At the North Pool of the 9/11 Memorial, victims' family members, survivors and others placed roses on the inscribed names of those who died in the Feb. 26, 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
The September 11 Memorial & Museum is a place of remembrance not just for 9/11, but also the lives lost in the Twin Towers’ first attack, on Feb. 26, 1993. On Sunday, victims’ families, survivors, dignataries and many others gathered at the memorial’s North Pool to commemorate the 30th anniversary of that deadly terrorist assault.
Six people died, including four Port Authority employees, one of whom was pregnant, and some 1,000 were injured when Muslim extremists detonated 1,200 pounds of explosives loaded in a rented van beneath the North Tower. The blast shook the entire tower and dug a crater six stories deep beneath the building’s parking garage. A harbinger of what was to come, it was the intent of the terrorists to bring both towers down, one collapsing on the other. The driver and three others were convicted a year later.
At the ceremony, a bell was tolled at 12:18 p.m., the time of the explosion, and victims' family members read the names of those who died. Among the speakers were Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, as well as former officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owners of the World Trade Center.
Charles Maikish, the Port Authority executive in charge of the World Trade Center at the time, recalled the safety measures that followed the tragedy. On that day, he said, it took up to six hours to evacuate the tower through darkened stairwells, and eight hours to rescue people from the elevators. As a result of “lessons learned,” he said, thousands of lives were saved on 9/11, when those who could evacuate got out in 20 to 30 minutes.
“We no longer had fire drills where people came into the corridors and told what to do if there were a fire,” Maikish recalled. “We did evacuation drills where people actually evacuated the trade center towers and knew how to get out.”
“The lives saved by the 1993 lifesaving protocols and changes,” he added, “are a gift of those who were killed on Feb. 26.”
