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HISTORY presents:
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- September 11th, 2001.
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A day of grief...
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...a day of courage.
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This is how that day unfolded.
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- My daughter called me.
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She said the plane just flew into the World Trade Center.
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Now, you gotta be kiddin' me.
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It's gotta be a Piper Cub or some clown that was flying down the river.
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- At 8:46 a.m, American Airlines flight 11 from Boston
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with 92 aboard travelling at a speed of 470 miles per hour
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strikes the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex.
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Within minutes, officials coordinate the citywide emergency response.
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Their base of operations is a state-of-the-art command center located on the 23rd floor of seven World Trade Center.
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- With one tower in flames, the tragedy is only beginning.
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It is 9:03 when United Airlines flight 175 with 65 aboard
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travelling at a speed of 590 miles per hour smashes into the South Tower
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of the World Trade Center.
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This aircraft strikes the corner of the South Tower. It rips a diagonally shaped gash
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from the 84th to the 78th floors.
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The South Tower lasts only 56 minutes before it succumbs at 9:59 a.m.
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- A dust cloud billows outward for blocks.
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- Victims stagger away.
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- At 10:28, the television mast atop the North Tower spears straight down.
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- Once the collapse started, there really wasn't any way to stop it.
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It was just gonna go all the way down once it got started.
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- Chaos in New York City.
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- Power is down in lower Manhattan.
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- Phone lines jammed with more than 230 million calls.
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- Hundreds of firefighters trapped in the towers.
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- Hundreds more race to the sea.
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- Falling debris from the collapse of the North and South Towers
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ignites fires in the neighboring buildings of the World Trade Center.
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World Trade four, five, and six are ablaze.
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World Trade seven, the building housing the city's command center burns unchecked
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for seven hours. At 5:20, it collapses.
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- The city's emergency nerve center is destroyed.
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- Somewhere in that time, and it's very hard to keep track of time
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during this, they had been ordered to evacuate number seven
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by the Port Authority. To this day, we don't know who gave that order,
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but whoever it was saved a lot of people's lives.
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- With New York a warzone, some residents walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to get out of the city.
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Others seek escape in vessels piloted by the Army Corp of Engineers.
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At 7:45 p.m, the New York Police Department says 78 officers are missing, and estimates that 200 firefighters are dead.
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At 10:56 p.m, police officials say they believe there are victims alive in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
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- Working with urban search-and-rescue teams, there was a lot of areas to be searched underneath the debris field.
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There were voids that had to be searched for possible live people.
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September 11th, 2001, the longest and most tragic day in New York's history is drawing to a close.
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