September 11, 2001 Hour by Hour From the First Plane to the Last Rescue

It was a Tuesday, and the weather in the Northeast was clear and almost perfect. Remember that, because everything after it was so far from ordinary. By the time the sun was high, the United States had been attacked on its own soil by nineteen men with knives and box cutters, and nearly three thousand people were dead or dying.

This post is a record, not a polemic. It sets down the times the 9/11 Commission established in its final report of July 2004, the most careful public account we have, so that a citizen can read the sequence in order. Americans should know these times the way they know the Fourth of July. A free people that forgets what happened to it will be tempted to forget what it owes. All times are Eastern Daylight Time.

Before the Attack: Four Flights, Nineteen Hijackers

Four commercial airliners, each loaded with fuel for a long flight across the country, were taken that morning by five men each on three planes and four on the fourth. They belonged to al Qaeda, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden, and they had been planning and training for years. They carried knives and box cutters, items that were allowed on aircraft under the rules at the time, and they planned to seize the cockpits and fly the planes into targets.

The flights were American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles, American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles, and United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco. Please read what follows with that in mind: these were ordinary flights carrying ordinary people, and most of them did not know until the last minutes what was happening.

The Timeline

7:59 to 8:42 a.m.: Four Departures

American 11 left Boston's Logan Airport at 7:59. United 175 left Boston at 8:14. American 77 left Dulles at 8:20. United 93 left Newark at 8:42, more than twenty-five minutes behind its usual schedule because of heavy morning traffic. Why it mattered: the delay on the last flight would give its passengers just enough time to learn what the others had suffered.

8:14 to 8:46 a.m.: American 11

The Commission found that American 11 was hijacked at about 8:14, soon after its last routine radio message, and that the hijackers stabbed flight attendants and took over the cockpit. A flight attendant, Betty Ong, reached an American Airlines reservations office by phone at about 8:19 and calmly described what was happening, including that the cockpit was not answering and that passengers had been stabbed. At 8:37 the Federal Aviation Administration notified the military's Northeast Air Defense Sector that American 11 had been hijacked. Fighters from Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts were ordered scrambled at 8:46. Why it mattered: the warning reached the military roughly nine minutes before the plane hit its target, and the system was simply not built for hijacked airliners used as missiles.

8:46 a.m.: American 11 Hits the North Tower

American 11 crashed into the north face of the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46. Those above the impact zone had no way down. Firefighters, police and port authority personnel began arriving within minutes, and building occupants below the impact zone began to descend the stairs. Why it mattered: the first alarm brought the first responders, and their actions in the next hour are the reason thousands of people got out. The story of the firefighters is in The Firefighters Who Climbed the Towers and the 343 Names the FDNY Still Reads.

9:03 a.m.: United 175 Hits the South Tower

United 175 had been hijacked at about 8:42 to 8:46 and was flown into the south face of the South Tower at 9:03. Millions of people were watching the burning North Tower on live television, and they saw the second impact. Why it mattered: there was no longer any question that it was an attack. At about 9:05, President Bush, who was visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, was told by his chief of staff that a second plane had hit the second tower and that America was under attack. He spoke briefly to the nation from the school a little later.

9:37 a.m.: American 77 Hits the Pentagon

American 77 was hijacked at about 8:51 to 8:54, turned back east, and circled to approach Washington at high speed. It crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37. All sixty-four people aboard died, including the five hijackers, and one hundred and twenty-five people in the building were killed. Why it mattered: the attack was now on the center of the American military.

About 9:42 a.m.: The Skies Are Cleared

At about 9:42, after learning of the Pentagon crash from news reports, the FAA's Command Center ordered every aircraft in the United States to land at the nearest airport. The Commission reports that about 4,500 commercial and general aviation aircraft soon landed without incident. Why it mattered: it was an unprecedented order, given by the FAA Command Center's national operations manager in the middle of a crisis, and the air traffic control system carried it out with great skill. There is more on how the system failed and then recovered in Terrorist Travel and the Visa Lessons the 9/11 Commission Laid Out.

9:59 a.m.: The South Tower Collapses

The South Tower fell about fifty-six minutes after it was hit. The steel structure, weakened by the heat of the fire, could no longer support the weight above. Hundreds of people, including firefighters who were still in the building, were killed. Why it mattered: it came with almost no warning to those inside, and it forced the question of whether the North Tower would follow.

10:03 a.m.: United 93 Crashes in Pennsylvania

United 93 was hijacked at about 9:28. In the following minutes, passengers and crew made phone calls to family and authorities and learned that other planes had been flown into buildings. They decided to act. The Commission determined that the plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03, after the passengers had tried to break into the cockpit. The hijackers are believed to have been heading toward Washington. Why it mattered: it was the only one of the four planes that did not reach its target, and it was stopped by civilians. Read the whole story in Flight 93 Passengers Voted to Fight Back and Saved a Target in Washington.

