Title : Journal of 9/11 Studies 47 August 2006/Volume 2 118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers Graeme MacQueen August 21, 2006
link : Journal of 9/11 Studies 47 August 2006/Volume 2 118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers Graeme MacQueen August 21, 2006
Journal of 9/11 Studies 47 August 2006/Volume 2 118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers Graeme MacQueen August 21, 2006
Journal of 9/11 Studies
48 August 2006/Volume 2
Initially, the city of New York refused to release this material, but after a lawsuit by the New York Times and some of the 9/11 victims’ families the city was ordered to release them. The New York Times then posted them on its internet site, where they have been available (with some deletions) to the public since
August, 2005.[3] As we learn from the oral histories themselves, the interviews took place in various FDNY offices and were conducted by a variety of FDNY officers. Sometimes only the interviewer and the interviewee were present, while at other times additional persons were present. Locations, dates, times, and names of those present are all meticulously recorded. It is impossible to tell simply by reading the recorded interviews if the atmosphere in which the interviews were conducted was coercive in any way, but I have found no evidence of this. In many cases the interviewer simply asks the interviewee to recount what he or she experienced on 9/11. Thereafter, some interviewers intervene frequently with questions, while others are largely silent. Interventions typically seek to establish details of times and locations, of the actions of various chiefs and firefighters, and of the progress of operations. Interviewers usually do not show any special interest in the topics central to my concerns—the collapses of the Towers and the use or non-use of explosions in these collapses--but their curiosity and attention are sometimes crucial to the eliciting of critical information.[4] There are very few cases where the interviewer may be said to have “led” the witness toward the explosion option.[5] Most interviewees appear to have given their testimony spontaneously, although some obviously read from a report they had written.[6] For the most part, interviewees appear to have been given the opportunity to structure their narratives as they wished. As we know, the New York firefighters were used by the U.S. government after 9/11 as symbols of heroism, but there are in this collection very few heroic narratives. Many accounts are actually structured as anti-heroic narratives--the firefighters arrive to save people and end up running for their lives as the Towers collapse.[7] Others are outright chaos narratives, where people mill around hopelessly with no plan and where their skills are useless.[8] I find many of the stories powerfully told, with vulnerability and humanity. Patriotism is no more than an occasional flash in these accounts, and there are extremely few witnesses who try to use their experiences to advance the U.S. government’s war on terror. Despite variations in the stories, as a body of narrative the collection gives prominence to five perceptions that were shocking to the witnesses: (1)the perception of the Towers burning;[9] (2)the perception of body parts littering the streets as the firefighters and medics arrive on the scene;[10] (3)the perception of people in the Towers leaping to their deaths;[11] (4)the perception of the Towers collapsing, and, especially, the perception of the initiation of these collapses; (5)the perception of, and entrapment in, the cloud of pulverized building flowing down the streets after the collapses.[12] It is the fourth of these shocking perceptions that is the focus of the present study. Journal of 9/11 Studies 49 August 2006/Volume 2 The Surprising Collapses Although the 9/11 Commission Report acknowledges that fire chiefs on the scene thought the collapse of the Towers was impossible,[13] it is worth emphasizing the unanimity of the FDNY personnel on this point. Here are typical comments: “...it took me a long time before I could accept the fact that even after you could see that the tower wasn't there you said it had to be there somewhere. You couldn’t believe that it had come down.” (Captain Michael Donovan, 9110205) “I was kind of in disbelief that the building was actually collapsing. I kind of stopped to say, well, maybe that was a piece of the facade. I couldn’t believe that the entire building was going to collapse in one heap.”(Captain Charles Clarke, 9110250) “Once again, I’m doing this 23 years...This changed all the rules. This changed all the rules. This went from a structure to a wafer in seconds, in seconds. I couldn’t believe the speed of that tower coming down. I heard the rumble, I looked up, debris was already 50 feet from the ground...” (Sergeant James Canham, 9110370) “I’ve worked in Manhattan my whole career in high rises and everything else...you looked back, all you see--you know how fast those buildings came down...it just doesn’t click that these buildings can come down...you just couldn’t believe that those buildings could come down...there’s no history of these buildings falling down.” (Lieutenant Warren Smith, 9110223) “whoever in their right mind would have thought that the World Trade Center would ever fall down...Nobody in the world, nobody ever would ever have thought those buildings were coming down.” (EMS Captain Mark Stone, 9110076) Hypotheses Many hypotheses have been put forward to explain the collapse of the Twin Towers, but we can think of these hypotheses are falling into two sets, the set of hypotheses according to which explosions were a critical factor in the collapses (which I shall call the set of explosion hypotheses, or EH) and the set according to which explosions were not a critical factor in the collapses (non-explosion hypotheses, or NEH). EH would include, for example, suggestions of explosives on the planes, mini-nukes in the buildings, or multiple pre-positioned charges—the last suggestion being, for good reasons, the most popular—which cut the columns, pulverized the building, and so on. NEH would include various combinations of failed trusses, weakened core and perimeter columns, sagging floors and the like, typically said to have been caused by a combination of airplane impact and heat from burning jet fuel, which somehow resulted in progressive and total collapse of the buildings.