On Sept. 11, 2001, America suffered a terrorist attacked that left 2,977 people dead and the country forever changed. At the Orange County Register, two special sections were printed that day.

Below, read the first two pages of the initial special edition, and see pages of that edition as you scroll down.

Page 1 —

WORLD TRADE CENTERS COLLAPSE

PENTAGON HIT; U.S. AT STANDSTILL

• Two hijacked airliners today crash into the World Trade Centers. Both towers collapse.
• Another hijacked plane slams into the Pentagon south of Washington, D.C. Part of the building collapses and is burning.
• Thousands are dead and injured. No estimate is available. More than 50,000 work in the Trade Center.
• A fourth jetliner crashes outside Pittsburgh. Three of the crashed planes were headed for Los Angeles, one for San Francisco.
• Airports across the nation are ordered closed. All planes are grounded.

Page 2 —

N.Y., D.C. attacked

From the Associated Press — In one of the most audacious attacks ever against the United States, terrorists hijacked two airliners and crashed them into the World Trader Centers in a coordinated series of blows Tuesday that brought down the twin 110-story towers. A plane also slammed into the Pentagon, bringing the seat of government itself under attack.

Thousands could be dead or injured, a high-ranking city police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“I have a sense it’s a horrendous number of lives lost,” Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said. “Right now we have to focus on saving as many lives as possible.”

Authorities had been trying to evacuate those who work in the twin towers, but many were thought to have been trapped. About 50,000 people work at the Trade Center. American Airlines said its two aircraft were carrying a total of 156 people.

“This is perhaps the most audacious terrorist attack that’s ever taken place in the world,” said Christ Yates, an aviation expert at Jane’s Transport in London. “It takes a logistics operation from the terror group involved that is second to none. Only a very small handful of terror groups is on that list. … I would name at the top of the list Osama Bin Laden.”

President Bush ordered a full-scale investigation to “hunt down the folk who committed this act.”

Within an hour of the Trade Center attack, the Pentagon took a direct, devastating hit from an aircraft. The fiery crash collapsed one side of the five-sided structure.

The White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol were evacuated, along with other federal buildings in Washington, D.C. and New York. Authorities in Washington immediately began deploying troops, including an infantry regiment. The Situation Room at the White House was in full operation.

And authorities went on alert from coast to coast, halting all air traffic and tightening security at strategic installations.

“This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don’t think that I overstate it,” said Sen. Cuck Hagel, R-Neb.

American Airlines identified the planes that crashed into the Trade Center as Flight 11, a Los Angeles-bound jet hijacked after takeoff from Boston with 92 people aboard, and Flight 77, which was seized while carrying 64 people from Washington to Los Angeles.

In Pennsylvania, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh with 45 people aboard. The fate of those aboard was not immediately known and it was not clear if the crash was related to the disasters elsewhere. In a statement, United said another of its planes, Flight 175, a Boeing 767 bound from Boston to Los Angeles with 65 people on board, also crashed, but it did not say where.

Evacuations were ordered at the United Nations in New York and at the Sears Tower in Chicago. Los Angeles mobilized its anti-terrorism division, and security was intensified around the naval installations in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla, was evacuated.

At the World Trade Center, “everyone was screaming, crying, running — cops, people, firefighters, everyone,” said Mike Smith, a fire marshal. “It’s like a war zone.”

“I just saw the building I work in come down, said businessman Gabriel Ioan, shaking in shock outside City Hall, a cloud of smoke and ash from the Trade Center behind him.

Nearby, a crowd mobbed a man on a pay phone, screaming at him to get off the phone so that they could call relatives. Dust and dirt flew everywhere. Ash was 2 to 3 inches deep in places. People wandered dazed and terrified.

The planes blasted fiery, gaping holes in the upper floors of the twin towers. A witness said he saw bodies falling and people jumping out. About an hour later, the southern tower collapsed with a roar and a huge cloud of smoke; the other tower fell about a half-hour after that, leaving heaps of gray rubble and broken glass. Firefighters trapped in the rubble radioed for help.

“Today we’ve had a national tragedy,” Bush said in Sarasota, Florida. “Two airplanes have crashed in to the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.”

He said he would be returning immediately to Washington.

The crashes at the World Trade Center happened minutes apart, beginning just before 6 a.m. PDT. Heavy black smoke billowed into the sky above one of the New York City’s most famous landmarks, and debris rained down on the street, one of the city’s busiest work areas. When the second plane hit, a fireball of flame and smoke erupted, leaving a huge hole in the glass and steel tower.

John Axisa who was getting off a commuter train to the World Trade Center, said he saw “bodies falling out” of the building. He said he ran outside, and watched people jump out of the first building. The there was a second explosion, and he felt heat on the back of his neck.

WCBS-TV, citing an FBI agent, said five or six people jumped out of the windows. Witnesses on the street screamed every time another person leaped.

People ran down the stairs in panic and fled the building. Thousands of pieces of what appeared to be office paper drifted over Brooklyn, about three miles away.

Several subway lines were immediately shut down. Trading on Wall Street was suspended. New York’s mayoral primary election Tuesday was postponed. All bridges and tunnels into Manhattan were closed.

David Reck was handing out literature for a candidate for public advocate a few blocks away when he saw a jet come in “very low, and then it made a slight twist and dove into the building.”

Terrorist bombers struck the World Trade Center in February 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

“It’s just sick. It shows just how vulnerable we really are,” Keith Meyers, 39, said in Columbus, Ohio. “It kind of makes you want to go home and spend time with your family. It puts everything in perspective,” Meyers said.

He said he called to check in with his wife. They have two young children.

In New York, “we heard a large boom and then we saw all this debris just falling,” said Harriet Grimm, who was inside a bookstore on the World Trade Center’s first floor with the first explosion rocked the building.

“The plane was coming in low and slow and … it looked like it hit at a slight angle,” said Sean Murtagh, a CNN vice president, the network reported.

In 1945, an Army Air Corps B-25, a twin-engine bomber, crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in dense fog.

In Florida, Bush was reading to children in a classroom at 9:05 a.m. when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered into his ear. The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading. He addressed the tragedy about a half-hour later.

Source: Orange County Register