• ALL the hundreds of professional firefighters massing at tower one AND their chiefs and superiors -- a number of whom had eye-witnessed the plane's actual impact -- along with other emergency services personnel familiar with and trained to deal with such disasters, were VERY surprised to find that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the north tower's elevators was OUT OF COMMISSION. Despite the obvious severity of the impact and the ensuing explosion and fire in parts of the building eighty stories above, these professional firefighters and rescue workers were at a loss to explain how EVERY SINGLE elevator could have been knocked out. Clearly, SOMETHING ELSE besides the plane crash was responsible for this truly dangerous state of affairs, which was a big factor in the large number of fatalities which ensued. ALL firefighters and rescue workers and their superiors and chiefs were FULLY CONFIDENT at ALL TIMES -- even after the attack on the south tower but before its unimaginable and unprecedented collapse -- that the dwindling conflagrations on the upper levels of the twin towers WOULD be fully contained, and that the majority of those people still up there WOULD be brought to safety. These trained and experienced professionals were FULLY aware of the extent and severity of the damage and destruction; yet not ONE of them even remotely envisioned something as catastrophic as the TOTAL, UTTER COLLAPSE of these two behemoth, tremendously solid structures. They knew they had a tough job to do -- and they KNEW -- every one of them -- that they COULD do it.
But then….. something they could never, ever have imagined DID happen. The buildings -- beginning strangely enough with the far less damaged and last to be struck south tower -- crumbled and sank from the Manhattan skyline in a vast and truly apocalyptic cloud of dust and rubble.