[14] Testing the Hypotheses through Observation Journal of 9/11 Studies 50 August 2006/Volume 2 Let me begin by stressing that I am interested here only in how these sets of hypotheses are verified and falsified through the direct accounts of witnesses. I exclude all evidence, even where it is indirectly based on eyewitness accounts, that involves measurement, analysis of physical materials, or photographic or seismic records. Obviously, all these forms of evidence are valid, but they are not my focus in this paper. (i) How, then, can EH be tested by the observations of those present at the scene? What, among such observations, will tend to verify EH and what will tend to falsify it? If witnesses perceive or think they perceive explosions that they judge to be critical to the collapse of the towers,[15] this will constitute positive evidence in support of EH. All testimony that supports NEH will count against EH. Whether or not silence on the part of witnesses—no mention of explosions--should count against EH is a difficult matter. Arguments from silence have many dangers. I am prepared to say this: the nature of observational evidence is such that the greater the number of witnesses, the richer the detail of their observations, and the more their testimonies complement each other, the stronger the case will be. I see no way to set a decisive boundary, a number of testimonies beneath which EH fails and beyond which it succeeds. There will be an irreducible degree of subjective judgment. (ii) How can NEH be tested by the observations of those present at the scene? What will tend to verify and what will tend to falsify it? We can divide non-explosion hypotheses into two main sub-sets, those that focus on the initial causes of structural failure of the Towers and those that focus on the progressive and total collapse of the Towers. The hypothesis of the National Institute of Standards and Technology is in the former class. NIST has a clear hypothesis concerning the initiation of the collapses of the upper stories of the Towers, but it has nothing of substance to say about progressive and total collapse.[16] Even if our main interest lay in the initiation of the collapse of top floors (which it does not), we would find that the evidence supporting this is, for the most part, hidden from observers and, where visible, is ambiguous and could easily support EH.[17] We therefore find that NIST’s hypothesis, and similar hypotheses focusing on initial causes, offer us little that we can test through observation. This does not mean these hypotheses are false, it simply means we must pass over them in silence when we are looking for positive evidence from observers. The proponents of these hypotheses will have to look elsewhere for supporting evidence. Of the second sub-set of NEH, the most common over the years since 9/11 has been the well-known “pancake” hypothesis.[18] Regardless of what the initiating causes of collapse may be, says this hypothesis, progressive and total collapse came about through successive, linked and cumulative falling or “pancaking” of floors. The pancake hypothesis became very influential as an explanation of Tower collapse soon after 9/11. It was later adopted in the 9/11 Commission Report of 2004 [19] and it continues to be influential among those unfamiliar with research on the collapses. The evidence and argument assembled against this hypothesis seem to me, however, to be definitive, and it is not surprising that the 2005 NIST report avoids endorsing pancaking. I believe that this hypothesis is simply no longer viable.[20] At the time the interviews with members of the FDNY were being conducted, the pancake hypothesis was well known and was felt by many people to have been proven correct. I have no doubt that this is why FDNY members make fairly common mention of pancaking. What are we to do with this testimony? Journal of 9/11 Studies 51 August 2006/Volume 2 We notice, first of all, that not all witnesses regard pancaking and critical explosions as mutually exclusive. Williams Reynolds says: “I was distracted by a large explosion from the south tower and it seemed like fire was shooting out a couple of hundred feet in each direction, then all of a sudden the top of the tower started coming down in a pancake...” [21] Second, we can in most cases not tell for certain what witnesses mean when they speak of pancaking. Perhaps some of them simply mean that they saw progressive collapse of the building, starting near the top and continuing on down. (This difficulty is not restricted to the term “pancaking:” it applies to several terms I have used in my research. When people speak of the buildings “imploding,” for example, they may merely mean that the buildings collapsed rapidly on themselves. But I believe most of the terms on which my research focuses, such as “explosion” and “bomb,” are less subject to ambiguity.) I have decided that it is important, regardless of the status of the pancake hypothesis today, to record all those cases in the oral histories where witnesses appear to support this hypothesis. These cases are, at the very least, important as evidence of how theories about the collapses evolved among witnesses over time. The oral histories show that many people who originally thought they had witnessed critical explosions were later persuaded that they had not, and it appears that the pancake hypothesis was the main alternative they were offered. In any case, I have been able to find only one other type of report in this material that clearly supports NEH, namely cases where witnesses directly deny that they witnessed explosions. In short, support for NEH, for the purposes of this study, consists of testimony denying explosions and testimony supporting the pancake hypothesis. Falsification of NEH is quite straightforward. NEH and EH cannot both be true, so all evidence that supports EH weakens NEH. Note that it weakens not only the pancake hypothesis but all non-explosion hypotheses. Where observational evidence is concerned, falsification should be