10:28 a.m.: The North Tower Collapses

The North Tower fell about one hour and forty-two minutes after being hit. Many of those who had died in the collapses were firefighters, police officers and port authority officers who had gone into the buildings to get people out. Why it mattered: the evacuation had succeeded for most of the people below the impact zones, because thousands of occupants walked down while responders went up. By the end of the day, Building 7, a smaller structure in the complex, also collapsed in the late afternoon after burning for hours, though everyone had been evacuated.

The Afternoon and Night: Search and Rescue

Rescuers began a search in the debris. Over the next days, hundreds of people worked in teams in a place of fire, smoke and unstable rubble. Two Port Authority police officers, Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin, were pulled out alive from the wreckage, one late that night and the other early the next morning. On September 12, after about twenty-seven hours trapped beneath the North Tower's rubble, a Port Authority employee named Genelle Guzman-McMillan was pulled out, and she is widely reported as the last survivor rescued from the site. Why it mattered: the hope for survivors drove the effort through the night, and the work of recovery continued for months.

The Toll

The number most often cited is 2,977 people killed in the attacks, not counting the nineteen hijackers. About 2,750 died at the World Trade Center, including 343 New York City firefighters and about 60 New York City and Port Authority police officers. One hundred and eighty-four died at the Pentagon, counting those aboard American 77. Forty died aboard United 93.

Those numbers are worth saying aloud. Behind each is a family in a particular town, and most of those who died were not soldiers but ordinary people at work, from cooks to bond traders to the people who cleaned the offices. The attackers had chosen their targets because they wanted to kill as many civilians as they could.

The Constitutional Response

A constitutional republic answers an attack by following the Constitution, and the record of September 2001 is a reminder of how that works. Article I, section 8, clause 11 gives Congress the power "To declare War." Article II makes the President the Commander in Chief. On September 14, 2001, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which the President signed on September 18 as Public Law 107-40. It says that "the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." The vote was 98 to 0 in the Senate and 420 to 1 in the House.

Congress then created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 and established the 9/11 Commission by statute. Those were decisions made in public, by elected representatives, and they are the model for how a free country should respond to a threat.

A Fair Objection

A critic will say that the response after the attack gave too much power to the executive, and that a 2001 authorization written in a week has been stretched far beyond what the people who voted for it meant. That is a serious criticism, and conservatives who believe in the separation of powers should take it seriously. Authorizations of force are supposed to be specific, and Congress has a duty to revisit them rather than leave them in place on autopilot.

The answer is not to doubt the need for the original action. It was clear, it was limited to the perpetrators and those who harbored them, and it was voted on. The answer is that the proper remedy for overreach is the one the Constitution supplies: Congress reads what it authorized, narrows or renews it and holds hearings. A republic that gave the President a broad power in a time of shock should be able to take stock of it in time of calm. For more on the constitutional and the practical, see Terrorist Travel and the Visa Lessons the 9/11 Commission Laid Out.

Why We Read the Times

There is a point to reading a minute-by-minute account of a day this terrible. First, it honors the dead by recording what happened to them accurately. Second, it shows where our systems failed, in the warnings that arrived too late, the lack of coordination, and a long-standing habit of treating terrorism as a crime rather than as war, so that we can fix them. And third, it shows what held: the people who got out because their colleagues helped them, the first responders who climbed, the passengers who refused to be cargo, the air traffic controllers who cleared the skies, and the ordinary Americans who donated blood and fed the rescuers.

The Preamble to the Constitution says that one of its purposes is "to provide for the common defence." That is the first duty of the government a free people sets up, and it is the duty tested that morning. It is also a duty the government cannot discharge alone. When a free society works, its citizens are part of the defense. That was true on a plane over Pennsylvania, and it is true in your town. For another example of citizens defending a republic, see Why Lexington Green and Concord Bridge Started a War on April 19, 1775.

The case in brief

1. On September 11, 2001, nineteen al Qaeda hijackers seized four airliners and killed 2,977 people: American 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46, United 175 the South Tower at 9:03, American 77 the Pentagon at 9:37, and United 93 crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:03.
2. The South Tower fell at 9:59 and the North Tower at 10:28, after the evacuation had saved thousands below the impact zones and while first responders climbed.
3. The FAA grounded every civilian aircraft in the country, and Genelle Guzman-McMillan, widely reported as the last survivor, was pulled from the rubble on September 12.
4. Congress answered under the Constitution, passing the Authorization for Use of Military Force on September 14, 2001 by votes of 98 to 0 and 420 to 1 (signed September 18), and later creating the 9/11 Commission and the Department of Homeland Security.
5. The right way to honor the dead is to know the record, fix what failed, and hold the authorizations passed in a time of shock to the same constitutional standard as any other power.

What you can do: read the executive summary of the 9/11 Commission Report, and ask your representative's office what the current authorization for the use of military force covers and whether Congress should vote on it again.