georgetown professor, making the first leg of a flight to Australia to take up a university fellowship. With her are her husband Charles Falkenberg, and daughters, Zoe, eight, and Dana, three. As they talk and look out of the windows, al-Shehhi and his team make their move. Peter Hanson, 32, flying with his wife, Susan, and two-year-old daughter, Christine, phones his father, Lee, in Connecticut. "Something's wrong with this plane. Oh my God. They just stabbed the airline hostess. I think the airplane is being hijacked," he tells him. The hijackers are dragging the flight attendants to the back of the plane. Mr Sanchez stands up and tries to stop them, but he is stabbed. Mr Ward calls his brother, Anthony, a San Diego police officer, and tells him: "We're being taken hostage, we need help. Get help. A man has been stabbed, they are trying to take over the plane." The hijackers use the intercom to try to calm the passengers and it appears to work. Mr Falkenberg uses his mobile phone to call a neighbour: "We've been taken hostage, but they have promised not to harm us. We've tried to fight them off but they have weapons," he tells him. IN NEWARK, flight UA93 is taking off for San Francisco, 42 minutes late because of air traffic congestion. There are 45 people on board, including five crew and two pilots. The passengers include Atta's former flatmate Ziad Jarrah, 27 . It is 8:45am. Over the Hudson River above New York, flight AA11 turns sharply and Mrs Sweeney catches a glimpse of the New York skyline out of one of the plane's windows. She calls her ground manager in Boston again: "I see water and buildings. Oh my God! Oh my God!" she screams. At 8:46am and 26 seconds, flight AA11, laden with 10,000 gallons of aviation fuel, smashes into the north tower at 470mph, cutting a swathe from the 94th to the 98th floors. Three floors below, on the 91st floor, Steve McIntyre feels the shock wave pass through his office and knows he has to get out. He heads for the centre of the building, where the lifts and staircases are housed. Peering into the stairwell, he finds a scene of devastation. Above him is an unpassable plug, sealing off everything from the 92nd floor upwards. From below, smoke is billowing up and he can hear water pouring out of fractured pipes. It looks bad, but better than the other two emergency exits. "This way," he calls to his colleagues from the American Bureau of Shipping, and they plunge into the darkness. On the 84th floor of the south tower, Brian Clark, the 54-year-old executive vice-president of Euro Brokers, has been at his desk since 7:15am. He sees the flash of the explosion and the gap between the buildings fill with flames. Mr Clark, a volunteer fire warden, grabs his whistle and torch and yells to his colleagues: "Get out - everybody get out". Over the intercom in the south tower comes an announcement: "Building two is secure, there is no need to evacuate building two. If you are in the midst of evacuation you may return to your office by using the re-entry doors on the re-entry floors and the elevators to return to your office." From all over the city, firefighters are heading towards the burning building. Mike Kehoe, firefighter 12,898, has jumped into Engine 28 and headed down the east side, down the tip of Manhattan and around to the World Trade Centre. In front of the engine, the towers are smoking, but the crew don't have any idea what has happened. They grab the roll-up hoses and Mr Kehoe carries the equipment they need to link the roll-ups to the hydrants inside the building. Inside the lobby of the tower, it is a mess. Elevators and glass are blown out, but they find the stairwell and start upwards, past crowds of people queuing to get out. One of them takes a picture of Mr Kehoe, looking startled in the flashlight. Later the picture will be published around the world, an image of a brave man heading into oblivion. He runs on, frightened, but determined to get up to the floor where the plane hit. "Good luck", people tell him. "Lots of luck". Flight UA93 has climbed quickly to 30,000ft and on the flight deck, Captain Jason Dahl switches off the fasten-seat-belts lights. On board Flight AA77, Khalid al-Midhar and four other men produce knives and herd the passengers to the back of the plane, which starts to bank round until it is heading back towards Washington. The time is 8:56am. GEORGE Bush, the US president, is on his way to the Emma E Booker elementary school in Sarasota, Florida. He is informed that a plane has hit the north tower of the World Trade Centre, but he presses ahead with the visit. Workers trapped above the point of impact are told to put wet towels over their faces to keep out the smoke. Jan Maciejewski, a waiter, rings his wife to tell her he can't find any water to wet a rag. He says he will check the flower vases. South of Manhattan, Flight UA175 turns towards the south tower. On the 81st floor, Stanley Praimnath is assuring a worried client from Chicago that he is fine. He had been evacuated to the lobby, he says, but a security guard told him to go back to work, so he had. "I'm fine," he says again, looking out across the bay towards the Statue of Liberty, where he catches sight of a plane flying low and fast. As he watches, it banks and heads towards him, so close now that he can see the red stripe down the fuselage. "Lord, you take over!" he yells, dropping the receiver and diving under his desk. 9:02am and 54 seconds. Flight UA175 tilts its wings and slews into the south tower, the nose crashing through the windows of Mr Praimnath's floor. Thousands of gallons of aviation fuel ignite and a fireball engulfs the centre of the building. It snaps backwards, but steadies itself. Now both towers are ablaze. Outside, Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York fire department, is administering the last rites to a victim. A piece of falling debris kills him. On the 81st floor, 130ft away from the point of impact, Praimnath, huddled under his desk, has somehow