This document provides a summary of events on September 11, 2001 through eyewitness accounts and news reports. It describes the experiences of Brian Clark, who was in the south tower of the World Trade Center during the attacks. It details his actions to evacuate others from the building and his escape. It also summarizes the timeline of events that day, including the crashes of four hijacked planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The summary describes the collapse of the towers and the immediate response by officials and the media.

1. SUNDAY, September 11, 2011 • $1.50 www.vicksburgpost.com Every day SinCE 1883
WEATHER
Today:
Partly cloudy; highs in the
upper 80s
Tonight:
Partly cloudy; lows in the
lower 60s
Mississippi River:
15.2 feet
Fell: 0.2 foot
Flood stage: 43 feet
A9
DEATHS
Holder Horn Strong
A9
TODAYINHISTORY
1936: Boulder Dam begins
operation as President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
presses a key in Washing-
ton to signal the startup
of the dam’s first hydro-
electric generator.
1941: Groundbreaking
takes place for the Penta-
gon, now headquarters of
the U.S. Department of
Defense.
1961: Hurricane Carla
strikes the coast of Texas
as a Category 4 storm;
Carla is blamed for 46
deaths in the U.S.
2001: America sees its
worst day of terrorism as
19 al-Qaida terrorists
hijack four passenger jet-
liners. Two smashed into
New York’s World Trade
Center, causing the twin
towers to fall; one jetliner
plowed into the Pentagon;
and the fourth was
crashed into a field in
western Pennsylvania. In
all, nearly 3,000 people
were killed.
INDEX
Business................................ B9
Puzzles................................... B8
Dear Abby............................ B7
Editorial.................................A4
People/TV............................. B7
CONTACTUS
Callus
Advertising....601-636-4545
Classifieds....... 601-636-SELL
Circulation......601-636-4545
News................601-636-4545
E-mailus
See A2 for e-mail addresses
ONLINE
www.vicksburgpost.com
VOLUME 129
NUMBER 254
4 SECTIONS
TOPIC
MANY
MEDIA
MaryElsaHocker
seesitall
C1
By The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Ten years on, Americans will
come together today where the World Trade
Center soared, where the Pentagon stands as a
fortress once breached, where United Airlines
Flight 93 knifed into the earth.
They will gather to pray in cathedrals in our
greatest cities and to lay roses before fire sta-
tions in our smallest towns, to remember in
countless ways the anniversary of the most
devastating terrorist attacks since the nation’s
founding, and in the process mark the mile-
stone as history itself.
As in earlier observances, bells will toll again
to mourn the loss of those killed in the attacks.
Ceremonies also will consecrate new memori-
als in lower Manhattan, rural Pennsylvania and
elsewhere, concrete symbols of the resolve to
remember and rebuild.
But much of the weight of this year’s cere-
monies lies in what will largely go unspoken
— the anniversary’s role in prompting Amer-
icans to consider how the attacks changed
them and the larger world and the continuing
struggle to understand 9/11’s place in the lore
of the nation.
“A lot’s going on in the background,” said Ken
Foote, author of “Shadowed Ground: America’s
Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy,” exam-
ining the role that veneration of sites of death
and disaster plays in modern life. “These anni-
versaries are particularly critical in figuring
out what story to tell, in figuring out what this
all means. It forces people to figure out what
happened to us.”
The ceremonies honor those who “fought the
first battle against terrorism — and they won,”
Anniversaryisaboutremembering,rebuilding
The associated press
One World Trade Center has reached the
80th floor in this aerial photo, taken 10
days ago.
See Anniversary, Page A6.
10 Years Later
By Pamela Hitchins
phitchins@vicksburgpost.com
As the country marks the 10th anniversary
of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Vicksburg
engineer whose work was key to saving hun-
dreds of lives at the Pentagon that day views
it as the highlight of his career.
Robert Hall, 62, is a 38-year veteran of the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, most of that
at the Engineer Research and Development
Center on Halls Ferry Road.
He led the team that developed building sup-
ports and materials credited with keeping a
section of the Pentagon from collapsing in the
minutes following the impact of American
Airlines flight 77 at 8:37 a.m. central time.
