9/11 Museum

I was so impressed with the 9/11 museum.  I'm sure it was a very tricky balance to be respectful and not commercialize this tragedy.  I thought it was very well done.  

The museum had different displays, but one of them was a time line.  Here is a picture of New York City at 8:30 AM, just before the attacks. 

This wall has a map and an explanation.  It says, "On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists who were members of al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist network, hi-jacked four California-bound commercial airplanes shortly after their departures from airports in Boston, Massachusetts; Newark, New Jersey; and Washington, D.C. In a coordinated attack that transformed the airplanes into weapons, the hijackers intentionally flew two of the planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and another into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Learning about the other hijacks through phone calls the passengers and crew members on the fourth plane launched a counterattack.  When the passengers tried to breach the cockpit, the hijacker pilot, who had changed course toward the nation's capital, crashed the plane into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, near the town of Shanksville.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day, the single largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil, and the greatest single loss of rescue personnel in American history. Approximately, two billion people, almost one-third of the world's population, are estimated to have witnessed these horrific events directly or via television, radio, and internet broadcasts that day." 

They had pictures and videos playing of that morning.  They also had voicemail messages left by the victims from the planes and the towers before they fell playing over a speaker.   

Here is the view after the attacks. The North tower was struck at 8:46 AM. At 9:02 AM the South tower was hit.  Everyone was trying to figure out what was going on and news was reporting the airplane hitting the North tower when the South tower was hit. At 9:37 AM an plane crashed into the Pentagon.  At 9:59 the South tower collapses, 57 minutes after being hit.  The North tower collapsed at 10:28.  I can't even imagine the horror and chaos for all of those people in the towers and those outside watching them collapse. At 10:03AM an airplane crashed in the field of Pennsylvania, they think that they were targeting either the United States Capitol Building or the White House.

This fire truck was recovered from the World Trade Center site.  There was a plaque in front of the truck that said, "FDNY Ladder 3 Company is located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan. On September 11, 2001, led by it's highly decorated captain, Patrick "Paddy" Jonah Brown, the company asked a dispatcher to deploy its members to the World Trade Center disaster.  After they parked their rear mount aerial ladder truck on the West Street near Vesey Street, 11 members of the company, some of whom had just gotten off duty after completing over night shifts, entered the North Tower.  They were among the thousands of uniformed responders who collectively formed the single largest dispatch of nonmilitary emergency personnel in the history of New York City and the Nation."

"Assigned to aid in the evacuation of civilians in the North tower on 9/11, members of FDNY Ladder Company 3 are known to have reached the 35th floor by 9:21 AM.  Captain Patrick "Paddy" Brown unable to communicate directly with the lobby command post, used a functioning office phone to call a Manhattan dispatcher.  He reported that the burn victims and numerous others were making their way down the stairs and he understood the fire to be above the 75th floor. In his last recorded transmission Captain Brown said, 'Three truck, and we are still heading up'. All 11 responding members of the Ladder 3 company were inside the building and killed when it collapsed at 10:28 AM."

This is the "Survivors' Staircase." It was the last visible remaining original structure at the World Trade Center site. These stairs served as an escape route for hundreds of evacuees from 5-World Trade Center, a 9-floor building adjacent to the twin towers.

This is The Last Column: Marker of Loss.  A plaque below it says, "At Ground Zero, Column 1001B helped support a temporary haul road, known as Tully Road, laid close to where the South Tower's elevators had been located. Many first responders who were killed in the tower's lobby were believed to be buried nearby. In March 2002, after the remains of some missing members of FDNY squad 41 had been found in the area, a squad member painted "SQ 41" to mark the recovery. The marking is still visible at the center of the column.

There were so many hero's that day and in many days and years to come while they undertook the overwhelming task of finding bodies and cleaning up the city. 

I remember seeing pictures like this of walls in New York lined with pictures of missing people that their loved ones had posted.  There were only 20 survivors pulled out from the wreckage at ground zero.  The last one was rescued 27 hours after the building collapsed.  

This a segment of the antenna from the top of the North Tower.

 

I loved this tribute.  The plaque says, "This art installation, created in 2014, is composed of 2,983 individual watercolor drawings, each a distinct attempt by the artist to remember the color of the sky on the morning of September 11, 2001.  Commemorating the people killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993, every square is a unique shade of blue, combing to create a panoramic mosaic of color. Finch's work centers on the idea of memory.  What one person perceives as blue might not be the same as what another persons sees.  Yet, your memories, like our perception of color, share a common reference."

"No Day Shall Erase You From The Memory Of Time. This quotation from IX of The Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil suggest the transformative potential of remembrance." 

Two years later on September 11, 2003 families of the victims killed in the attack gathered at ground zero for a ceremony. 

It took 9 months to clean up the wreckage at ground zero.   This is a quote from Joe Bradley, operating engineer and recovery worker at ground zero when they finished the clean up in May 2002.

There was a big portion of the museum that you couldn't take pictures in.  They had a lot of videos from that day in that area.  Seeing the pictures and videos took me right back to that day.  It is still hard to believe that kind of evil exists in the world, but we know it does.  

This monument and the new World Trade Center are a reminder to me that good will triumph over evil.  It is a reminder of the goodness of humanity and how people are ready and willing to help where they are needed.  Osama Bin Laden, who was the leader of al-Qaeda and responsible for these attacks was hunted down and killed on May 2, 2011.   He may have taken many precious lives that day, but he did not succeed in his mission to destroy the United States of America.  We are too strong for that and I hope and pray that God will continue to bless America.