• by Adam Bernard , September 11, 2001

In what is surely the worst attack in U.S. history, early this morning, two commercial planes, hijacked by thus far unidentified terrorists, crashed into the two World Trade Center towers in Manhattan. Less than an hour later, both towers collapsed. Another hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon and yet another near Camp David, the presidential retreat. New York is sealed off from the rest of the world, all flights nationwide are cancelled, major buildings are evacuated, emergency personnel working overtime.

Everyone wants to know exactly what’s going on. But getting the news and any new developments out to the public is no easy task. The signals of multiple New York television stations were reported to be down of interrupted. Earlier today, neither ABC or CBS were coming through, and NBC and Fox were both "fuzzy" and "hard to read" according to a local resident.

"New York is covered in a black smoke for miles, and only medical personnel are allowed into the state. All subway lines stopped running," said Bob Slovak, spokesman for NYC Transit. Trains and busses will be going into Connecticut with evacuated people until 8 p.m. tonight, but those people can't leave until they are told to do so.

Cell phone service throughout Manhattan was interrupted. Regular phone service was congested, forcing many callers to dial repeatedly to get through. AT&T shut down its entire phone and communications system in Manhattan, according to a spokesman, who declined to give his name.

A woman, who declined to give her name, was staying at a hotel on nearby North End Avenue, which is about three miles from where the World Trade Center buildings used to be, said, "There's smoke. Lots of black smoke everywhere. There's a lot of commotion outside. We're being told we can't leave the state, nobody can come in, I have to stay put for now and wait and see what happens."

A man named Brett working in a nearby office building added, "I can't see anything, there's too much smoke. I just hope they let me go home."

Several radio stations were also experiencing problems, but countless office workers around the country nevertheless walked out to their cars to listen to the latest reports as their internet connections slowed to a crawl.

One eyewitness, Lawrence Roth, has contributed a number of photos he took of the World Trade Center Towers just moments before the collapse. They are online at https://www.mediapost.com/worldtradecenter