Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Casualties

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Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

New York City is reporting that so far, they've lost two-hundred firefighters, and almost 80 police officers missing and presumed dead.

With the 260 dead on the planes, that takes the death toll to 540 so far. And it'll only get higher tommorrow.

Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :

NBC was reporting earlier that there are about 100 deaths from the Pentagon attack. That is, as still, unconfirmed, but they did show the lawn of the Pentagon with bodies draped in white sheets. I counted about 30 in that one shot of film.

The World Trade Center is simply a graveyard now. About 200 firefighters trapped and buried when the two towers collapsed. The varying channels and online newswires are saying 100 to 200 police officers have also joined their comrades. NBC said earlier that at about the time the first plan hit, about 20,000 of the normal 50,000 workers are usually at work. They're also saying that the World Trade Center usually sees abour 90,000 visitors per day. Who knows how many tourists and delivery personnel, etc, were there at the time?

The last report I saw for the count of the wounded but living being transported to the local hospitals was at around 6:00 p.m. That stood at just under 1,000 people.

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

The body-count would've been higher if the strikes had happened around noon or so -- you'd have a full crowd of visitors, probably a lot of the employees there ... not to mention rush hour traffic to hamper emergency vehicles. Christ, what a mess.

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Surely though after the first plane impacted, that the second building plus surrounding buildings would have been evacuated!?!

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

Is 18 minutes a long enough period to evacuate a 110-story building with tens of thousands of employees?

Besides, who thought it was a terrorist attack before the second plane hit?

Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :

In my mind and trying to think through this, it seems to me that the terrorists wouldn't have been able to accomplish this any later in the day than early mid-morning. I know from experience that Houston's two major airports are horrendously busy from about 11:00 a.m. on. Assuming for an instant that this is also true for Logan, Newark, and Dulles airports, then the terrorists ran a greater risk of being caught before boarding the plane.

There also the matter of the planes usually being more heavily loaded during the afternoon flights. None of the hijacked planes had more than about 95 passengers. A fully loaded plane would have had several passengers probably attempt to attack the hijackers since they were armed only with knives.

I need to get out of here for a while. The more I see of the footage and the more I read of the stories is too much. This is too horribly sad to think about.

Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :

I just read Andrew's post, so I'll comment on that. I used to work in a 19-story dormitory that was a twin tower setup. Each tower housed approximately 550 students. For complex-wide fire drills and building evacuations, it took us around 6 minutes to dump 19 floors and 1200 students.

The World Trade Center's Twin Towers were each 110 floors high. 18 minutes would not be enough to dump the buildings. You must also remember that, at the same time occupants are running down the stairs, the firefighters and rescue squads are running up the stairs with equipment. Plus, the stairwells were dark, smokey, and wet (from the fire sprinkler systems). Total and complete chaos.

Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :

From an eye witness report, the 2nd tower was being evacuated, but then they received the all clear call, and some workers actually went BACK to their offices. Only 10 minutes after that did the plane hit that tower...

Posted by Manji (Member # 550) on :

I'm still in a state of shock over what has happened today, it just didn't feel real until I saw the footage on TV. As of 8:45pm the loss of life was estimated to be in the ten thousand's range. With over 250 firefighters and 200+ police officers missing. I think about it and frankly it scares me, people were calling this a second Pearl Harbor. We retaliated that by dropping two atomic weapons. What are we going to do this time....

Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :

Even after the first crash, people in the second building went back to work.

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

We dropped two atomic bombs because we were in a war with a nation which we could find easily. We knew EXACTLY who our enemy was from the get-go.

Not quite so clear this time.

Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :

The people had no idea in the lower levels of either building what happend til that second jetliner went crashing into the second tower. When I saw both towers fall, I thought that it was a clip from Armageddon. And to think that three out of four of them were due to arrive at LAX.

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

And SWAT and Bomb Squad teams from the LAPD cleared and went through LAX bit by bit. I understand the FBI is standing by to execute search warrants in Dayton, Florida.

It's been a hell of a day. All the wild rumors:

Two planes at WTC ...

A plane at Camp David ... a plane down in PA ... a plane shot down by the Air Force ... a plane smashing into the Pentagon, a car bomb at the State Department.

Thank goodness things didn't turn out to be that bad ... although I am curious where the plane which crashed in PA was heading to (from Newark, it was heading southwest), and what its target was.

Posted by BlueElectron (Member # 281) on :

I just got this from the news...

AT LEAST 800 are dead reported from Pentagon...

AT LEAST!

Damn, this whole thing is screwy!

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

Thats not bad considering how many it would've been if the plane had crashed into a wing that wasn't under renovation and emptier then normal. Hopefully, many of them are alive and trapped inside the ruins.

[ September 11, 2001: Message edited by: MeGotBeer ]

Posted by BlueElectron (Member # 281) on :

The totaly death toll is already beyond a thousand, if you count both the casuality at pentagon and the fire fighters plus polices missing in action.

