American Airlines jet crashes in New York

November 12, 2001 Posted: 11:03 a.m. EST (1603 GMT)

Smoke rises Monday morning from the crash site in Queens, New York.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- An American Airlines jet with 255 people on board crashed Monday in a residential neighborhood after taking off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

American Airlines Flight 587 went down at 9:17 a.m. EST in the Rockway section of the New York City borough of Queens about five miles from Kennedy Airport. Mayor Rudy Giuliani said there were two crash sites -- one where the plane landed and another where an engine landed. Both were about six blocks from a school building. The school was closed for the Veterans Day holiday.

The plane was scheduled to leave at 8:40 a.m. EST, but takeoff was delayed until 9:14 a.m.

The plane, an Airbus A300, was en route from New York to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the plane was carrying 246 passengers and nine crew members.

An eyewitness told CNN, "I was in my kitchen ... and I saw the plane hit the house behind my house. It was so low, I was ducking almost, then huge fireballs and I jumped out of the ... window of my house.

"I ran right across the street ... it's unbelievable," she said, overcome by emotion. "It sounded like two planes. It was flying too low, and then it hit. It was like a bomb exploded."

Another eyewitness, Phyllis Paul, who lives near the crash site, said a "big, silvery piece of metal" fell behind her house before the plane went down.

"I was sitting having breakfast, and I heard the engines very loud," she said. "They were loud and low, and because of what happened September 11, it gave me a chill. ... I looked out of the window to see if I could see where it was."

Paul said she got her 10-year-old son and left the house.

"I didn't hear an explosion at first when I saw the metal fall. I heard an explosion about a minute and a half later," she said.

CNN confirmed President Bush postponed a scheduled interview with Russian and American reporters so he could meet with advisers and discuss the crash.

"The president is on top of it. They're alert; they're watching everything else all over the country," Giuliani said. "So I think people should remain absolutely calm. This can be handled, and we're just being tested one more time. We're going to pass this test, too."

Asked if terrorism was suspected, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Bill Schumann said, "All options are open at this time. We have very limited information."

The Pentagon said surveillance flights were going on in the area and nothing unusual had been spotted.

At least four houses were on fire, and a huge plume of smoke could be seen rising from the site. The New York Fire Department dispatched 44 firetrucks and 200 firefighters to the scene.

All three New York City-area airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- closed after the crash, along with all the city's bridges and tunnels. Giuliani declared a Level One emergency, mobilizing all available police, fire and emergency personnel.

The crash affected both national and international air traffic. British Airways said it had two flights en route to New York at the time of the crash. A spokesman said those planes would be diverted. A Lufthansa flight to New York was grounded. In Los Angeles, airport officials said flights to the three New York-area airports had been grounded.

The United Nations went into a partial lockdown after the crash. No cars or pedestrians were allowed to enter the United Nations, which is holding the high-level General Assembly debate.

Posted: September 11, 2001

People walk away from the World Trade Center as ash rains down.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Terrorists struck the United States Tuesday morning 11th September 2001 in harrowing, widespread attacks that included at least three commercial jet crashes into significant buildings.

• In the first attack, a plane hits the north tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan shortly before 9 a.m., followed by another plane into the second tower about 20 minutes later. Both towers later collapse.

• About an hour later, a plane crashes into the Pentagon, part of which later collapses.

• American Airlines tells CNN that it lost two planes, both en route to Los Angeles: American Flight 11 from Boston with 81 passengers and 11 crew aboard is lost. This is believed, but not confirmed, to have been one of the planes that crashed into the trade center. ... American Flight 77, a Boeing 757 from Washington Dulles airport to Los Angeles with 58 passengers and six crew is unaccounted for. The jet that crashed into the Pentagon may have been this one, but that is still unknown.

• United Airlines loses two planes: United Airlines Flight 93 airliner headed from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, crashes near Somerset, Pennsylvania -- police say initial reports indicate no survivors. ... United confirms the crash of Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles with 56 passengers and seven crew aboard. It's possible, but not confirmed, that this is the second plane that hit the World Trade Center.

• The Pentagon, the White House, the State Department, the Justice Department, the Capitol, the CIA and all other government buildings in Washington are evacuated.

Firefighters tend to a colleague overcome by treacherous conditions at the World Trade Center devastation

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Five firefighters, who had been missing since Tuesday's collapse of the World Trade Center Towers were found alive Thursday.

The firefighters were found in an SUV that had been buried in the rubble.

Earlier, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Thursday that 4,763 people were listed as missing after the attacks.

He said that includes the passengers and crew of the two airliners, unaccounted-for employees of the companies in the building, rescuers and people reported missing by friends or family members.

Giuliani said 94 bodies had been recovered and 46 of those had been identified. He said 70 body parts had also been recovered.

