Quote:
Originally Posted by Rail>Auto
One thing I haven't seen hardly anyone talk about is the hotel between the two towers. I have never seen any pictures of the inside of it. Was there anything special inside of it? I don't even know what year it was added.
If the two towers collapsed directly in their own footprint, which tower took the hotel with it?
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The debris from 2 WTC nearly cut the building in half straight down the middle, killing two hotel workers and trapping quite a number of firemen and some other hotel workers who were in the lobby. The northern and southern halves were still standing. The debris from 1 WTC finished the job and basically left a crushed 2-3 story mess. That's the best way to describe what it looked like after the dust settled.
The trapped people in the lobby didn't make it out before the second collapse. There's an excerpt about what happened in the hotel in "102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive inside the Twin Towers." Great book by a couple of NY Times writers that I recommend everyone pick up.
Part of the hotel's lobby was actually reinforced after the 1993 bombing, so the people standing in that area survived the first collapse relatively unharmed, but people standing a few feet away on the portion of the lobby floor that had not been reinforced became trapped. They were in contact with the trapped guys (close enough to talk without use of a radio) and were in the process of getting them out, but they just didn't have enough time.
This isn't really the place for 9/11 pictures, so if you want to see the before, during, and after pictures please send me a PM.