survived. "Help me! Help me!" he shouts. "I'm trapped. Don't leave me here!" Above him Brian Clark has been trying to decide whether to head up or down the one surviving stairwell. Now his mind is made up for him. Praimnath watches Clark's torch beam moving closer and crawls towards him over the wreckage that used to be his office. As the flames begin to take hold, the pair head down, through smoke and pouring water and on to safety. AT 9:17am, the Federal Aviation Administration closes all New York City area airports. The US air defences are struggling to get fighter planes into the air. Caught cold, there are only four jets available on the whole of the eastern seaboard. With fears that more planes have been seized, military commanders consider ordering pilots on training missions to crash their unarmed aircraft into the hijacked planes to bring them down. In the cockpit of flight UA93, Captain Dahl, 43, and his first officer, Leroy Homer, 36, receive a message from air traffic control in Chicago that other planes have been hijacked. "Beware, cockpit intrusion," it warns. They type back their reply: "Confirmed". At 9:28am, Jarrah's men make their move. Controllers on the ground can hear screams and shouting in the cockpit. "Hey, get out of here," one of the pilots shouts. Captain Dahl and First Officer Homer have been stabbed and dragged from the cockpit and a message is relayed to the passengers over the intercom to keep them calm: "This is your captain speaking. Remain in your seat. Stay quiet. We are returning to the airport." It does not have the desired effect. Stewardess CeeCee Lyles, a mother of four, phones her husband, Lorne. He can hear screaming as she tells him: "We've been hijacked. I love you and the boys." FROM Sarasota, a grim-faced Mr Bush addresses the nation: "We have had a national tragedy. Two aeroplanes have crashed into the World Trade Centre in an apparent terrorist attack on our country." It is 9:30am. Eight minutes later, Ms Olson calls her husband Ted from the toilet of Flight AA77. He does not know until this moment that she is on the flight - it is his birthday and she has secretly booked a ticket to join him in Los Angeles as a surprise. She tells him the hijackers have knives and boxcutters and have forced everyone to the back of the plane. "What can I tell the pilot to do?" she asks. "There's nothing you can tell him. There is nothing you can do," he replies. In Washington, Captain Lincoln Liebner is parking his car in a restricted zone outside the Pentagon. The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is at his desk in the Pentagon's national military command centre. Capt Liebner is used to hearing jets passing overhead, but the sound he hears now makes him stop and look up. A jet is heading towards the building. It screams low over the Columbia Pike, a commuter slip road. As Capt Liebner looks on, flight AA77 smashes into the Pentagon It glances off the helipad, bowls over a fire engine and a military helicopter and embeds itself in the western wall of the main building. There is a 100ft hole in the walls of the Pentagon, but the north-eastern wedge, where Mr Rumsfeld and most of the chiefs of staff are housed, is unscathed. . IN MANHATTAN, in the north tower, those trapped above the impact are becoming desperate. A man answering a call on the trading floor of Cantor Fitzgerald in the north tower screams into the phone: "We're f*****g dying." A couple hold hands and jump 100 floors to oblivion. In Washington, the White House and the capital are being evacuated. In the Pentagon, Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, the chief Pentagon spokesman, describes the evacuation as "all very controlled". Others talk of panic and pandemonium. It is 9:57am and George Bush is leaving Florida and heading for the most remote air base in the country. On board flight UA93, a flurry of phone calls has revealed the fate of the other planes and the passengers resolve to tackle the hijackers. Jeremy Glick, 31, tells his wife Lyzbeth the plane has been taken over by three men wearing red headbands and carrying knives and what they say is a bomb. Frank Konefal is in Chambers Street when the south tower begins to go. A policeman shouts "It's going, it's going" . He smashes through a doorway and hurls himself inside, waiting for the end. The cloud of dust and debris begins to settle and Mr Konefal runs for his life. OVER Pennsylvania, three F16 fighter planes from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, each loaded with six air-to-air missiles, are closing in on Flight UA93. They have orders to bring down any hijacked planes still in the air. On board flight UA93, the cockpit recorder picks up the sounds of fighting. Then the sound of dishes being hurled. A passenger shouts: "Let's get them!" Another shouts: "Give it to me!" At 10:04am, flight UA93 crashes into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, south-east of Pittsburgh. In the north tower Richard Picciotto, 51, and his men have worked their way up to the 35th but the collapse of the south tower persuades him that the time for bravery is over. Mike Kehoe has taken a similar decision and has returned to the lobby. They are making good progress until they come to the 12th floor and discover a group of elderly and disabled people still sitting in an office. Picciotto and his group, now larger and slower, are still three floors from the ground when the building collapses around them. It is 10.28am. In the lobby, Kehoe's buddy yells "run" as the building begins to fall. Picciotto and the group have landed in a space surrounded by rubble. They survive, but 343 firefighters fail to get out in time. The towers are gone, the Pentagon is burning and in a field near Pittsburgh all that remains of 45 people are their final words, etched into the memories of those they reached out to in the final minutes of their lives.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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