Journalistic Chronicle of the Twin Towers

Journalistic Chronicle of the Twin Towers

The fall of the Twin Towers in New York: the great terrorist attack that began the 21st century

The first year of the 21st century was ending on that Tuesday, September 11, 2001, without No one in New York or anywhere in the West even suspected the events that would take place that day. morning. Events that seem to be taken from a Hollywood movie, but that caused very real and very emblematic damage in the heart of the American city: the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and all its structures surrounding.

That morning, passengers on four different flights from four Business American air carriers occupied the small seats inside their planes. American Airlines Flight 11 took off at 8:00 am from Boston's Logan International Airport, bound for the city of Los Angeles. It had 92 people on board. From the same airport, but fifteen minutes later, United Airlines flight 175 did the same, with the same destination but with 65 people on board. Both planes were Boeing 767 models, with an average wingspan of 47 meters and a length of between 40 and 60 meters.

Just 20 minutes into the flight, flight attendant Betty Ong, from the first flight, reported to the airline's reservations office that the flight appeared to be being hijacked. Minutes later, the information reached the US Air Defense Command (NORAD). And meanwhile, two more flights undertake their usual routes: at 8:21 am American flight 77 Airlines left Washington D.C. Dulles International Airport. bound for Los Angeles and 64 people to board; and United Airlines Flight 93 took off from Newark International Airport in New Jersey, bound for San Francisco with 44 people on board.

None of these four flights reached their destination.

At 8:40 am, around 14,000 people were going about their normal business in the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one one of the most iconic buildings in the city, an emblem of American corporate capitalism and a tourist attraction inaugurated in 1973. It was impossible to foresee that two planes, only a few kilometers away, would line up their trajectories towards the two towers, after being kidnapped by suicide agents of the Islamic terrorist group Al Qaeda.

With less than fifteen minutes to go before 9:00 am, the unthinkable became a reality. In front of the stunned eyes of tourists and workers, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, causing a huge wound to his side, which soon smoked black. The eyes of the world fell on the building, in what seemed to be an unfortunate accident.

But at 9:03 a.m., a second plane—United Airlines Flight 175, hijacked through the same modus operandi— rammed the South Tower before the astonished gaze of the press cameras. A ball of fire enveloped the structure, while the government reacted to what was already becoming obvious: they were being victims of a terrorist attack.

Within the next half hour, United Airlines Flight 93 and American Airlines Flight 77 had also been hijacked. The first crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, presumably because its crew rebelled against its kidnappers. The second, instead, crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. Flights of all kinds were suspended across the country, Congress and the White House were fully evacuated, and then-President George W. Bush was removed from an event at a Florida school.

But the tragedy was not over yet.

Before the cameras of the world and the desperate eyes of those trying to evacuate the towers and nearby buildings, the fire continued. It was then that some 200 people took, in the words of journalist David James of the British newspaper The Sunday Times, “an impossible decision”: to flee from the infernal flames caused by the fuel from the plane, they flung themselves to certain death, falling hundreds of meters.

Finally, at 9:59 am, after burning for 56 minutes, the South Tower of the World Trade Center gave way under its own weight and collapsed resoundingly. The gigantic cloud of dust and concrete that his fall raised was so large that it covered entire city blocks and caused damage to nearby buildings, many of which were set on fire or later had to be demolished. And at 10:28 am, after burning for more than an hour and a half, the North Tower imitated its companion: two colossi 110-story concrete buildings now lay in rubble, taking whole city blocks with them to the round.

Little remained of the World Trade Center at the end of that day. Hours later, the building 7 of the World Trade Center, until then standing, also collapsed, adding its 47 floors to the misfortune of the day. In total, the victims of the attack in the state of New York were around 2,600 people, including the passengers of both planes, whose last minutes of life were of indescribable terror. Many people remained missing for weeks and months, and some are still missing (24 people).

The attack was not only tragic in human terms, but it was a huge and unexpected blow to the self esteem American national. That same night, in his 8:30 p.m. address to the nation, George W. Bush announced the start of the war on terrorism, a declaration that predicted the coming wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and from that moment the whole world stepped firmly on the bloody ground of the XXI century.

References:

• “Chronicle (journalistic genre)”in Wikipedia.
• "Attacks of September 11, 2001"in Wikipedia.
• "Ten steps to write a chronicle" by Roque Rivas Zambrano in the National University Institute of Human Rights "Mothers of Plaza de Mayo" (Argentina).
• "Chronology in images of the attacks of 11-S" in The country (Spain).
• "September 11: the memories of a nightmare that marked humanity"in France24.

What is a journalistic chronicle?

The journalistic chronicle is a type of narrative text Y expository, which among the journalistic genres occupies a particular place, being considered as a hybrid genre. This means that it combines features of the informative genres and the interpretive genres, that is, it recounts a series of real events, not fictitious, providing objective, verifiable information, but also showing a subjective, personal view that reflects the way of thinking of the chronicler.

Chronicle is a journalistic genre modern, which has its roots in the travel accounts and diaries of the great explorers of yore (such as the Chronicles of the Indies of the Spanish conquerors in America), reinvented in light of journalistic needs current. It is typical of war reporters, investigative journalists, and even writers, in what has been baptized as the journalistic-literary chronicle, because it uses traditional expressive resources of writing literary.

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