“Anytime you do anything that is used is
good,” Hall said in a recent interview. “The
fact that what you’ve done has saved lives is
— it’s the highlight of your career. You never
dream .... you always hope that your prod-
uct and your research works, but for it to be
tested and for it to be proved to work suc-
cessfully, and then for it to save lives is... it’s
indescribable.”
The Boeing 757 that terrorists crashed into
the Pentagon at about 345 mph had taken
off from Washington’s Dulles International
Airport carrying 10,000 gallons of fuel. The
deaths included 125 Pentagon employees,
55 of them members of the military, as well
as the 59 passengers and crew onboard the
aircraft.
The first two floors of the impact section
were obliterated by the crash and firebomb
from the jet fuel, but the third, fourth and fifth
floors did not collapse for more than half an
hour, allowing many to get out of the building
where sections continued to burn for hours.
In addition, nearby sections that had recently
been renovated with reinforcements devel-
oped by Hall and other ERDC researchers
were largely undamaged.
“We had offices very close to the impact
that were fine, and other offices 100 or 200 feet
away that were completely blown out,” said
Wayne Stroupe, public information officer at
ERDC.
“Those retrofits saved lives,” Hall said
simply.
Hall, a native of Crestview, Fla., came to
‘...Forittosavelivesis...it’sindescribable’
See Windows, Page A6.
Robert Hall points out a window modeled after the
retrofitted windows he designed at the Pentagon.
KATIE CARTER•The Vicksburg Post
Vicksburg team instrumental in saving Pentagon
Marshall 26 / USM 20
Ole Miss 42 / Southern Illinois 24 Ark-Pine Bluff 27 / Alcorn 20
Auburn 41 / Miss State 34
LSU 49 / Northwestern State 3
Alabama 27 / Penn State 11 Jackson State 35 / Tenn State 29
Michigan 35 / Notre Dame 31
South Carolina 45 / Georgia 42
Belhaven 35 / Miss College 31
Florida 39 / UAB 0
college scoreboard
September 11, 2001 - September 11, 2011
1 YeARS AFTeR A2 • Courage of Flight 93 vic-
tims lauded at dedication
• U.S. denies plot reports
A4 • An editorial: Remain vigilant
A6 • One man’s memo-
ry, minute by minute
A10 •Taliban truck bomb kills
two in Afghanistan
B9 • Chopper demand boosts
Sirkorsky in post-9/11 wars
C5 • 9/11 impact stretch-
es across globe
WORKING TO BRING
RELIEFFROM BONE AND JOINT PAIN.
As Vicksburg’s first rheumatologist,
Dr.Ivory specializes in treating
patients with arthritis,osteoporosis,
gout and other diseases that cause
muscle,bone,and joint pain.
Dedri Ivory,M.D.
Rheumatologist
Street Clinic
(601) 883-3340

2. A6 Sunday, September 11, 2011 The Vicksburg Post
NEW YORK (AP) — Close
your eyes and picture Sept. 11.
The memories are cauterized,
familiar forever. The second
plane banks and slides in, the
fireball blooms, the towers
peel away as if unzipped from
the top
Start with the Tuesday
morning and the blue sky and
walk through the day from
two perspectives, inside and
out. From that of a man who
managed to survive above the
impactzoneinthesouthtower
and from that of the helpless,
watching world.
In those first two hours,
before anyone could put
together the full, awful pic-
ture, chaos filled in the gaps.
Brian Clark was working
at Euro Brokers, on the 84th
floor of the south tower of
the World Trade Center. He
arrived at about 7:15 a.m., had
his cup of coffee.
A “loud double boom” is
the first thing he remembers.
Then flickering of the lights in
his office. Something caught
his peripheral vision. He spun
around. His view usually
looked out over the Hudson
River. The river and the sky.
“It was filled with flame,”
he says. “Two yards from my
nose is the window, and it’s
right against the glass, almost
swirling.”
It was 8:46 a.m.
For reference, Clark some-
times tells people to imagine
a three-by-three grid, like the
first nine digits on a telephone
keypad. The north tower sat
where 1 would be, the south
tower at 8.
Clark’s office faced west,
near the southwest corner of
the 8 button. American Air-
lines Flight 11 had crashed
into the north face of the north
tower, the top of the 1 button.
Since the 1993 bombing
of the trade center’s under-
ground garage, Clark had vol-
unteered as a fire marshal for
his floor. Now, as if on autopi-
lot, he grabbed the flashlight,
grabbed the whistle.