thought of as a cumulative process, and we shall want to look at both the quantity and quality of our evidence. Evidence Supporting Sets of Hypotheses (i) I have established seven categories of evidence to help organize the cases that will count in favour of EH: (a)cases where witnesses use the words “explode,” “explosion” or variants to describe what they perceived; (b)cases where witnesses use the term “blast” to refer to what they saw or heard; (c)cases where witnesses use the terms “blew up,” “blew out” or variants to describe what they perceived; (d)cases where witnesses use the terms “bomb” or “secondary device” (a term for an explosive device timed to go off after care-givers have gathered to give aid) to describe what they perceived; Journal of 9/11 Studies 52 August 2006/Volume 2 (e)cases where witnesses use the terms “implode,” “implosion” or variants to describe what they perceived; (f)cases that I judge to be strongly suggestive of planned demolition; (g)other cases that are, in my judgment, suggestive of critical explosions. I have decided on the following exclusions. All cases will be excluded where sounds are described whose interpretation is ambiguous. Thus, “bang” and “boom” are excluded (though I have included “ba-ba-ba-boom”), unless accompanied by a more explicit term such as “explode,” since they might have non-explosive causes such as floors falling on other floors. The ubiquitous “rumble” is excluded, as is the very common “roar” and a host of similes and metaphors referring to freight trains, jet planes and the like. All these sounds might be expected to accompany a catastrophic collapse of a 110 story building, whatever the cause of the collapse. Although I have accepted references to “volcano,” I have excluded “earthquake” and related metaphors and descriptions from my list, thereby excluding one of David Ray Griffin’s main categories.[22] I recognize that Griffin has good reasons for including selected cases of the shaking of the earth: when this shaking occurs very early in the sequence of events, and especially before there is any visible sign of collapse in the Towers, it suggests the shaking has an explosive origin and is not simply the expected accompaniment of a massive building collapse. But I have decided to err on the side of caution and exclude all such references, leaving it to other researchers to sort the wheat from the chaff. I have included “blast” references only in selected cases, and especially when these appear to refer to what witnesses saw or heard, as opposed to what they felt. Many witnesses refer to feeling the massive pressure wave that accompanied or followed the collapse, and they sometimes use the term “blast” in this connection. But such a pressure wave would be expected to accompany the sudden collapse of large buildings and is freely described by the 9/11 Commission Report.[23] Again, as with the shaking of the earth, I have tried to err on the side of caution. A researcher more familiar than I with the signs of explosions and blast waves might be able to sort out these cases. I have excluded all references to possible effects of explosions where the explosions themselves are not named or described. I therefore exclude descriptions of lobby damage found when the firefighters arrived, which may be evidence of early explosions low in the building, as well as the debris cloud resulting from the mid-air pulverization of the Towers. Throughout, I have tried to keep my focus on what the witnesses themselves perceived or thought they were perceiving. When we apply the above criteria and restrictions we are left with 177 cases from 118 witnesses. (The former number is higher than the latter because a given witness may use more than one term or category in an account.) The cases are listed according to category in Appendix A and the testimony is given in extenso, in alphabetical order according to the names of the witnesses, in Appendix B. (ii) I have found it sufficient to establish three categories of evidence for the much smaller number of cases offering evidence that supports NEH: (a)cases where witnesses deny perceiving explosions; Journal of 9/11 Studies 53 August 2006/Volume 2 (b)cases where witnesses use the words “pancake,” “pancaking” or variants to describe what they perceived, while omitting reference to explosions; (c)cases where, although they do not use the above words, witnesses describe processes that suggest pancaking in the absence of explosions. Note that valid cases may not be retrospective (someone explicitly tells us that he or she decided after the event that what was seen was pancaking), nor may they be indirect (a person sees the event on television or passes on the opinion of a friend). When we apply the above criteria and restrictions we are left with ten cases from ten witnesses. These are given, according to category, in Appendix C. Failure to Mention Explosions: the Argument from Silence If there were, in fact, explosions, why do the majority of FDNY witnesses whose testimony has been recorded not mention explosions? I believe that this argument from silence must be faced, despite its problematic nature. Let us consider the numbers. We have 118 witnesses out of a pool of 503. Over 23 per cent of our group are explosion witnesses. In my judgment, this is a very high percentage of witnesses, especially when we consider that: (a)Interviewers were typically not asked about explosions and, in most cases, were not even asked about the collapses of the towers. What testimony we have was volunteered, and it therefore represents not the maximum number of witnesses to explosions but the minimum number. (b)Some FDNY witnesses were not near the Towers when collapse occurred.[24] (c)Some witnesses were preoccupied with issues other than the collapses: their accounts reveal little interest in the events on which we are focusing.[25] (d)Some accounts are extremely succinct and include little detail.