Informative Essay On 9/11

9/11, a compendium of stories

9/11. A horrible act viewed by many, where 4 ill-fated planes were hijacked and propelled into important super-structures, and pastures, is broadcasted on the news on every anniversary of this travesty, and every time, eye-witness stories show up. These stories are often talked about for a large amount of time, but with the numerous accounts of that fateful day, nobody can get all of their stories. I would like to show you some of the most obscure stories that are often overlooked by many. From people in a different country, people right in the tower, and residents of the island of Manhattan, everyone was affected on that fateful day, so what exactly are those stories?

On September 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked by Iraqi’s, and sent to destroy government buildings. Two planes hit the World Trade

Center’s North and South buildings, causing them to collapse and take other WTC buildings with it. Another plane was flown straight towards the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The final plane was heading towards the White House in D.C., but with the retaliation of passengers, it was crashed in a Pennsylvania field. This is just a small summary of the events that occurred on the day that the world stood still.

A very phenomenal story that I found through research was from a flight attendant in a plane heading to Newfoundland. The crew on a Delta plane were flying at cruising altitude when they received a fax from tower control. They reported terrorist activity and ordered all planes to land at the nearest airport. Which unluckily for the riders, was five hours away in Canada. They were quite nervous about telling the passengers fearing they would go into a fret about what had happened, and the crew didn’t know much about the event themselves. They decided to tell the unknowing passengers that they were turning around because of an instrument malfunction on the aircraft. Hours later, they received another fax telling the crew in detail what had happened, the World Trade Centers had been hit with two planes.

Once they had landed in the airport, there were 53 other planes waiting to be permitted to deplane. That didn’t happen for about 10 hours. Security came and gave food, drink, and lavatory services to passengers who needed it. They had ended up getting out their suitcases and sleeping in the plane overnight. Once they were given permission to leave, they were strangers in a foreign country, luckily the residents were superbly kind. All high schools had been generously closed and it was mandatory for students to help the stranded passengers. There were over 10,000 people from that single airport, so they had to be spread across the towns. Elderly and people who needed special assistance were kept in private homes. As an example to show their helpfulness, a lady who was 33 weeks into her pregnancy was kept in a house with a nurse, doctor, and across the street from a 24 hour urgent care.

Once the airports were reopened 3 days later, passengers were ready to continue their flights, but were happier than they were before. Each person was sharing their stories about how they were given boat tours, and had fantastic food, just a small portion of what all were given. A wealthy business man on the flight promised to make a trust fund to send the students to college. Once the flight had ended, over fourteen-hundred dollars had been raised for the fund. The man then contacted Delta and inquired them to donate. Since that day, over 1 million dollars has been raised and 158 students from that area were sent to college.

Secondly, once the towers collapsed, a large dust cloud covered the city.

People were trying to get out of its path, but there was water in the way from the mainland. People were trying to swim off the island and were nearly getting run over by boats. People were trying to jump on boats and were almost sinking them. After an hour of struggle, a plan finally emerged. A retired Coast Guard Worker used a HAM radio at a lifeguard station telling all boats that the World Trade Center towers had collapsed. At first, nobody expected more than 20 boats, but it ended up being north of 500 boats. It was a wide assortment of huge tug boats, large ferries, lavish coast guard boats, humongous private boats, quaint diving boats, party boats, sail boats. Any boat imaginable was there. “If it floated, and it could get there, it got there,” engineer of the Mary Gellatly Robin Jones recalls. This ended up getting 500,000 New Yorkers off of the island, taking them to the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, anywhere they would be safe. This ended up being the largest boat lift in history, leading the previous largest boat lift occurring in

WWII.

My 3rd and final story is about a lucky man who was in the South Tower and was forced to evacuate from his business meeting. This man, Joe Dittmar, was quite annoyed to have to leave a business meeting when he heard that there was an explosion in the North Tower. This had of course happened before in the year of 1993. His co-workers decided to catch the elevator but he decided to go down the seemingly never-ending staircase. He was heading down the stairs and saw ladies’ shoes, and men’s briefcases strewn across the floor. Before he could come to the realization of what was going on, the doomed flight flew in to the building just 2 floors above him. He described the moment after the plane hit as silent, he started running down the stairs to escape, unluckily so, everyone else had the same idea. People were stampeding to get back to their loved ones, men, women, all trampled to the ground by others. Something Dittmar recalls the most is someone singing God Bless America over the intercom. Nobody ever found out what happened to him. Then, a woman came on the intercom encouraging people to go as fast as humanly possible, telling them that this day will forever be remembered in American history.

In conclusion, No matter how far, or close you are from a tragedy, it can still effect you wherever you are. I encourage you to ask your relatives where they were on this remembered day and let their tales be known.