Just then, the network tele-
vision morning shows, where
the top stories of the day had
included whether Michael
Jordan might make a come-
back in the NBA, cut for the
first time to a live shot of the
gashed north tower of the
World Trade Center.
Thefirstalertonthenational
news wire of The Associated
Pressmovedat33secondspast
8:53 a.m.: Plane crashes into
World Trade Center, accord-
ing to television reports.
It was 8:55 a.m.
Clark remembers a voice
over the PA system: “Building
Two is secure.”
Eight minutes later, at 9:03,
he was standing outside his
office and talking with a co-
worker, Bobby Coll. They
were 2 feet to a yard apart,
he thinks, eye to eye. In an
instant, “the room exploded.”
The feeling was of tremen-
dous air compression. Then
things so secure no one ever
gave them a thought, things
like the lights and the floor,
came loose. For several har-
rowing, torqueing seconds,
it seemed the building itself
might go over. The power
went out.
“Everything was full of con-
struction dust,” Clark says.
He remembers terrorism
crossing his mind.
It was 9:04 a.m.
The AP alert says: “Explo-
sion rocks second World
Trade Center tower.”
TV networks were in the
middle of interviewing eye-
witnesses to the first explo-
sion when United Flight 175
approached, slipped into the
south face of the south tower,
and sent a mushrooming fire-
ball out the other side.
“That looks like a second
plane,” Charles Gibson said
on ABC.
“And now,” Matt Lauer said
on NBC’s “Today” show, “you
havetomovefromtalkabouta
possible accident to talk about
something deliberate that has
happened here.
With people around the
world now fixed on live pic-
tures of the trade center, the
puzzle was slowly coming into
focus.
In Sarasota, Fla., President
George W. Bush was read-
ing to schoolchildren when
Andrew Card, the White
House chief of staff, whispered
news of the second crash into
his ear. The color appeared to
drain from Bush’s face.
Inside the south tower, Clark
was trying to lead a small,
snaking line of people toward
a central stairway and down
from the 84th floor. Three
floors into the trip, they were
met by a woman, heading up.
“We’ve got to go higher,” the
woman said.
A debate ensued. Up or
down. Clark shone his flash-
light on whoever was talking.
In the middle of the discus-
sion, Clark heard a muffled
scream for help coming from
the 81st floor. He and a co-
worker, Ron DiFrancesco,
went to investigate.
They squeezed through a
crack between drywall and
door frame.
“I have this very clear vision
of all my co-workers turning
around and starting up the
stairs,” Clark says. “And they
all died.”
Mid-rescue on the 81st floor,
DiFrancesco was overcome by
smoke, coughed and sturned
back. Clark continued toward
the stranger’s voice. It was
Stanley Praimnath, an execu-
tive with Fuji Bank
It was just after 9:30 a.m.
To the outside world, it was
about to become clear that the
disaster, whatever it was, was
not limited to two skyscrapers
in New York.
“Today we’ve had a national
tragedy,” the president told
reporters and young children
at the Florida elementary
school. “ Two airplanes have
crashed into the World Trade
Center in an apparent terror-
ist attack on our country.”
It was seven seconds past
9:43 a.m.
Another alert on the AP
wire: “An aircraft has crashed
into the Pentagon, witnesses
say.” It was American Flight
77. Seconds later, anotheralert
said that the White House had
been evacuated.
Clark and Praimnath
wound up at Trinity Church,
two blocks downtown. They
stood gripping the iron railing
around the cemetery, close to
what they later learned was
the burial site of Alexander
Hamilton.
It was, Clark says, as if they
had been invited to witness
the destruction of the south
tower.
“Floor by floor, it kind of dis-
solved in front of us,” he says.
“The white wave.”
It was 10:29 a.m.
A second flash on the AP
wire: “Second World Trade
Center tower collapses.”
It was 10:37 a.m.
“Large plane crashes in
western Pennsylvania, offi-
cials at Somerset County Air-
port confirm.”
The official times were 10:03,
for the crash of United Flight
93 near Shanksville, Pa., and
10:28 a.m., for the collapse of
the north tower of the World
Trade Center.
In all, it had taken under two
hours and almost 3,000 souls.
The count was 40 in Penn-
sylvania, 184 at the Pentagon
and 2,753 at the World Trade
Center.