[26] (e)Many accounts include references that are, while ambiguous, not inconsistent with explosions. In this category I include “rumble,” “boom” and the like. In my judgment, the lack of references to explosions among the majority of witnesses is easily explained and does little to weaken EH. The Quality of the Cases Since one of the main aims of my research has been to take seriously the perceptions and interpretations of FDNY witnesses (in a way that the 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST report do not), I find myself reluctant to “explain away” statements that these witnesses have made. I believe it is fair to say, however, that the cumulative impact of the NEH witnesses is weak not merely because of the paucity of these accounts but because most of them can, without difficulty, be accommodated within EH. Of the ten cases, I would say that Terranova’s (9110168) is the strongest. He hears the rumble and the succession of booms but interprets these within the pancake framework, because, he says, he directly saw this pancaking. Fair enough. The Sanchez account (9110128) I would rate a close second, but its reference to a shaking of the Journal of 9/11 Studies 54 August 2006/Volume 2 earth early in the sequence of events could indicate explosion. Several other accounts include similar difficulties: in addition to the ambiguity already mentioned (what do they mean by “pancaking?”) we find references to “the earthquake feel” (Harris, 9110108); the odd expression “machine gun” to refer to pancaking (Salvador, 9110474); and reference to the pancaking starting much lower (70th floor of the South Tower) than it should have (Holowach, 9110114). In my view, as evidence in support of the set of non-explosion hypotheses this list of cases is not strong. It can be accommodated by the alternative set of hypotheses. What of the EH cases? Can they be accommodated by the set of non-explosion hypotheses? I do not believe so. We begin by facing the simple number of individual witnesses (118) and the even greater number of references, direct or indirect, in their accounts to explosions. We next have to deal with the rich, mutually supportive detail of these accounts. True, there are apparent inconsistencies: one person will refer to a single big explosion, another will say there were three explosions, while yet another will claim to have heard seven. I have made no attempt to sort out all these claims and cannot pretend to know if they are ultimately compatible. But, on the other hand, I cannot read this material without being struck by the ways in which the witnesses’ testimony is not merely cumulative but complementary and multidimensional. Griffin has discussed this multidimensionality while making his case for planned demolition, and I direct the reader to his discussion.[27] Among the phenomena to which he draws our attention are: the horizontal ejection of debris early in the buildings’ collapses; the huge clouds of fine dust; the explicit discussion by the firefighters, in the midst of these events, of the possibility that they were witnessing planned demolition; and multiple, heard “pops” with apparently related, visually perceived “flashes,” which occur in patterns, temporally and spatially, in ways that suggest planned demolition. I fail to see how any of the non-explosion hypotheses put forward to date, including the pancake hypothesis, can accommodate all of these phenomena. The Changing of MindsAs will be apparent to anyone who reads through Appendix B, many members of the FDNY came to believe, in the period between 9/11 and their interviews, that they had been mistaken in interpreting what they perceived as evidence of explosions. Some suggest in their interviews that they now (as of the interview date) realize they witnessed non-explosive collapse, with the implication that they face the task of fitting what they originally perceived into the new framework. A few adopt the new framework readily; others do so reluctantly; and still others are unwilling to do so at all. I have not attempted in Appendix B to delete references to change of mind: on the contrary, I have included them because I find them fascinating and instructive. In some cases we can almost feel the struggle of the interviewee to accept the new interpretive frame. Charles Wells appears to be making a valiant effort to avoid mentioning explosions before he at last gives in: “We got to the point of being in between the Vista Hotel and the World Trade Center, at which point we heard a -- we felt a loud -- a very strong vibration, shaking, and a loud noise like a Journal of 9/11 Studies 55 August 2006/Volume 2 subway train coming through a station at speed, like a jet engine at full throttle. It was a roaring sound... [then, later in the narrative] Everybody's heads were all popping up now. Everybody is digging out, so I ran into a couple of firefighters and I said, ‘Well, you know, what the hell happened?’ Some kind of an explosion, he goes, and that's what I thought it was...”[28] Maybe the non-explosion interpretation gained ground as the result of reflection, reading and a gradual maturing of judgement. In this case we might speak of a process of education. But maybe the change in interpretation resulted from an undercutting of witnesses’ perception by the theories and claims of “experts,” institutional superiors and government leaders, in which case we might prefer to speak of the “re-education” or indoctrination of the FDNY witnesses. I mentioned earlier the concern of Mr. Von Essen that the oral histories be recorded “before they became reshaped by a collective memory.” Now we see the soundness of his intuition. Early in 2004 Rodger Herbst suggested that, in explaining the collapse of the towers, explosion hypotheses came first and were only gradually supplanted by “politically correct revisionist theories.”[29] We now have solid evidence suggesting that, for the FDNY, non-explosive collapse is, indeed, a revisionist theory. The Oral Histories, the 9/11 Commission Report, and the NIST Report The 9/11 Commission and NIST both resorted to legal threats against the city of New York in order to obtain the 503 oral histories.[30] They succeeded in gaining access to this material, and we would expect them to make use of it. It appears (references are somewhat unclear) that the Commission did, in fact, make fairly extensive use of the oral histories in composing the crucial Chapter 9 of its 2004 Report, which deals with the crashing of the planes into the Towers and the subsequent collapse of these buildings.