‘I probably watched two dozen people jump’
Bernard Kerik
SOMERS POINT — “I probably watched two dozen people jump. As they got closer to the ground, the air pulled them away from the buildings. When they hit the awnings on the outside of the towers, it was like they exploded.”
That’s how Bernard Kerik, 40th commissioner of the New York City Police Department, opened his presentation, “Leadership in Crisis,” a gripping first-hand account of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, during a luncheon Sept. 16 at Greate Bay Country Club.
“As I waited for the mayor, about three minutes before he arrived the second plane slammed through the north side of the tower above me,” Kerik continued. “I’m looking up 75 floors and all I can see is this orange fireball.”
Kerik, 66, was in charge of the 55,000-person agency during the worst terror attack in world history, when 19 al-Qaida terrorists crashed two jetliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, destroying the complex and killing nearly 3,000 people. Kerik oversaw the police response to the attacks, coordinating rescue measures and later recovery efforts.
On that morning 20 years ago, a total of four commercial airliners were hijacked mid-flight with the goal of flying them into high-profile symbols of America. While New York City scrambled to deal with the aftermath of the attacks there, American Airlines Flight 77 was flown into the west side of the Pentagon, causing a partial collapse of the building’s side. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was flown in the direction of Washington, D.C., but hearing of the earlier attacks, the passengers attempted to regain control of the aircraft and forced a crash-landing in a field near Shanksville, Pa. Investigators determined its target was either the White House or the U.S. Capitol.
Not only was it the single deadliest terrorist attack in history, but it extracted a heavy toll from the ranks of the city’s first responders: 340 firefighters and 72 police officers lost their lives.
Kerik noted that not only were the Twin Towers destroyed but “Towers One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven were all destroyed.”
Paul Chiolo, operating principal of Keller Williams Jersey Shore, which hosted the event, introduced Kerik, who joined the NYPD in 1986 and served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Corrections from 1998–2000.
“We wanted to do something to honor 9/11, especially on the 20th anniversary. I don’t know what it was particular about to this year — every year there are ceremonies and remembrances — but this year it seems to have hit home more than others,” Chiolo said. “I really can’t put my finger on why but on social media and regular media, it seemed that people were posting a lot of sentiments, more than I ever saw before. So we thought it would be a great opportunity to bring in someone that had boots on the ground, that could share with us a little of the realities that we probably don’t know.”
Timeline: Boots on the ground
Kerik’s presentation included information about where he was and what he was doing while not only witnessing but responding to the tragic events of that day, as well as some light-heated anecdotes that can be laughed at only now that some of the wounds have partially healed.
— 8:46 a.m.
Flight 11 smashes into Tower One of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
“The emergency response was immediate and massive,” Kerik said, noting members of the NYPD, Fire Department of New York and the Port Authority Police Department arrived within a minute of the plane striking the tower.
Kerik said all of the senior executives of the PAPD, which was headquartered at 7 World Trade Center, were having breakfast at Windows on the World atop Tower One.
“They lost their senior executives. They died that morning,” Kerik said.
Rescue workers began assisting the injured and evacuating the building and surrounding highways were closed to nonemergency vehicles.
Kerik arrives at Tower Seven, where EMTs were treating people for injuries.
“Radio frequencies were designated for emergency services only and we initiated crowd control,” he said.
— 9:02 a.m.
Flight 175 slams into the south side of Tower Two.
“I am on the opposite side of that building waiting for the mayor to arrive. Beams weighing 17,000 pounds per linear foot, that’s what’s coming down in the street,” Kerik said.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani arrives at Tower Seven just 2 minutes after the second plane hits.
“We had emergency service protocols for just about everything you could think of. Every month we had mock drills, table-top exercises, plans, preparations, practice for just about every scenario,” Kerik said.
After Flight 175 strikes, it is clear it is more than an accident, that the United States is under attack, Kerik said.
“When the second plane hit Tower Two, the first thing that went through my mind when I realized we were under attack — I didn’t see that plane, that plane came from the other side and blew out the north side of the building. All I saw was the fireball — I could hear the aviation pilots yelling to central command that it was a second aircraft. At that point I knew we were under attack. My first thought was, ‘How many more planes are there?’”
Kerik called for the evacuation of City Hall, police headquarters, the Empire State Building, United Nations — “any building I could think of that might be a target in Manhattan.”
Frozen zones were established, all subways stations south of 14th Street were closed. The area was evacuated. Giuliani contacted the White House and other officials and the military assumed control of New York airspace.
“Condition Omega called for the entire closure of New York City, the first time that had ever been done,” Kerik said.
He said it was not until a year later, on the first anniversary of the attacks, that he saw footage of what had taken place.
“I was a little busy at the time, wasn’t watching TV. Didn’t know what was going on on the outside with the coverage,” he said. “On the first anniversary I sat in my living room and watched hours of coverage from the year before. Sat there shocked, crying. But I saw the sign ‘New York City closed.’ It was the first time, hopefully the last.”
First responders began to evacuate more than 1 million people out of Lower Manhattan in what Kerik called “the greatest evacuation in the history of this country.”
“They took between 20,000 and 25,000 people from these buildings. Then they took over a million people and evacuated them into the four boroughs and into New Jersey,” he said, noting the contributions of the Garden State’s first responders.