Clark, who lived then and
lives today in Mahwah, N.J.,
got off the island of Manhattan
by ferry. He walked east and
found that ferries to Jersey
City.
He remembers chugging
through the dust of Sept. 11.
Only when the boat got to
the Jersey side did Clark
realize that both towers had
collapsed.
Minutebyminute
Pentagon Interior Damage
Without ERDC Technology
300 feet north of impact
With ERDC Technology 50
feet north of impact
Typical third floor views
Ware said. “It’s something I
don’t want to miss. It’s become
a part of my life.”
The nation’s focus today
turns to ceremonies at the
Pentagon, just outside Wash-
ington, D.C., and in lower
Manhattan for the dedication
of the national Sept. 11 memo-
rial. President Barack Obama
planned to attend ceremonies
at the sites of all three attacks
and was scheduled to speak
this evening at a service at the
Kennedy Center.
The New York ceremony
begins at 8:30 a.m., with a
moment of silence 16 min-
utes later — coinciding with
the exact time a decade ago
when the first tower of the
trade center was struck by a
hijacked jet. And then, one by
one, the reading of the names
of the 2,977 killed on Sept.
11 — those who died in New
York, as well as those who
died at the Pentagon and in
rural Pennsylvania.
They include the names of 37
of Lt. Patrick Lim’s fellow offi-
cers from the police depart-
ment of the Port Authority of
New York and New Jersey.
Lim, assigned to patrol the
trade center with an explo-
sives detection dog, rushed
in to the north tower after it
was hit to help evacuate work-
ers. He and a few others sur-
vived despite still being inside
a fifth-floor stairwell when the
building fell.
In the years since, Lim said
he has wrestled with survi-
vor’s guilt, realizing the last of
those he’d urged ahead of him
were crushed when the tower
collapsed.
The 10th anniversary has
forced Lim to revisit an expe-
rience he’s worried too many
people have pushed from their
minds. But the approach of
today’s ceremonies has con-
vinced him of the value of
revisiting Sept.11, both for
himself and others.
Some of the most powerful
ceremonies will likely be the
smallest and most personal.
In Brown City, Mich. — with
a population of about 1,300
and no direct connection to
the attacks — firefighters will
lay 343 roses on a 15,000-pound
steel beam salvaged from the
World Trade Center, in honor
of the New York City brethren
who perished in the disaster.
Since venturing to New York
in June to claim the beam and
bring it home, the Michigan
firefighters have finished
building a brick plaza, lighted
around the clock and crowned
by three flagpoles. Already,
this has become a local shrine,
Chief Jim Groat says.
A few days ago, a couple
from St. Joseph, Mich. who
happened to be driving
through, pulled into the fire
station lot when they spotted
a sign for the memorial. Groat
came out to speak with them
and the woman explained that
she was a flight attendant for
American Airlines who’d been
aboard a plane the morning of
the attacks.
Then she turned to face the
steel beam from the trade
center.
“She just stood there and
cried. She said she was just
honored that somebody still
cares,” Groat recalled. The
chief observed silently, before
offering an invitation.
“Will I see you here on Sept.
11?” he asked.
“I’ll be here,” she answered.
Windows
Continued from Page A1.
Vicksburg in 1971 as a Mis-
sissippi State University
graduate student working
with the Corps of Engineers
Vicksburg District. Within a
year he moved over to what
was then called Waterways
Experiment Station.
“I came here to work on
my masters and then go to
a better life,” he said with
a chuckle. “Then they sent
me off to school to get my
Ph.D. ...” — and Hall ended
up staying, rising to chief of
the Geosciences and Struc-
tures Division of the ERDC’s
Geotechnical and Structures
Laboratory before retiring in
2009.
Scientists at ERDC began
looking at improving the abil-
ity of structures to withstand
explosives in the 1980s, Hall
said, first against smaller
“briefcase” explosives and
then progressing as terror-
ists built larger and more
destructive bombs.
“ERDC has been involved
in anti-terrorism ever since
the bombing of the Beirut
Marine barracks (in 1983),
the Khobar Towers (1996),
Oklahoma City (1995), the
first bombing of the New
York City Twin Towers
(1993), all of those,” Hall said.
