11 Facts about 9/11

- On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 were killed in the terror attacks at the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City, at the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., and in a plane crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
- 9/11 was not the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. A bombing in February of 1993 killed six people.
- On any given workday, up to 50,000 employees worked in the WTC twin towers, and an additional 40,000 passed through the complex.
- The rescue and recovery clean-up of the 1.8 million tons of wreckage from the World Trade Center site took 9 months.
- Passengers aboard United Flight 93, which had been delayed, heard about the previous airplane attacks in New York City and at the Pentagon attacks and attempted to retake control of the plane from hijackers. As a result, the hijackers dilberately crashed the plane in a Pennsylvania field instead of at their unknown target.
- 9/11 was the single largest loss of life from a foreign attack on American soil.
- At the time, New York City fire evacuation procedures only required mandatory evacuations for floors immediately surrounding a fire. After a plane struck Building 1 of the WTC, Building 2 employees were initially told to stay in the building.
- Though both the police and fire departments of New York City had their own emergency response procedures, the two departments did not have a coordinated response plan to a major incident.
- While video accounts of the WTC attack aired immediately, no video footage of the Pentagon attack was publicly released until 2006.
- 18 people were rescued alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center site.
- For 9/11 surivors, post-traumatic stress symptoms are the most common health effect. Respiratory problems like asthma and lung inflammation also developed at abnormal rates.
Sources:
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States