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Eyewitness Reports Of
Explosions
Before WTC Collapses
Edmund McNally, WTC 2 victim, 97th floor Edmund McNally phoned his wife Liz twice following the aircraft impact. Mr McNally said in his second phone call "Liz, this was a terrorist attack. I can hear explosions below me.'' Louie Cacchioli, a firefighter assigned to Engine 47 in Harlem On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there was bombs set in the building.
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| One eyewitness whose office is near the World Trade
Center told AFP that he was standing among a crowd of
people on Church Street, about two-and-a-half blocks from
the South tower, when he saw "a number of brief
light sources being emitted from inside the building
between floors 10 and 15." He saw about six of these
brief flashes, accompanied by "a crackling
sound" before the tower collapsed. Each tower had
six central support columns. [American Free Press] Note: See The Oklahoma City Bombing for an explanation of the "crackling sound". |
Trusses failing on floors 70+ of WTC 2, a building containing a minimal amount of fire, would not have caused a major explosion at the building's base. The above eyewitness accounts are corroborated by the 9/11 firefighters' transmissions on this page. Other firefighters also talk of an explosion before the collapse of WTC 1:
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'Everyone was screaming, crying, running. It's like a war zone' In New York, police and fire officials were carrying out the first wave of evacuations when the first of the World Trade Centre towers collapsed. Some eyewitnesses reported hearing another explosion just before the structure crumbled. Police said that it looked almost like a "planned implosion" designed to catch bystanders watching from the street. An Eye-Witness
Account of the World Trade Center Attacks The following is taken from an email Neil deGrasse Tyson sent to his family and friends on 12 September 2001. Neil witnessed the attacks on the twin towers from his apartment only six blocks from the World Trade Center. "As more and more and more and more and more emergency vehicles descended on the World Trade Center, I hear a second explosion in WTC 2, then a loud, low-frequency rumble that precipitates the unthinkable -- a collapse of all the floors above the point of explosion. First the top surface, containing the helipad, tips sideways in full view. Then the upper floors fall straight down in a demolition-style implosion, taking all lower floors with it, even those below the point of the explosion." "I decide it's time to get my daughter, who was taken by the parents of a friend of hers to a small office building, six blocks farther from the WTC than my apartment. As I dress for survival: boots, flashlight, wet towels, swimming goggles, bicycle helmet, gloves, I hear another explosion followed by a now all-too familiar rumble that signaled the collapse of WTC 1, the first of the two towers to have been hit. I saw the iconic antenna on this building descend straight down in an implosion twinning the first."
He was on the 81st Floor of Two World Trade Center "I was almost out. I got down to the lobby, right near the Border’s book store. And then there was this explosion. I don’t know, I just got thrown to the ground and all this stuff fell on top of me." 9/11 Survivor Stories: Sujo & Mini "So they escorted us thru the exit of World Trade 2 and I had just reached the revolving door of the building that I heard a loud explosion and the whole building collapsed. [...] When that explosion took place and the building was crumbling over me I could see the pics of my wife, my parents, grandmother loved ones flash thru my mind and now what a relief that we are alive." |
See also: The 9/11 WTC Collapses: An Audio-Video Analysis