“After the bombings of all the
embassies overseas, we’ve
worked with the Department
of State and several differ-
ent government agencies in
protection of their critical
infrastructure.”
Tests were carried out on
small- and full-scale models
within ERDC’s experimental
buildings and areas as well
as off-site test areas at the
Big Black River and Louisi-
ana’s Fort Polk, he said. In
cases where the full-scale
is the size of the Pentagon,
they’d work on components
or quarter-scale models of
components, such as a park-
ing garage.
“Yes,” he laughed, “they
gave us permission to blow
things up, but also (to) simu-
late with computer applica-
tions. Physical experiments
are very expensive, so you
want to be able to do that
numerically on the computer
as much as possible.”
They worked to predict
how a wall would react to an
explosion — how it would
break, how much debris
would be cast around inside
the room, what would happen
to bricks used in its con-
struction or to embedded
windows.
“You have to tie that
window frame to the floor
above and below, otherwise
you just blow the wall out,”
he said. “When that blast
comes in, one of the great-
est hazards is the breaking
of the glass, and also that
unreinforced masonry then
becomes a projectile.”
In addition to structural
supports, Hall and his team
experimented with lining the
inside of walls with a mem-
brane, a so-called geo-fabric.
“We started anchoring it at
the floor and the ceiling, and
it turned out that that mate-
rial ended up preventing
those unreinforced masonry
pieces from becoming pro-
jectiles, and protecting the
people inside,” he said. That
technology was further
developed by the Protective
Design Center, a sort-of sister
Corps agency of ERDC’s in
Omaha, Neb., he said.
“They took that technology
and matured it, and that got
transferred to the Pentagon,”
he said.
The “window-wall retrofit”
had been completed in most
of the areas of one wedge of
the Pentagon on the day of
the attack.
“It is a terrible way to get
the increased visibility and
attention ERDC received
after 9/11, but I’m glad we had
the kinds of people who were
able to tackle those problems
and to produce solutions that
really work,” said Dr. Jeffery
Holland, ERDC’s director.
After Sept. 11, the Corps
worked with military offi-
cials to get the Pentagon
rebuilt within a year. Since,
ERDC, which today spends
about $1.2 billion annually
at its seven research labs,
has stepped up anti-terror
research. Some of that over-
laps with work done to pro-
tect overseas military.
“We always knew that what
ERDC was doing was impor-
tant, but the impact of what
we were doing to support the
nation’s military just really
accelerated tremendously
after Sept. 11,” Holland said.
“I would say half of today’s
total ERDC budget is anti-
terrorism-related, and our
budget has tripled since Sept.
11. So our largest increases
are all in antiterrorism-
related work efforts that sup-
port our military and our
nation.”
Some of the specific tech-
nologies are protected by
security concerns, but areas
include all of the locks and
dams the Corps of Engineers
manages, most of the major
tunnels and bridges in the
U.S., border security, and
even terrain and data analy-
sis, Holland said.
In retirement, Hall has con-
tinued his association with
ERDC as a contractor, and is
a consultant to other agen-
cies and businesses. Hall and
his wife, Jeanine, the presi-
dent of Engineering Innova-
tions, have two daughters
— one who lives in Vicks-
burg and like her father is an
engineer at ERDC, and one
a doctor of internal medi-
cine in Mobile — and five
grandchildren.
He has been a member of
Bowmar Baptist Church since
his coming to the city, serv-
ing as church deacon and
elder, a member of the strate-
gic planning committee and
a teacher of youth and adult
Sunday school classes for
many years.
“I enjoy that,” he said. “I
enjoy the people.”
He also likes to hunt and
fish and serves on the board
of Habitat for Humanity.
As Hall looks back on the
10-year response of Ameri-
cans to the Sept. 11 attacks,
he said he is proud of the role
his work played but thinks
people need to enjoy the free-
doms they have.
“Even though we work so
much in this protection area,
I think people have to real-
ize that if we try to protect
everything, we protect noth-
ing,” he said. “We are in a
free society and freedom has
risk. I think the society has
to learn not to overreact to
these terrorist activities, but
appreciate the freedom that
we have and realize that that
freedom has a cost. We need
to focus more on our freedom
than on trying to hide behind
reinforced structures.”
1 YeArS AFter
September 11, 2001 - September 11, 2011
Anniversary
Continued from Page A1.