“I have so much admiration for the Jersey cops who responded, because if they didn’t make it into Manhattan, they made it to Jersey City where they were on the other side of the water and helping us get people off the shore on the New York side, sticking them on every boat we could find, to the Jersey side,” he said.
Kerik said dispatch centers received thousands of calls for help, noting there is a room at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum where visitors can listen to recordings — “it’s hard, it’s a rough thing to do” — of the 911 calls.
“99 percent of the people who called for help from within the towers did not make it. Everybody above the impact zone in both buildings died,” he said.
When Giuliani arrived at the scene, he wanted to see the damage to Tower One so they walked to West Street where there was a temporary command post.
“We went into that command post where we met the first deputy commissioner of the fire department — that’s the No. 2 guy — met with the chief of the department — that’s the No. 3 guy — and met with chief of operations — that’s the No. 4 guy — and met with Father Michael Judge,” Kerik said.
Kerik and Giuliani were told it was not anticipated that the buildings would collapse but that all of the structures above the impact zone — and everybody that was within the impact zone and above the impact zone — would be lost.
“As we were leaving, Father Judge, who was the chief chaplain of the Fire Department, said ‘Wait!’ He ran up to Mayor Giuliani and grabbed him by the arm. And the mayor turned around and Father Judge made a cross above his head and said, ‘God bless you, go in peace and please, please be careful.’”
— 9:37
Flight 77 hits the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration halts all flight operations at U.S. airports. The Pentagon, White House and U.S. Capitol are evacuated.
— 9:45 a.m.
Giuliani is inside the Merrill Lynch office waiting to talk to the president.
“The vice president was coming to the phone and someone got on and said ‘Mr. Mayor, we’ve got to go, the Pentagon just got hit,’ and he hung up the phone. I was standing in the doorway and the mayor was sitting behind a small desk and repeated what he had just heard and as he did, the building we were in began to shake like a freight train was coming through it.
“The door slammed open and my chief yelled, ‘It’s coming down.’ I didn’t know if he meant the building we were in, but I knew we had a problem because all of the windows on the outside of the building were all blown out,” Kerik said. “And this soot, and this gas and this white dust came pouring into the building. There was paper everywhere. Everybody we had just left, all those guys I told you about, every single one of them died. We just left there. We were with them 10 to 15 minutes ago.”
Tower Two implodes and “110 thousand tons, 110 floors came down to the ground within 10 seconds. The magnitude of the force, I believe, was like the equivalent of a nuclear blast,” Kerik said.
— 10:03 a.m.
Flight 93 crashes into a field in Shanksville, President George W. Bush puts the military on high alert and a portion of the Pentagon collapses. The United Nations, Justice Department and U.S. State Department are evacuated
— 10:28 a.m.
Tower One collapses.
“We were in the middle of the street, walking up Church Street trying to get to the New York City Police Academy. Tower One collapses within 8 seconds and registers as a Magnitude 2 earthquake,” Kerik said.
Electrical service, gas and telecommunications are completely lost. A chain-link fence is erected around the World Trade Center as a crime scene.
The city’s command center, where the mayor would run disaster response, collapses at about 5 p.m. and a new headquarters is established at the Jacob Javits Center.
“To give you an idea of the speed at which we were working, I would say we completely rebuilt that command center with telecommunications, data, computers, visuals, cameras, I think within 72 to 96 hours,” Kerik said, noting there was space for every city agency as well as state and federal authorities.
‘We’ve got to open the Stock Exchange’
Kerik said the morning of Sept. 12, he walked into the police academy where there was a temporary command center and found Giuliani sitting at a desk
“He has his feet up on the desk and a box of Cheerios and he’s got a book in his hand. He’s reading the book and it’s Churchill’s book on leadership. He’s reading that book, he’s eating Cheerios from the box. I say ‘Good morning, sir’ and I’m trying to visualize what he is doing and he says, ‘We’ve got to open the Stock Exchange.”
“I said ‘Mr. Mayor, the Stock Exchange can’t open this morning because it’s covered in about 2 foot of dust and I don’t think any of the computers work and they have structural damage on the front of the building.’ And I gave him a litany of reasons,” Kerik said. “He said, ‘Get Dick Russell on the phone right now.’”
Russell told the mayor it was going to take a month to open the Stock Exchange.
“He said, ‘If it takes a month to open the Stock Exchange, I am going to call the board and get you fired. I want the Stock Exchange open as fast as possible. The people that did this to us did it for a reason. They targeted those two buildings, the two largest economic symbols in the nation. That was their target for a reason. We have to prove them wrong, get the Stock Exchange open.’ And on the morning of Sept. 17, the Stock Exchange opened.”
By the numbers
— World Trade Center situated on 16 acres with 12 million square feet of enclosed space
— 15,000 people worked in seven buildings.
— 10,000 daily visitors and 150,000 commuters
— 13,365 customers without power
— 5,880 customers with gas
— 300,000 telephone lines down, no cellular service
— 2,795 confirmed dead: 2,392 civilians, 343 FDNY, 37 PAPD, 23 NYPD
— 12,382 total injuries
—294 recovered bodies
— 19,800 recovered remains
— 1,468 victims identified
— 19,993 DNA samples collected
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff