World
25 Years Later: Reliving The Hindu's Original 9/11 Ground Report from New York
September 11, 2001, remains one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in history, with consequences felt across the globe. Terrorists crashed two hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, causing both 110-storey twin towers to collapse. The Hindu's correspondent Sridhar Krishnaswami was present in New York City and documented the chaos in an article titled 'Smoke, shock spread over New York,' which ran on the newspaper's front page on September 12, 2001. As the 25th anniversary of the attacks is marked, the original report is being revisited.
The report described New York as tense, noting the city had previously experienced terrorism in 1993, when an attack on the World Trade Center killed six people and injured more than 1,000. However, the scale of the 2001 attack left officials without immediate answers. The twin towers had been destroyed, and smoke from the site could be seen for miles.
Thousands of people were reported moving away from the area, which authorities had cordoned off to allow rescue operations. With airports across the country shut down, thousands of travelers were stranded, and officials urged people to evacuate Lower Manhattan. Crowds gathered around television screens in hotel lobbies or listened to radios on street corners, while many shops in the area closed. Phone and cell phone networks were largely non-functional, leading to long lines at street payphones and jammed hotel telephone lines.
In response to the attacks, authorities in Washington D.C. declared a state of emergency and deployed the army to guard sensitive locations. In New York, the National Guard was called in to support the city's 40,000 police officers and 15,000 firefighters.
The coordinated and precise nature of the attacks stunned both intelligence agencies and the public. Within an 18-minute span, two planes struck the World Trade Center, followed shortly after by an attack on the Pentagon. At least two additional civilian aircraft crashed, with investigations underway to determine the cause. Officials reported that at least 110 people died in the Pentagon and additional aircraft incidents.
The report noted growing concern over intelligence failures, with officials beginning to question how such an attack could occur undetected, particularly given that the terrorists managed to strike key government installations, including the Pentagon.
The article also referenced years of security planning that had anticipated a scenario involving a hijacked or explosive-laden aircraft crashing into a densely populated city — a scenario that came close to reality in New York that day.