[31] The Report refers to the oral histories to verify the condition of civilians in the stairwells of the Towers, the nature of rescue actions taking place on various floors of the buildings, and so on. It appears to regard the oral narratives as trustworthy; establishes no critical distance from them; seems to consider them straightforward descriptions of the events of the day. But what about all the references in the FDNY material to explosions? The Report makes no mention of them. Chapter 9 contains the only reference to explosion hypotheses in the entire 9/11 Commission Report: “When the South Tower collapsed, firefighters on upper floors of the North Tower heard a violent roar, and many were knocked off their feet...those firefighters not standing near windows facing south had no way of knowing that the South Tower had collapsed; many surmised that a bomb had exploded...”[32] The note supporting this statement is to a body of later (2004) interviews of firefighters by the Commission, not to the 503 oral histories. Why is this? And what are we to make of the
Journal of 9/11 Studies 92 August 2006/Volume 2 After hearing this and looking up and seeing the building, what I thought was an explosion, everyone was running... [pp. 4-5] *** Janice Olszewski, 9110193 South Tower: I didn’t think it was safe. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought more could be happening down there. I didn’t know if it was an explosion. I didn’t know it was collapse at that point. I thought it was an explosion or secondary device, a bomb, the jet-plane exploding, whatever. [p. 7] *** Patricia Ondrovic, 9110048 South Tower: My partner and I grabbed our stretcher, went to put it in the back of our vehicle, and at that time, I think it was the lobby of the building behind us blew out. Everybody started running, I didn't see him again that day. He got thrown one way, I got thrown the other way. ...I was still on Vesey, cause the building that blew up on me was on Vesey. ...There was no where safe to go...I thought that they blew up our triage sector...The paramedic from Cabrini, that's where he was. I was just talking to him 20 minutes before everything blew up. [pp. 4-7] ... At that point I got really upset. I said, do you realize they just blew up our triage sector? Everybody back there is dead, everybody back there is gone. [p. 9] *** Joseph Patriciello, 9110378 South Tower: ...I happened to be looking up and saw the explosion or the building fail with the ensuing fireball and cloud. It didn't appear to me at that moment the building was coming down. But when the noise level began to pick up, it was obvious that something wrong was going on. We all proceeded to run... [p. 4] Journal of 9/11 Studies 93 August 2006/Volume 2 *** Joseph Petrassi, 9110449 North Tower: We came out of the building and we were looking up and the tower seemed to blow out...You could the feel the stuff hitting you on the back as you were running. [p. 3] *** Thomas Piambino, 9110493 South Tower: The south tower had fallen, but at that time I didn't know what it was. All I heard was a tremendous explosion. The tower I was in shook really bad. [p. 5] North Tower: ...and then the north tower started to fall, and my perception was that when I looked back at the tower as it was starting to come down -- I was booking -- was that there was -- I thought it exploded, and I didn't realize it had collapsed. It looked to me like an explosion...I wound up taking refuge behind an ESU truck, I believe it was, a Police Department ESU truck, I think, and I just rode it out until first there was the explosion or the concussion, and then there was very, very strong wind, and then there was the black... [pp. 9-10] *** John Picarello, 9110240 South Tower: In about a second or two, you just heard like a ba-ba-ba-boom, and everything just came down and everything was pitch-black. [p. 6] *** Richard Picciotto, 9110211 South Tower: [As heard from inside the NT.] ...drop your tools, drop your masks, drop everything, get out, get out, get out. My thinking was either--I thought a bomb hit the other building and brought it down, and if there’s a bomb in that one, there’s a bomb in this one. [p. 6] Journal of 9/11 Studies 94 August 2006/Volume 2 *** Kevin Quinn, 9110339 South Tower: Looking up at the towers and it looked like it just basically imploded. [p. 2] *** Joseph Rae, 9110294 South Tower: We started walking north to just about the second footbridge, which would be 6 World Trade, and all of a sudden we heard the explosion and the building started to come down and I ran... [p. 3] *** Gerard Reilly, 9110435 South Tower: So we probably were in the building maybe a minute in the lobby of the tower, whichever one we were in, and that's when it came down. But I thought it was an explosion in the hotel, because all the debris came down, it was pitch-black, the whole building shook. [p. 4] ... I told him I thought it was a bomb in the hotel, because nobody said the building collapsed. [p. 5] *** William Reynolds, 9110288 South Tower: After a while, and I don't know how long it was, I was distracted by a large explosion from the south tower and it seemed like fire was shooting out a couple of hundred feet in each direction, then all of a sudden the top of the tower started coming down in a pancake... [p. 3] ... Q. Bill, just one question. The fire that you saw, where was the fire? Like up at the upper levels where it started collapsing? Journal of 9/11 Studies 95 August 2006/Volume 2 A. It appeared somewhere below that. Maybe twenty floors below the impact area of the plane. [p. 4] ... Q. You're talking about the north tower now; right? A. Before the north tower fell. He said,’No.’ I said, ‘Why not? They blew up the other one.’ I thought they blew it up with a bomb. I said, ‘If they blew up the one, you know they're gonna blow up the other one.’ [p. 8] *** Patrick Richiusa, 9110305 North Tower: ...then it was dead silent. There was no noise after 1 Trade Center fell. It was like something out of a movie. It was really loud and then it was -- maybe it was just my hearing from the blast. [p. 10] *** Juan Rios, 9119937 South Tower: ...I was hooking up the regulator to the O-2, when I hear people screaming and a loud explosion...So I just started to run... [p. 3] *** Angel Rivera, 9110489 South Tower: [The collapse is experienced from inside the Marriott hotel.] ...when we hit the 19th floor, something horrendous happened. It was like a bomb went off. We thought we were dead. The whole building shook. The brick coming out of -- the door to the hallway into the hotel blew off like somebody had thrown it all over the place. It shook all over the place. We were thrown on the floor...The building was still shaking and we're still hearing explosions going on everywhere, so we decided let's get out of here. [pp. 4-5] North Tower: [Again from inside the Marriott.] Mike Mullan walked one flight up, and then the most horrendous thing happened. That's when hell came down. It was like a huge, enormous explosion. I still can hear it. Journal of 9/11 Studies 96 August 2006/Volume 2 Everything shook. Everything went black. The wind rushed, very slowly [sound], all the dust, all the -- and everything went dark. We were rolling all over the floor, banging against the walls... [p. 7] ... When the second tower came down, we had no idea what was going on. We thought another plane, another bomb, another as a second device. [p. 9] *** Daniel Rivera, 9110035 South Tower: [This witness is very close to ST when it collapses.] Then that’s when I kept on walking close to the south tower and that’s when that building collapsed. Q. How did you know that it was coming down? A. That noise. It was a noise. Q. What did you hear? What did you see? A. It was a frigging noise. At first I thought it was--do you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear ‘pop, pop, pop, pop, pop’? That’s exactly what--because I thought it was that. When I heard that frigging noise, that’s when I saw the building coming down. [p. 9] *** Terence Rivera, 9110343 South Tower: As I run towards it, I know that I'm not going to escape the -- escape it, so I dive under -- I don't know even know which rig it was. I dive under a rig. At the same time it felt like an explosion. I got bounced around underneath the rig. [p. 7] *** Kenneth Rogers, 9110290 South Tower: ...we were standing there with about five companies and we were just waiting for our assignment and then there was an explosion in the south tower, which according to this map, this exposure just blew out in flames. A lot of guys left at that point. I kept watching. Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing. [pp. 3-4] Journal of 9/11 Studies 97 August 2006/Volume 2 *** John Rothmund, 9110112 South Tower: At that time we were looking at the top of the towers and all the rubble and people coming off, and all of a sudden you heard -- it sounded like another airplane, or a missile. It was like a slow shake. The whole ground just vibrated and shook. [pp. 5-6] North Tower: Again, we didn't know what was going on. We thought it was a bomb, you know, like planes were dropping from the sky or missiles were hitting. We didn't know what the hell was going on. [p. 14] *** William Ryan, 9110117 [Seems to be after both collapses.] Q. What did you think you were responding to at that point? A. Well, we knew we had fire. We knew we had partial collapse. Q. From an explosion or -- A. Yes. Well, we heard a loud boom when we were getting ready to dock the ferry. Probably the jet fuel igniting, I assume. [p. 3] *** Stanley Rybak, 9110263 South Tower: ...then the -- then everything just came right through. The dust and the explosion knocked the windows out, and so I was momentarily on the ground. [p. 5] *** Anthony Salerno, 9110309 North Tower: Journal of 9/11 Studies 98 August 2006/Volume 2 Putting out all those fires, in that interim, the second building had come down. I remember hearing a lot of explosions, the street turning completely gray, gray clouds of smoke all over the place. Everybody had stopped what they were doing and ran back up the block. [p. 4] *** Patrick Scaringello, 9110030 South Tower: I started to treat patients on my own when I heard the explosion from up above. I looked up, I saw smoke and flame and then I saw the top tower tilt, start to twist and lean. [p. 4] North Tower: I was assisting in pulling more people out from debris, when I heard the second tower explode. [p. 5] *** Howie Scott, 9110365 South Tower: We just made our turn to go in towards the lobby of tower two. For whatever reason, I just happened to look up and saw the whole thing coming down, pancaking down, and the explosion, blowing out about halfway up. [p. 6] *** Edward Sheehey, 9110226 South Tower: We were probably just at West Street, just at the street. Then the south tower -- we heard an explosion, looked up, and the building started to collapse. [p. 3] *** William Simon, 9110115 North Tower: Then we hear a rumble, and we see a blast of smoke and a slight ball of flame coming out from the silhouette of the building, and we watched the antenna collapse into the building. [p. 9] Journal of 9/11 Studies 99 August 2006/Volume 2 *** Richard Skillington, 9110279 North Tower: I looked up. I saw a helicopter, and I was trying to figure out what he was doing. Then the second tower exploded and started coming down. [p. 4] *** Richard Smiouskas, 9110210 South Tower: All of a sudden there was this groaning sound like a roar, grrrr. The ground started to shake....It looked like an earthquake. The ground was shaking. I fell to the floor. My camera bag opened up. The cameras went skidding across the floor. The windows started exploding in. [pp. 8-9] ... ...I didn't know exactly what was going on outside. I'm thinking maybe the building snapped in half. I'm thinking maybe a bomb blew up. I'm thinking it could have been a nuclear. [p. 9] *** Thomas Spina, 9110445 South Tower: I don't know what time later a loud rumble -- it sounded like an explosion. We thought it was a bomb... and number two tower comes down... [p. 9] *** Mark Steffens, 9110003 South Tower: We got to maybe one block north of where the Battery Tunnel exits onto West Street there, and then, boom, a massive explosion. Right in front of us we saw what looked like a fireball and smoke. It was rolling this way. [p. 5] North Tower: Journal of 9/11 Studies 100 August 2006/Volume 2 Then there was another it sounded like an explosion and heavy white