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Here are the beginnings of stories following the WTC bombings that appeared in New York City newspapers: The Next Morning Day That Will Live in Infamy Twin terror attacks by hijacked airliners toppled the World Trade Center towers yesterday as coordinated strikes here and in Washington killed untold numbers of people, leaving the nation reeling from a "second Pearl Harbor." Within an hour of the Twin Towers blitzkrieg, another kamikaze airliner plowed into the Pentagon. A fourth, possibly aiming for Camp David, crashed in Shanksville, Pa. Thousands were feared dead in the fiery chaos that followed. Some estimated that this worst attack ever on U.S. soil could have left as many as 10,000 dead in New York alone. "We're afraid to even guess how many people are dead," said one exhausted police official. "We don't even know how many of our own people are dead."—New York Post Triple Attacks Rock the Nation On a day of unspeakable horror for New York and the nation, terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon yesterday in the deadliest assault on the U.S. in its history. "Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror," President Bush said in an address to the nation last night. The attacks involved four synchronized plane hijackings—two from Boston, one from Newark and one from Dulles International outside Washington. Each was bound for the West Coast, loaded with fuel for the cross-country flight, and they crashed within 90 minutes of one another. Bush ordered the nation's military to high alert and vowed to hunt down those responsible for the attacks in Washington and New York, where both towers of the World Trade Center collapsed into a swirling, lung-choking pile of rubble after burning for more than an hour. Mayor Giuliani said city morgues were "ready to deal with thousands and thousands of bodies" today.—Daily News Next to the main story in The New York Times, the off-lead story began this way: A Creeping Horror It kept getting worse. The horror arrived in episodic bursts of chilling disbelief, signified first by trembling floors, sharp eruptions, cracked windows. There was the actual unfathomable realization of a gaping, flaming hole in first one of the tall towers, and then the same thing all over again in its twin. There was the merciless sight of bodies helplessly tumbling out, some of them in flames. Finally, the mighty towers themselves were reduced to nothing. Dense plumes of smoke raced through the downtown avenues, coursing between the buildings, shaped like tornadoes on their sides. Every sound was cause for alarm. A plane appeared overhead. Was another one coming? No, it was a fighter jet. But was it friend or enemy? People scrambled for their lives, but they didn't know where to go. Should they go north, south, east, west? Stay outside, go indoors? People hid beneath cars and each other. Some contemplated jumping into the river. Two Days Later The Long, Grim Job of Sorting Bodies Begins
It was a caravan that no one ever wanted to see. A convoy of refrigerator trucks began transporting bodies and body parts extracted from the twisted rubble of the World Trade Center yesterday to a morgue at the city medical examiner's office at 30th St., east of First Ave. A line of six 18-wheelers was parked on Vesey St., and shortly after noon, emergency workers began loading body bags, one by one, into a truck backed up to the atrium of the World Financial Center. They labored in the heavy smoke and ashes still swirling through the area. At 4:56 p.m., the first truck pulled out, with a police motorcycle escort, heading slowly north. There were no sirens, just the flashing lights on the motorcycles. A few minutes later, workers started loading the second truck.—Daily News 'I Can't Believe I Got Out' They all thought they were going to die. First they heard the boom, then they felt the shaking. They jammed themselves into the stairways elbow-to-elbow, scurrying down into the dark, chaotic maw. Most of the shaken survivors of yesterday's attack feared they would never make it out of the World Trade Center alive. But there were some miracles among the ashes: Ray Bartels, an insurance underwriter from Wilton, Conn., was in his office on the 47th floor of Tower One when the first explosion hit. "We all got into the stairwell to go down. It was shoulder to shoulder in there," he said.—New York Post Here is how the lead story began in The New York Times under a headline that ran across the top of the page:
Rescuers combed mountains of rubble at what had been the World Trade Center yesterday in a grim search for survivors among the thousands presumed dead in its collapse. Investigators meantime cast a worldwide net for those behind the hijackers who slammed jetliners into the twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia in the worst terrorist attack in American history. The first clues to the identity of those responsible pointed toward five suspects whose movements appear to have taken them to Boston, Canada and Florida, and suggested that the hijackers had Middle Eastern and Islamic connections. John Ashcroft, the attorney general, said investigators believed that each of the commandeered planes been hijacked by groups of three to six men armed with box cutters and plastic knives that would have been difficult for airport security officials to detect. There were no arrests in the case, however, and officials said the inquiry might take weeks or months. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said that 82 bodies had been recovered from the smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center, a fraction of the thousands he said were presumed dead. |
