First Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Reporter: The ladies that are with me were in the World Trade Center in the first building and escaped through the lobby where they report they believe there was a bomb in the lobby.
First Witness of 911 Attack: And even the turnstile was burnt and was sticking up and they just told us to run.
Second Witness of 911 Attack: And as we were coming out we passed the lobby, there was no lobby, but I believe the bomb hit the lobby first, and a couple of seconds in the first plane hit.
Second Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Reporter: They were having coffee in the World Trade Center when the first plane struck.
Witness of 911 Attack: And all of a sudden it sounded like, I don’t know where the subway is, but it sounded like a subway collision, a bomb, and it was just pounding. Boom, boom, boom. And I literally thought the subway had exploded and all the cars were sitting on top of it. It was so loud.
Third Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Reporter: Did you see what happened? What happened?
Witness of 911 Attack: Well, I was in the PATH train and there was a huge explosion sound. Everyone came out.
Fourth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Reporter: Tell us what you saw when you exited the subway station due to a lack of smoke. Eileen.
Witness of 911 Attack: It was very smoking and we exited on Church Street out of the PATH train station.
Fifth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Reporter: At the time, I was actually in the subway heading towards the World Trade Center right around Franklin Street. And after the first explosion, the subway station started to fill with smoke.
The subway cars started to fill with smoke and the subways actually stopped.
Sixth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Witness of 911 Attack: I was entering the building on the lobby level. I was in the revolving door when the plane hit the building.
Reporter: David Gray worked in number one World Trade Center.
Witness of 911 Attack: One of the elevators, I think, came crashing to the lobby level and all the debris came flying out of it. And a fireball emerged from the elevator lobby and was coming toward me.
Seventh Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Witness of 911 Attack: I was standing next to one World Trade Center and then all of a sudden I heard rumbling and we all started running away from it. The glass blew out and threw me onto the sidewalk and I couldn’t see for like 20 seconds.
Witness of 911 Attack: Bottom elevator, the glass flames exploded out the front of the World Trade Center and glass flew everywhere.
Eighth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Witness of 911 Attack: I asked him what happened. What was amazing about his story was that he was in the lobby of World Trade Center 1 when the plane, the first plane hit. And when the debris started coming down, he went back to go into the building to protect himself and was in the revolving doors going back in off West Street when he looked up and a fireball came flying out.
I guess from the elevator shaft, that’s what he seemed to believe, and blew out all the windows and threw him back onto the street.
Ninth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Witness of 911 Attack: Yes, I was right there. I was down in the basement, came down, all of a sudden the elevator blew up, smoke, I dragged the guy out, his skin was hanging all back up, and I dragged him out and I helped him out to the ambulance.
Tenth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Witness of 911 Attack: I was on the sixth floor and I was reviewing some work and it was about ten to nine and the building shook and I felt there was an earthquake and it didn’t bother me because I felt the building could sustain earthquakes, they were built for that. And then there was a huge explosion in the ceiling cell.
Ttwelfth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Witness of 911 Attack: He went through the front door of the ground floor and the lady who was about three seconds in front of him was hit by a terrific fireball and she was critically injured.
So we went to our assistant, I think he had some type of tablecloth to put over, and as he was doing that, another explosion happened.
Thirteenth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Witness of 911 Attack: In the B4 level, I was assigned to the B3 level, but I had to do something in the B4 sheet metal shaft. So I went in the sheet metal shaft, do what I had to do, and on my way, I heard a bomb.
So I says, probably a transformer again blew up. So I stepped back, finished what I had to finish, and I started towards the door again and there came a big blast with a big ball of fire and that’s when I got hit. It hit me right back down on the ground and I realized that my ankle was shattered.
Fourteenth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers:
Witness of 911 Attack: There was an explosion, we were on the support floor, which is a basement. A guy came in running, all his skin was out of his body. All his skin was out of his body.
We took him out, we ran out, we heard a lot of rumbling. I went back in and there was a lot of smoke.
Witness of 911 Attack: And all of a sudden we hear BOOM! I thought it was a generator that blew up on the basement and I said to myself, oh my god, I think it’s a generator.
And I was going to recognize it when I finished saying that in my mind, I hear BOOM! Right on top, pretty far away. So it was a difference between coming from the basement and coming from the top. And that’s, everybody started screaming and a person comes running into the office saying explosion, explosion, explosion.
He got his hand extended and all the skin was pulled from under his arm all the way to the top of his fingertips and it was hanging on both arms. Hanging and hanging. And then I look at his face and he was missing parts of his face.
And I said, what happened? What happened? And he said, the elevators, the elevators.
Fifteenth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers
Witness of 911 Attack: We then, you know, talking about the day’s work and what needed to be done, we heard a massive explosion that was in the World Trade Center at about 8.46 a.m. in the morning. The explosion came from, I believe, at first we believed that it came from the mechanical room.
And then we heard a series of other explosions that sounded up on the above levels of the building to where we then realized that there was something wrong and there was a major problem.
Sixteenth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers
Witness of 911 Attack: Pfeiffer was the first chief into the building. Right away, a guy from the Port Authority told him the damage is somewhere above the 78th floor.
But all you had to do was look around. It was obvious. Something had happened right there in the lobby.
Seventeenth Interview of the 911 Attack of Twin Towers
Reporter: This happened at about 8.45 this morning while we were on the air. It first broke. It’s now some three hours and a few minutes later.
Let’s go back to that moment when we were on the air and the first crash took place.
Witness of 911 Attack: It sounded like a plane crash. There was a reaction on the part of… Come to us. Come to us. Come to us. Come to us.
Hey, Beth, what is that? Somebody hit the World Trade Center? It’s a trade center. There’s a fire on the upper floors. It’s just an explosion.
Can you describe what you saw on the first floor and right after the crash? Once the plane hit the top, then that’s when the bomb was going off on the first floor. It’s like the plane was actually hitting the first floor.
