10 September 2007
The World Trade Center from 1993-2002
Sirens blared. Lights flashed. A crowd of amazed and horrified people stood on Church, Vecey, Liberty, and West Streets. This was not a “King Kong” remake. This was real. This was the first time the World Trade Center got bombed. On February 26, 1993, at 12:18 p.m., a bomb equal to 22,000 TNT exploded in the second floor garage in Tower 1. With 6 people dead, and 1,000 injured, Afghanistan had its first strike.
Although this was a pretty strong bomb, the WTC stayed erect. Mario Cuomo was the first person to go back to his office in the ‘fixed’ WTC. And after that, nothing really happened-until 2001, that is.
9/11. 911. The number that you call the police with. That’s just what many people did. At 8:47 a.m., Flight 11 of American Airlines bound for Los Angeles, CA, crashed into the WTC. The 767 Jet had 81 passengers and 11 crewmembers. Its main impact was the 99th and 100th floors. This could have been pure misfortune. But we knew that this was more than that when United Airlines Flight 175, also a 767 going to Los Angeles, hit the 78th-87th floors of the Tower 2, killing its 56 passengers and 9 crewmembers. Now everybody knew that nothing was coincidental. This was all for real, and someone had intended this.
Some awful mistake? No. An act of war is what it was, and what it shall remain. The reason: Osama Bin Laden’s hate for our freedom. We will never stop having freedom forever.
