Description: This damaged structural bracket from the World Trade Center was recovered from the debris pile.
Context: This viscoelastic damper connected a floor truss to an exterior steel column of the World Trade Center. Building movement caused by wind was a major concern to the architects and engineers designing the 110-story towers. They cleverly mitigated apparent building movement by using these dampers to allow the exterior of the building to sway slightly under wind load, while the floor remained largely stationary.
The damper and other floor attachment brackets were also a point of failure leading to the towers' collapse. When the intense fire heated the 60 foot-long floor trusses, they eventually distorted and pulled free of their attachments to the exterior columns. As the upper floors of the towers fell, the weight then “pancaked” the lower floors, breaking floor truss attachments unaffected by heat. Each of these huge towers collapsed in about ten seconds.
Description: This identification card was carried by Lt. Robert Cirri, a Port Authority Police officer, who died in the World Trade Center attack.
Context: After the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Port Authority Police Department officers from around New York City rushed to the scene to aid in the evacuation. They directed the building tenants to safe exit routes and began to search the building for people in need of help.
Rober Cirri and four fellow Officers, Chief James Romito, Capt. Kathy Mazza, officers James Parham, Stephen Huczko, and Paul Laszczynski, were killed in the collapse of the north tower as they carried a woman, incapable of using the stairs, in an evacuation chair. The Port Authority Police Department lost thirty-seven officers in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Description: This beeper belonged to Goumatie Thackurdeen, an employee at Fiduciary Trust Corp, which was housed in the 97th floor of the South tower. The beeper was recovered from the debris of the World Trade Center.
Context: When the first plane crashed into the North Tower, people in the South Tower could see falling debris and feel the heat of the explosion. Employees of Fiduciary Trust assessed the situation and began evacuating. Before leaving, Goumatie called her mother to say she was exiting the office.
People began streaming into the stairwell. Shortly thereafter, a plane crashed into the South Tower, impacting the 78th-84th floors. According to newspaper reports, 99 percent of the people below the points of impact survived. Yet for those above the impact zones or trapped in elevators, there was no escape. Goumatie was one of 87 Fiduciary Trust employees killed in the attacks.
Pennant from Holly Guzowskis office that survived the attack on the Pentagon.
Holly Guzowski, a civilian employee of the Department of Defense, survived the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. Her office was on the third floor of the D ring (the E ring is the exterior), and was directly above the path of the airplane as it slid through the first and second floors of E, D, and C rings. In the Pentagon attack, 125 employees were killed and some 140 more were injured; aboard the plane, all 53 passengers, six crew members, and five hijackers were killed.
Description: This piece of scorched limestone facade was recovered from the wreckage of the Pentagon.
Context: The Pentagon, completed in 1943 under the urgencies of World War II, was built to provide a central headquarters for an expanded U.S. military. On September 11, hijackers crashed an American Airlines Boeing 757 airliner into a portion of the Pentagon that had been reinforced recently as part of a building renovation and counterterrorism effort. The plane crashed just outside the building and slid nearly halfway through it. It totally destroyed a section of the first two floors of the five-story building. The heavily damaged upper floors initially held but, with an intense fire raging, soon collapsed.