102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers Read Online Free
Book: 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers Read Online Free
Author: Jim Dwyer, Kevin Flynn
had slipped, somehow, he was sure, and had pulled the cord out of the jack.
Higher still in the building, on the 106th floor, Howard Kane, the controller for Windows on the World, was speaking by phone with his wife, Lori. Kane dropped the receiver, or so it seemed to his wife, because the sounds of clamor and alarm, the high notes of anxiety if not the exact words, filled her ear. Maybe he was having a heart attack. Then she could hear a woman screaming, “Oh, my God, we’re trapped,” and her husband calling out, “Lori!”
Then another man picked up the phone, and spoke. “There’s a fire,” he said. “We have to call 911.”
From the Risk Waters conference in Windows on the World, Caleb Arron Dack, a computer consultant, called his wife, Abigail Carter, on a cell phone. “We’re at Windows on the World,” Dack said. “There was a bomb.” He could not get through to the police emergency line. He needed Abigail to call 911 for him. The bomb may have been in the bathroom.
At another breakfast, in a delicatessen a quarter mile below Windows on the World, the former director of the world trade department, Alan Reiss, had not heard, felt, or seen a thing. He sat with his back to the window that overlooked the plaza. Suddenly, one of the other Port Authority managers, Vickie Cross Kelly, looking past Reiss’s shoulder to the window, called out.
“Something must have happened,” she said. “People are running around on the mall.” Reiss turned. He saw terrified people, sprinting in every direction. A person with a gun had set off the chaos, he guessed.
“I’ve got to go,” Reiss said, tossing a five-dollar bill on the table, then headed for the trade center police office, one floor above them, in the low-rise building known as 5 World Trade Center. Through big plate-glass windows that faced east toward Church Street, he could see a blizzard of burning confetti. This was not as straightforward as someone with a gun. Another bomb?
In 1993, Reiss had just opened the door to his basement office when the terrorists’ truck bomb exploded 150 feet away. Afterward, he had been part of the team that refitted the towers for better evacuation. As a matter of doctrine at the trade center, bombs were seen as a threat that could cause harrowing but local damage. They were unlikely to bring cataclysm.
In the weeks and months following the 1993 attack, the danger from a powerful bomb attack on the trade center, especially the two towers, had been considered by the Port Authority and its security consultants. Most experts agreed that while the towers could be hurt by a bomb, they could not be destroyed. Anyone might, in theory, sneak a bomb onto a floor, but the damage would largely be confined to 1 floor out of 110—or looked at another way, 1 acre out of 110. In general, bombs are as powerful as they are big. The larger the bomb, the bigger the explosion, the greater the damage. The 1993 terrorists had driven 1,200 pounds of explosive into the basement. Even so, the base of the towers, the strongest part of the buildings, easily deflected the explosion. Compared with the powerful load absorbed by the face of the towers from winds that blew every hour of every day, the truck bomb in the basement was puny.
Moreover, there was no simple way of getting 1,200 pounds of explosive to the upper floors, where the structure was not as dense as the base. If the monumentalism of the towers made them a natural target, their very height added protection, not vulnerability. Gravity was part of the built-in defense to the devastation of a big bomb.
From what Reiss could see, he was sure that someone had set off a big bomb. While it is true that small bombs—explosives fitted into a tape recorder or hidden inside a suitcase—can blow an airplane out of the sky, that destructiveness has less to do with the bomb than with the altitude. What rips apart the aircraft is not the size of the bomb but a rupture in the fuselage at
Higher still in the building, on the 106th floor, Howard Kane, the controller for Windows on the World, was speaking by phone with his wife, Lori. Kane dropped the receiver, or so it seemed to his wife, because the sounds of clamor and alarm, the high notes of anxiety if not the exact words, filled her ear. Maybe he was having a heart attack. Then she could hear a woman screaming, “Oh, my God, we’re trapped,” and her husband calling out, “Lori!”
Then another man picked up the phone, and spoke. “There’s a fire,” he said. “We have to call 911.”
From the Risk Waters conference in Windows on the World, Caleb Arron Dack, a computer consultant, called his wife, Abigail Carter, on a cell phone. “We’re at Windows on the World,” Dack said. “There was a bomb.” He could not get through to the police emergency line. He needed Abigail to call 911 for him. The bomb may have been in the bathroom.
At another breakfast, in a delicatessen a quarter mile below Windows on the World, the former director of the world trade department, Alan Reiss, had not heard, felt, or seen a thing. He sat with his back to the window that overlooked the plaza. Suddenly, one of the other Port Authority managers, Vickie Cross Kelly, looking past Reiss’s shoulder to the window, called out.
“Something must have happened,” she said. “People are running around on the mall.” Reiss turned. He saw terrified people, sprinting in every direction. A person with a gun had set off the chaos, he guessed.
“I’ve got to go,” Reiss said, tossing a five-dollar bill on the table, then headed for the trade center police office, one floor above them, in the low-rise building known as 5 World Trade Center. Through big plate-glass windows that faced east toward Church Street, he could see a blizzard of burning confetti. This was not as straightforward as someone with a gun. Another bomb?
In 1993, Reiss had just opened the door to his basement office when the terrorists’ truck bomb exploded 150 feet away. Afterward, he had been part of the team that refitted the towers for better evacuation. As a matter of doctrine at the trade center, bombs were seen as a threat that could cause harrowing but local damage. They were unlikely to bring cataclysm.
In the weeks and months following the 1993 attack, the danger from a powerful bomb attack on the trade center, especially the two towers, had been considered by the Port Authority and its security consultants. Most experts agreed that while the towers could be hurt by a bomb, they could not be destroyed. Anyone might, in theory, sneak a bomb onto a floor, but the damage would largely be confined to 1 floor out of 110—or looked at another way, 1 acre out of 110. In general, bombs are as powerful as they are big. The larger the bomb, the bigger the explosion, the greater the damage. The 1993 terrorists had driven 1,200 pounds of explosive into the basement. Even so, the base of the towers, the strongest part of the buildings, easily deflected the explosion. Compared with the powerful load absorbed by the face of the towers from winds that blew every hour of every day, the truck bomb in the basement was puny.
Moreover, there was no simple way of getting 1,200 pounds of explosive to the upper floors, where the structure was not as dense as the base. If the monumentalism of the towers made them a natural target, their very height added protection, not vulnerability. Gravity was part of the built-in defense to the devastation of a big bomb.
From what Reiss could see, he was sure that someone had set off a big bomb. While it is true that small bombs—explosives fitted into a tape recorder or hidden inside a suitcase—can blow an airplane out of the sky, that destructiveness has less to do with the bomb than with the altitude. What rips apart the aircraft is not the size of the bomb but a rupture in the fuselage at
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