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take time to remember the events of September 11th 2001
never forget and pray it never happens again
take time to remember the events of September 11th 2001
never forget and pray it never happens again
Yes, thank you for this.
"It took three or four to realize: They were people," says James Logozzo, who had gathered with co-workers in a Morgan Stanley boardroom on the 72nd floor of the south tower, just 120 feet away from the north tower. "Then this one woman fell."
She fell closer to the south tower, he recalls. Logozzo saw her face. She had dark hair and olive skin, a white blouse and black skirt. She fell with her back to the ground, flat, staring up.
"The look on her face was shock. She wasn't screaming. It was slow motion. When she hit, there was nothing left," Logozzo says.
Logozzo cried, "Oh my God!" and raced for the stairs. When he got to the street 45 minutes later, he looked up. By then, his building had been struck by United Airlines Flight 175. From the ground, he saw two more people jump. This time, they were from his building.
The story of the victims who jumped to their deaths is the most sensitive aspect of the Sept. 11 tragedy. Photographs of people falling to their deaths shocked the nation. Most newspapers and magazines ran only one or two photos, then published no more. USA TODAY ran one photo Nov. 16.
Still, the images resonate. Many who survived or witnessed the attack say the sight of victims jumping is their most haunting memory of that day.
...
USA TODAY estimates that at least 200 people jumped to their deaths that morning, far more than can be seen in the photographs taken that morning. Nearly all were from the north tower, which was hit first and collapsed last. Fewer than a dozen were from the south tower.
The jumping started shortly after the first jet hit at 8:46 a.m. People jumped continuously during the 102 minutes that the north tower stood. Two people jumped as the north tower began to fall at 10:28 a.m., witnesses said.
For those who jumped, the fall lasted 10 seconds. They struck the ground at just less than 150 miles per hour — not fast enough to cause unconsciousness while falling, but fast enough to ensure instant death on impact. People jumped from all four sides of the north tower. They jumped alone, in pairs and in groups.
...
Victims who jumped had a profound influence on the evacuation. Firefighters moved their command post away from the building to avoid them. A falling body killed a firefighter. Fire Commissioner Thomas Van Essen, rushing out of the north tower to meet Mayor Rudy Giuliani, was nearly killed when a body landed 15 feet away.
...
Eric Thompson, who worked on the 77th floor of the south tower, went to a conference room window after the first jet hit. He was shocked when a man came to a north tower window and leapt from a few floors above the fire. Thompson looked the man in the face. He saw his tie flapping in the wind. He watched the man's body strike the pavement below. "There was no human resemblance whatsoever," Thompson says.
Terror on the Ground
Still from video by Evan Fairbanks, Magnum Photos
At 9:03 a.m. ET United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center's south tower, as seen in a still from a video taken from the ground on 9/11.
By hijacking four planes as part of the 9/11 attacks, terrorists took the lives of nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. (See a time line of the events of 9/11.)
National Geographic photo editors have chosen 25 iconic images that tell the stories of one of the country's darkest days.
"After ten years, I think many of the images from 9/11 still convey the rawness and brutality of the attack. It seems to me that they still have the capacity to shock," said Clifford Chanin, an executive at New York City's National 9/11 Memorial and Museum and editor of Memory Remains, a photographic book of 9/11 artifacts.
Warning: This gallery contains graphic content.
| WHY, Did Victims Jump from the World Trade Center | |||
| A couple stepped out in tandem, holding hands. One man went head first, captured freeze-frame on film, arms loosely at this side, one leg akimbo in a graceful passe. A woman jumped while clutching her handbag, as though she might have to hail a cab when she alighted. | ||
| Among the most heartbreaking images in a day of haunting imagery were the dozen or more people who took stock of where they were and what was happening to them, and leapt. Some were on fire. Most were not. Why jump from the 90th floor of a burning building to certain death? Possibly, because they could. "in a way, it was a healthy response," says Ronald Maris, a forensic suicide expert and director of the Center for the Study of Suicide at the University of South Carolina. "It is taking charge of a situation rather than letting the situation take charge of you. The primary motive of all suicides is escape. What are they fleeing from? In this case, they have escaped from terrible thoughts of being crushed to death, or burned to death, by annihilating their consciousness in a way that is nearly instantaneous."
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