Walking Tour to World Trade Center area Part IV: One World Trade Center (section II)
Today is Thursday, September 9th, 2021. Today is a special day, although everyday is special as someone saids. But today, it is sooooo special for me. Today, I receieved a returning loong lost letter (posted date is 12/15/2020) for my loong lost friend. I didn’t oftenly think of her but today, before I got out of my home. I saw the letter sitting on the stone wall just below our mailbox. Also, today is a new day (everyday is a new day by the way) for us to be more brave to face/overcome the lost, the pain, the suffer, and hard time…
As I just read a little bit of the September 11 attacks on the web, I felt sad or I should pain inside my heart. I am not sure because I was sad for my personal life, then the news triggered my emotional feelings or I felt sad for the people who lost their lives and those whose loved ones died in the attacks. I really don’t know. It’s just like we are not 100% knowing ourselves.
On 2/13/1975, on the 11th floor of the North Tower, a 3-alarm fire broke out, and spread to the 9th and 14th floors.There was no structural damage to the tower because the fireproofing protected the steel. The World Trade Center complex had no fire sprinkler system at the time. The fire damaged the 9th and 14th floors. And water used to extinguish the fire damaged a few floors below.
on 2/26/1993, at 12:17PM, the 1st terrorist attacked the World Trade Center. The attack was planned by Ramzi Yousef. A Ryder truck detonated in the underground garage of the North Tower with 1500 pounds of explosives. The main damage was on B1 & B2, and structural damage on B3. The blast made a 100 feet hole through 5 sublevels. It killed 6 people. More than 1000 people were injured. There were around 50000 worker and visiters inside the tower.
It has been 20 years… On September 11, 2001, at 8:46AM, 5 hijackers affiliated with al-Qaeda crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the 93rd and 99th floors of the northern facade of the North Tower. At 9:03 AM, another group of terrorists crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the 77th and 85th floors of the southern facade of the South Tower. It burned for about 56 minutes and then collapsed by 9:59AM. The North Tower collapsed at 10:28AM after burning for 102 minutes. The 7 World Trade Center which was nearby the North Tower was damaged by the debris of North Tower, and it started fires. It collapsed at 5:21PM. (note: my heart is so heavy as i’m writing this…)
2996 people lost their lives in the attacks including the ones in Arlington, Virginia and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They were 2507 civilians, 343 firefighters, 72 law enforcement officers, 55 military personnel, and 19 hijackers. The workers and visiters (>90%) who died in the towers were at or above the impacting point. 1355 people from the North Tower died of trapping at or above the impacting point, fell, jump for escaping the flames and smoke, smoke inhalation, and the building collapsing. After Flight 11 hit the North Tower, all its 3 staircases above the impact zone were destroyed. This caused the people above the impact zone were impossible to escape. 107 people who were below the impacting point still lost their lives.
By 2002, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation organized a contest to decide how to use the World Trade Center site. Many proposals were made. They were a plan to rebuild the World Trade Center complex and to memorialize the September 11 attacks. In December 2002, a design by Daniel Libeskind was selected after the public rejected the 1st round of designs.
In the early plan, the numbers of floors using for office space and amenities were criticized. Compared to the original World Trade Center complex, more than 3000000 square feet of office space would be reduced. And only 82 floors would be habitable. Silverstein imposed the floor limit to express his concern about the higher floors would be a liability of future terrorist attack or incident. A lot of the building height was consisted of a big and open-air steel lattice structure on the roof where containing “sky gardens” and wind turbines. In 2002, George Pataki expericed accusations of cronyism. People saids he used his power to influence the result of the design contest. Because his friend and also the campaign contributor, Ronald Lauder preferred the winning architect’s design.
on 6/28/2005, the “Freedom Tower”’s final design was formally showed to the public. In April 2005, a 187 feet concrete base was added to the design beccause of the security consideration. The original design used glass prisms to clad the base, but it was replaced by a simple facade consisting of stainless steel panels and blast-resitant glass because the glass prisms were easily shattered into dangerous shards. The World Trade Center designers saids the tower would be “ a monolithic glass struture reflecting the sky and topped by a sculpted antenna”. In 2006, Larry Silverstein saids, “By 2012, we should have a completely rebuilt World Trade Center, more magnificent, more spectacular than it ever was.” (personal note: as we see the tower today, it is as what Silverstein stated.) On 4/26/2006, the foundation constuction of the “Freedom Tower” began with the approval from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In May 2006, the construction formally began.