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials said the death toll there had reached an estimated 190, including an Army three-star general. The figure included the 64 passengers and crewmembers on the plane.

New York City Medical Examiner's office sought on Thursday to increase its stock of body bags to nearly 11,000.

The city had 900 bags in stock ; 10,000 more were ordered.

Seven people were pulled from the rubble Wednesday. A ballroom in a nearby building, set up to receive survivors, was empty Wednesday afternoon.

Hundreds of buildings are damaged in the area around the World Trade Center complex, some of them with huge holes that put them at risk of collapsing themselves.

The damaged buildings, along with some still-standing beams of the destroyed World Trade Center towers that could fall at any time, forced rescue workers to go slowly in their desperate search for more survivors.

On the 75-foot-high wreckage of those twin towers -- still smoking in places from smoldering fires -- more than 1,500 workers climb and dig, hoping to find more survivors. Above them loom 12 buildings with huge holes in them, threatening to collapse. One 20-story building seems as if it would tumble in a heavy wind.

As the rescue workers make their way through the rubble, they carry dishes. It is in those dishes they put the body parts they find.

Another room -- part of a damaged Brooks Brothers store next to the World Trade Center wreckage -- is set up as a morgue. It has some bodies in it, but mostly it has only body parts.

The scene in Lower Manhattan is much worse than it appears from outside the area.

For more than 10 blocks in every direction from the World Trade Center complex, debris clogs the streets, cars are overturned, and buildings are heavily damaged from the debris that came raining down when the center's towers fell.

A nine-story building, 5 World Trade Center, and the Millennium Hilton hotel were in danger of collapsing, fire officials said.

Giuliani said two people trapped in the WTC basement made cell phone calls to their relatives to give them their locations, and said others were down there with them.

"We're going to focus our efforts on recovering as many people as we can and on removing debris, which will take at least two or three weeks," said Giuliani at a Wednesday news conference.

Eighteen teams of rescue workers were using listening devices and dogs to locate survivors and bodies, the police commissioner said at a news conference Wednesday.

New York Fire Chief Pete Ganci, who spent more than 30 years with the New York Fire Department, and First Deputy Commissioner of the Fire Department William Feehan are among those who perished.

The Greater New York Hospital Association -- an organization of some 200 hospitals in the New York metro area -- said emergency rooms treated more than 1,500 people after Tuesday's attack.

Knife-wielding hijackers took over four planes Tuesday, crashing two of them into the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center. Another hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon; a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

A total of 266 people aboard those airplanes were killed.

Pentagon officials said they expected the number of fatalities there to be somewhere between 100 and 200, including the people on board the plane.

Dover Air Force Base in Delaware was preparing to receive the victims' bodies.

Arlington County emergency officials said they were assuming they would find no more survivors in the wreckage.

Washington Hospital Center told the AP it is treating 15 people from the attack. Seven of those are in critical condition. Walter Reed Army Hospital has two patients, according to the AP.

About 24,000 workers returned to work at the Pentagon Thursday. Half of the building remains closed because of structural and smoke damage, and many workers will have to double up in offices.

• President Bush calls the crashes "a national tragedy." Later in the day, Bush issues a statement from Barksdale AFB near Shreveport, Louisiana. "Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."

• In the first-ever national ground stop of aircraft, all flights nationwide are stopped at their departure airports.

• International flights are initially diverted to Canada; FAA says later, however, that 22 U.S.-bound international flights will be allowed to land.

• Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, says in reaction to the terror attacks that "we want to tell the American children that Afghanistan feels your pain and we hope that the courts find justice."

• In New York, more than 10,000 rescue personnel rush to the scene. Evacuation of lower Manhattan begins.

• Israel evacuates all of its missions around the world.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is evacuated. CDC prepares bioterrorism teams in case they become necessary.

• Philadelphia landmarks are evacuated.

• In Chicago, the Sears Tower is evacuated; United Nations in New York is evacuated.

• The New York Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels into the city.

• U.S. stock markets close after the New York attacks.

• NATO sends home all non-essential personnel from its Brussels, Belgium, headquarters.

• The Immigration and Naturalization Service puts the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada on highest state of alert.

• Los Angeles International Airport is evacuated.

• Disney closes its parks in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

• FEMA implements plan established for such events: FBI leads investigation, and Justice Deptartment heads crisis management.

• Three Palestinian groups -- Hamas, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Islamic Jihad -- deny responsibility for the attacks, but blame U.S. policies in the Mideast.

• Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington, D.C., declares a state of emergency.

• A Delta flight makes emergency landing in Cleveland and all passengers are safely evacuated. Federal officials search the plane for a possible bomb.

© 2001 Nicolas MONTEL News From New York City All rights reserved Tous droits reservés