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Picture this: It’s a beautiful Tuesday morning, similar to every other Tuesday morning; you are on your way to work or school, just about ready to start your normal day, and all of a sudden something you never expected happens; a plane crashes into one of the tallest and most important buildings in the city. Then minutes later, another plane hits the second building. Oh the horror! Smoke rising and debris flying everywhere; panic and terror is in the air and the one question on everyone’s mind is why?
On September 11th, 2001 at approximately 8:45am, a Boeing 767 Airplane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, setting off an enormous explosion, instantly killing people on the 80th floor of this 110-story building, and trapping others in the floors above. Several minutes later, another Boeing 767 crashed into the south tower near the 60th floor, sending burning debris to the streets and other buildings where people ran and panicked for their lives. As the buildings sat there burning, firefighters and police raced to evacuate the buildings and help bring people to safety. Before people knew it, the south tower collapsed with great force, sending ash and smoke flying into the streets of New York City. The north tower stood a little longer, but eventually it collapsed as well. This caused surrounding buildings to be damaged and some of them fell as well.
Meanwhile, another catastrophic event occurred in Washington D.C. when the Pentagon was attacked. At around 9:45am, a Boeing 757 hit the west side of the Pentagon causing a section of the building to collapse and inflame. All 64 passengers aboard were killed along with 125 people in the Pentagon.
Distress filled the country, as a final attack on another Boeing 757 took place. It is said that this plane was aiming to hit either the Washington Capital building or the White House, but it is still unclear what the target was. The passengers aboard the flight ended up fighting the four hijackers and unfortunately, the plane ended up crashing into a field in Shanksville, Virginia. All passengers on the flight were killed.
These four coordinated terrorist attacks were coordinated by a notorious terrorist group, known as Al-Qaeda. Osama Bin Laden became even more suspicious, although he denied any involvement in the attack. It is said that some of the motives behind these attacks was to seek revenge against America for their support of Israel and for their military presence in the Middle East. There were five hijackers on each plane that hit the twin towers and the Pentagon and there were four hijackers on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, making that a total of 19 hijackers involved. These terrorists were able to overpower the innocent people on these flights and fulfill their evil plots to terrorize America.
September 11th, 2001 was the deadliest day in New York City’s history. There were close to 3,000 deaths in total. This catastrophic event affected the nation emotionally and economically. When the World Trade Center was attacked, panic filled the entire nation. People were scared to get on a plane, those who had lost loved ones were in mourning, and the country was filled with sorrow. But I believe that true nationalism arose at this time because people came together to support each other in this time of despair. America was at a loss and people all over the country formed a community of love for America and strength for the brave people we’d lost. A nation-wide cry had spread all over and even those who didn’t know anyone personally who died in the attack, everyone was at a loss.
Many people developed psychological problems as well as health issues after the attack. According to “9/11 by the numbers” from New York Magazine, there are an estimated 422,000 New Yorkers suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. People who worked at the World Trade Center Cite are said to be at an increased risk for cancer. According to a study done on 10,000 New York Firefighters, half of them having worked at the World Trade Center Cite, 32 percent of them were more likely to have cancer. Additionally, people developed asthma and several other breathing problems, some of which were life-threatening. The collapse of the twin towers contaminated the air with dangerous particles such as cement, glass, asbestos, etc. The lasting effect of 9/11 still impacts many people even today.
Economically, New York spent a lot of money on the disaster. According to New York Magazine, the month after the attack economic loss in New York ranged around 105 billion. The estimated cost of cleanup was 600 million and FEMA spent about 970 million on the emergency. So there was an economic strain in New York following the attack. Additionally, budgets defense agencies drastically increased as the nation tried to strengthen America’s defense against terrorism. There were new attitudes and approaches to defense in response to 9/11. Besides America’s involvement in the War on terror and their invasion of Iraq, America has also implemented stricter security measures when flying. This consists of full body scans, not being able to have liquids over three ounces in carry-on bags, etc.
September 11th, 2001 is a day in history that no one, especially no American should ever forget. Below are some poems using text mining tools that were about the disaster and some of these poems helped support people doing the time of mourning. Overall, 9/11 helped people really begin to appreciate America and stand for our nations beliefs and values and that brought everyone closer together. This first Wordle is a poem by Michael R. Burch entitled “Because Her Heart is Tender, for Beth” and it’s about the emotional struggle many people went through when 9/11 happened. It talks about never forgetting what happened and also about regret. It’s a deep poem and the emotions are felt through the words the author uses. The second Wordle is a poem by Galway Kinnell entitled “When the Towers Fell”. This poem is about a recall of the horrific images when the Twin Towers were hit. It discusses the ashes that covered broken people walking on the street and bloodiness as well. It paints a picture of the scene of the disaster and it’s very vivid.
In order to preserve this site I plan to constantly keep up with this site and encourage visitors to leave feedback so I can know how to make it better. I also plan to update my information as often as possible and to keep adding more posts about different interesting topics such as this one. I think people would appreciate my site and love to learn more about different events in history. I also would want to eventually create a separate archive for a ride range of pictures on my topic just so that the viewers have more access to interesting pictures that are easy to access. As far as security, not only will I copyright my site but I will also make it required that in order to access certain parts of the site you have to create a username and password and log in to the site. Therefore my viewers can keep up with me and I can keep up with them.