powder, papers, flying everywhere. [pp. 6-7] *** John Sudnik, 9110198 South Tower: The best I can remember, we were just operating there, trying to help out and do the best we could. Then we heard a loud explosion or what sounded like a loud explosion and looked up and I saw tower two start coming down. *** Frank Sweeney, 9110113 South Tower: I bent over to pick up the hose, and I hear what sounded like firecrackers and a low rumble. I look up, and the south tower -- I could see the top part of the siding overlapping the bottom side of the siding...I ran... [p. 9] *** Jay Swithers, 9110172 South Tower: I took a quick glance at the building and while I didn't see it falling, I saw a large section of it blasting out, which led me to believe it was just an explosion. I thought it was a secondary device, but I knew that we had to go. [p. 5] ... So I assumed that the vehicle had not been in the - what I thought was an explosion at the time, but was the first collapse. [p. 9] *** David Timothy, 9110156 North Tower: The next thing I knew, you started hearing more explosions. I guess this is when the second tower started coming down. [p. 12]
Journal of 9/11 Studies 101 August 2006/Volume 2 *** Stanley Trojanowski, 9110292 South Tower: After the collapse of number Two World Trade Center, which I actually thought was a bomb that went off because the north tower was blocking my view, debris and everything started falling, people were running... [p. 3] ... I made my way underneath the scaffolding again and just tried to outlast the collapse, which I thought was just another bomb going off. [p. 4] *** Albert Turi, 9110142 South Tower: The next thing I heard was Pete say what the fuck is this? And as my eyes traveled up the building, and I was looking at the south tower, somewhere about halfway up, my initial reaction was there was a secondary explosion, and the entire floor area, a ring right around the building blew out. I later realized that the building had started to collapse already and this was the air being compressed and that is the floor that let go. [p. 14] *** Thomas Turilli, 9110501 South Tower: [This appears to be at, or just before, the collapse of the ST. They are in the NT and have just sent some men up in the elevator.] The door closed, they went up, and it just seemed a couple seconds and all of a sudden you just heard like it almost actually that day sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight, and then just a huge wind... [p. 4] [They get down the stairs.] At that point we were kind of standing on the street and I looked to my left and actually I noticed the tower was down. I didn't even know what it was when we were in there. It just seemed like a huge explosion. [p. 6] Journal of 9/11 Studies 101 August 2006/Volume 2 *** Stanley Trojanowski, 9110292 South Tower: After the collapse of number Two World Trade Center, which I actually thought was a bomb that went off because the north tower was blocking my view, debris and everything started falling, people were running... [p. 3] ... I made my way underneath the scaffolding again and just tried to outlast the collapse, which I thought was just another bomb going off. [p. 4] *** Albert Turi, 9110142 South Tower: The next thing I heard was Pete say what the fuck is this? And as my eyes traveled up the building, and I was looking at the south tower, somewhere about halfway up, my initial reaction was there was a secondary explosion, and the entire floor area, a ring right around the building blew out. I later realized that the building had started to collapse already and this was the air being compressed and that is the floor that let go. [p. 14] *** Thomas Turilli, 9110501 South Tower: [This appears to be at, or just before, the collapse of the ST. They are in the NT and have just sent some men up in the elevator.] The door closed, they went up, and it just seemed a couple seconds and all of a sudden you just heard like it almost actually that day sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight, and then just a huge wind... [p. 4] [They get down the stairs.] At that point we were kind of standing on the street and I looked to my left and actually I noticed the tower was down. I didn't even know what it was when we were in there. It just seemed like a huge explosion. [p. 6] Journal of 9/11 Studies 102 August 2006/Volume 2 *** Thomas Vallebuona, 9110418 South Tower: ...I heard ‘boom’, an exploding sound, a real loud bang. I looked up, and I could see the Trade Center starting to come down, the south tower, which I guess I was about a block away from. [p. 5] North Tower: And ‘ba-boom’ again, the same sound, the same noise, the same shuddering, shrilling noise of the metal falling as it cascades down. [p. 9] *** Stephen Viola, 9110439 South Tower: [Collapse experienced from inside NT.] Our guy went in with 13 truck, and he was coming down with the guy from 13 truck to bring the elevator to us, and when he was either going up or coming down the elevator, that's when the south tower collapsed, and it sounded like a bunch of explosions. You heard like loud booms, but I guess it was all just stuff coming down... [p. 3] *** William Wall, 9110285 North Tower: At that time we heard an explosion. We looked up and the building was coming down right on top of us... [p. 9] *** James Walsh, 9110459 North Tower: The building didn’t fall the way you would think tall buildings would fall. Pretty much it looked like it imploded on itself. [p. 10] Journal of 9/11 Studies 103 August 2006/Volume 2 *** William Walsh, 9110442 North Tower: I just remembered seeing two floors of heavy fire from the north side of World Trade Center one and the West side of World Trade Center one. All of a sudden things collapsed one Floor, and then within a second or so it just imploded. [p. 28] *** Charles Wells, 9110163 South Tower: We got to the point of being in between the Vista Hotel and the World Trade Center, at which point we heard a -- we felt a loud -- a very strong vibration, shaking, and a loud noise like a subway train coming through a station at speed, like a jet engine at full throttle. It was a roaring sound... [p. 6] [After digging himself out of the collapse rubble.] Everybody's heads were all popping up now. Everybody is