CNN was saying that rescuer are hearing cryings from the remains of the WTCs, but they're not allow to go in yet, cuz the unstable structure and fire that's going on.

Damn...I could imaging myself going mental if I'm a rescuer.

Posted by Stingray (Member # 621) on :

I would love to be a NYC firefighter right now. Well, not love, but I hope you understand what I mean.

And what's this about Daytona? If you could please elaborate as much as possible. As the Daytona Intl Airport is half a mile from my room, I'd really like to know whats going on over there, if possible.

Posted by BlueElectron (Member # 281) on :

As I was reading from the news, more then half of NYC fire fighting forces are gone, more then 80 police officers gone...

I'm suprise that criminals did not take advantages of this...

Posted by BlueElectron (Member # 281) on :

Just wait until tomorrow when the estimate number for casualty from WTCs start to roll in...

Then the American will be very pissed, even more pissed then now...

Then I will feel just a little bit sorry for the mother f*c*ers that is gonna get their homeland bombed back to stone age.

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

Stingray,

Can't tell you a whole lot, just that the FBI is executing search warrants in Florida, reportedly near Daytona.

quote:
The FBI used information from the planes' passenger lists to obtain search warrants for more than one location in south Florida, including homes and post office boxes, a law enforcement source told CNN.
"We're looking at south Florida ties to some of the people we're looking at," the source said. One search will made at a location in Daytona, the source said.

[ September 11, 2001: Message edited by: MeGotBeer ]

Posted by akb1979 (Member # 557) on :

As of approximately 8:45 GMT I had these facts;

2 mile radius of debris
1,500 hospitalised/walking wounded with 150 being serious.
266 people dead (from the planes).
300-500 firefighters killed/lost
At least 75 police officers killed/lost
800 killed at the Pentagon with a further 800 missiong. It was later stated that the 800 killed was a high-range estimate and that it would probably be closer to 200 - thank God.

The total confirmed dead at the time was about 2,500, with it expected to reach at least 25,000.

I later saw a picture of a mother and her young daughter, must have been no more than 4 or 5 years old. They were on one of the planes - so young and innocent - her life cut so horribly short.

I could not recognise New York - looked like a war zone. Those rescuers are brave souls - I take my hat off to them and all Americans who have rushed to hospitals to donate blood. Bravo!

Sadly all the new security procedures in the USA and the UK are too little too damn late. It is such a shame that it takes a catastrophic event such as this to make us realise how vulnerable we really are.

I woke up this morning wishing that the last 24 hours had been a bad dream, sadly this was not the case. 11th September was a very sad and dark day for us all . . . like Wing Commander IV says - "The price for freedom is eternal vigilance."

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

The last I heard, the Pentagon figure had been revised back down to 100. There were 202 fire fighters and 57 police unaccounted for in New York. That was a couple hours ago, though.

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

quote:
to make us realise how vulnerable we really are.

I'm about to go on a rant. Forgive me.

The FAA recently sent undercover operatives whose missions were to attempt to smuggle weapons -- including guns and pipe bombs -- onto aircraft. I don't remember precisely whether the number of successes was given for just one airport or airports all across the U.S., but they were successful over one hundred and forty times!

Our current administration has been hawking an expensive "missile defense shield" to protect this nation. It's time they wake up and spend that money hiring more security for our airports, including armed security for each flight. Let's protect the nation from real threats, okay?

Sorry if I offended anyone, but we've spent how many billion on SDI? Stop wasting money, if you want to protect the American people -- no, scratch that. If you want to protect people -- not just American, but Canadian, Australian, British, German, Dutch, Swedish, Swiss, French & Beligian ... we've all just learned a lesson bought in blood.

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

As this is the Lounge, what say we avoid turning an unspeakable tragedy into a soapbox for our pet political projects, m'kay?

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

Sol,

Sorry. With this whole thing, the line between OL/FB has been blurred. Er ... if you want to move this to the FB, I'll understand.

Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :

My friend Michelle is one of the people I was frantically trying to get in touch with on Tuesday. I met her in Boston a little over a year and a half ago, and we've kept in touch over AIM and the telephone. She lives in Manhattan, and attends Northeastern University in Boston.

While she was survived the attack -- she lives about four miles away -- not all of her friends and family did.

A friend of hers from NEU was on one of the Boston flights.

A family friend worked and is presumed dead at the WTC.

Her mother's boyfriend, a NYC cop, is among the missing. They had hopes he had just not had a chance to check in the first couple of days in all the rush of events, but that hope has begun to fade.

I had hopes I was beginning to get out of being in a shocked, numbed state, but I think I'm going right back in ...

[ September 13, 2001: Message edited by: MeGotBeer ]

Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :

My relatives in New York were more lucky then... one was comming from Norfolk back to NYC when the attack occured. Another was at the UN and had to walk from there to Queens since the subway was down. An aunt, who is a registered nurse was called in from Brooklyn. My family over there was pretty damn lucky. Too bad not everyone else was.