digging out, so I ran into a couple of firefighters and I said, "Well, you know, what the hell happened?" Some kind of an explosion, he goes, and that's what I thought it was... [p. 8] *** Daniel Williams, 9110289 South Tower: I turned my face back towards the buildings as -- looking up at the south tower. It seemed like the one floor exploded, but in retrospect I'm thinking that was the compressive force of the building coming down that blew it out. I remember yelling, "Run." [p. 4] *** Journal of 9/11 Studies 104 August 2006/Volume 2 APPENDIX C: NON-EXPLOSION CASES BY CATEGORY: TEXT AND CONTEXT: 10 CASES 1.DENIAL OF EXPLOSION: 2 CASES James Murphy, 9110323 South Tower: [This is the sound as heard from around the ground floor of the NT.] I was looking down towards West Street, because that's where it seemed that it was coming from. You just heard -- I thought it was a third plane that hit, because when we were going in there was a couple of cops. When we made the right onto Liberty, they said, "Be careful, guys, there's a third plane heading in." So that's what I thought it was. It just seemed like a long time that it was -- it didn't seem like an explosion. It was like boom, boom, and then just got louder and louder. It got louder and louder, and then all of a sudden I was looking out onto West Street and the whole area turned from gray to black in a hurry. *** Glen Rohan, 9110404 North Tower: We got approximately to Vesey, a little further past Vesey, I would say about 200 feet from the tower, when we heard a noise. I wouldn't even call it an explosion, but it was enough to make you look up. When we looked up, you could see things coming off the sides of the building of what was then number One World Trade Center. We looked at it for probably about five seconds before I realized that this building is coming down. 2.PANCAKING (TERM): 7 CASES Craig Dunne, 9110490 North Tower: I believe we were there maybe two minutes, two and a half minutes. We heard the rumble, looked up, and the antenna started leaning and the whole building started pancaking towards us, coming down. *** Dennis Fischer, 9110402 North Tower: Journal of 9/11 Studies 105 August 2006/Volume 2 ...we heard the rumbling. We looked up, that I remember as plain as day. I looked up and I saw from the top, I actually watched it with my own eyes, I saw the top start to pancake down. I remember looking at the proby I was with. We looked at each other in amazement. The time seemed to like stand still for a second. We looked at each other. We looked back up. We looked back at each other. It seemed like a bunch of time went by. It was probably like a fraction of a second. Everybody started just running the other way. *** Sammuel Harris, 9110108 South Tower: As I related back to Chief Gombo – or I was getting ready to walk out and tell Chief Gombo what I was told, that's when tower one started to pancake and collapse. The only thing that I remember was the guy in front of me who was standing there in awe of just the earthquake feel, for myself as well. *** Scott Holowach, 9110114 South Tower: Shortly after that, sure enough, I heard – I don't know even -- I guess a rumbling sound. I looked up and I see the whole 70th floor basically like buckle out and start crumbling down the outside of the building. At the time I grabbed two other guys and said let's get the hell out of here. We dove into the building and after the rumbling stopped -- Q. Would have been south tower collapsing? A. The south tower. Q. You could see it from your position? A. Yes. I visually watched the 70 floor. It looked like almost it was buckling outwards and then it just went down the outside of the building, just like scaled the outside of the building and it just started pancaking... *** Robert Salvador, 9110474 North Tower: ...and then the north tower started coming down. I heard the same -- same pancaking, like a machine gun coming and glass flying, so I closed -- shut the door, got out of the rig, and ran -- started running across the street. Journal of 9/11 Studies 106 August 2006/Volume 2 *** Tiernach Cassidy, 9110413 North Tower: We start walking down Cortlandt Street from Broadway, going west, and we’re carrying the stokes basket, myself and the team I was with, the other four guys. We started hearing the pancaking of the north tower now. I looked at the officer I was with. We both looked at each other like what’s that? Not thinking the second one would be coming down. Q. What did it sound like? A. It sounded like a plane just getting ready to land, just getting closer, coming in; a bowling ball getting closer when it’s ready to hit that sweet spot, you know. But it didn’t take us long to realize what it was. We didn’t look up. We just ran ... *** Rosario Terranova, 9110168 South Tower: While we were discussing this, I remember hearing Chief Ganci say, "Oh, shit," you know, so we all looked up, and you could hear this rumble coming. We looked up at the south tower, which is the No. 2 tower, and all of a sudden we began to see like a pancake. I mean, it's as simple as that. If you could imagine you had two cards in your hand, and you just clapped your hands, and they just closed on each other. That's what it looked like, like a toy, and we began to see the pancake, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, one floor after another, as quick as you can imagine it. 3.PANCAKING (DESCRIPTION): 1 CASE Luis Sanchez, 9110128 South Tower: Five minutes later I just heard this loud noise. It was like an earthquake. It was shaking, and things was going down. I looked everywhere. There was nothing going on. I looked to the side, looked to my friend. There was nothing going on. When I looked up, I saw the top of the building floor by floor was coming down, collapsing. I was oh. (Inaudible.)
Thus Article Journal of 9/11 Studies 47 August 2006/Volume 2 118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers Graeme MacQueen August 21, 2006
That's an article Journal of 9/11 Studies 47 August 2006/Volume 2 118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers Graeme MacQueen August 21, 2006 This time, hopefully can give benefits to all of you. well, see you in posting other articles.
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