- 1. SUNDAY, September 11, 2011 $1.50 www.vicksburgpost.com Every
day SinCE 1883 WEATHER Today: Partly cloudy; highs in the upper 80s
Tonight: Partly cloudy; lows in the lower 60s Mississippi River:
15.2 feet Fell: 0.2 foot Flood stage: 43 feet A9 DEATHS Holder Horn
Strong A9 TODAYINHISTORY 1936: Boulder Dam begins operation as
President Franklin D. Roosevelt presses a key in Washing- ton to
signal the startup of the dams first hydro- electric generator.
1941: Groundbreaking takes place for the Penta- gon, now
headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. 1961: Hurricane
Carla strikes the coast of Texas as a Category 4 storm; Carla is
blamed for 46 deaths in the U.S. 2001: America sees its worst day
of terrorism as 19 al-Qaida terrorists hijack four passenger jet-
liners. Two smashed into New Yorks World Trade Center, causing the
twin towers to fall; one jetliner plowed into the Pentagon; and the
fourth was crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania. In all,
nearly 3,000 people were killed. INDEX
Business................................ B9
Puzzles................................... B8 Dear
Abby............................ B7
Editorial.................................A4
People/TV............................. B7 CONTACTUS Callus
Advertising....601-636-4545 Classifieds....... 601-636-SELL
Circulation......601-636-4545 News................601-636-4545
E-mailus See A2 for e-mail addresses ONLINE www.vicksburgpost.com
VOLUME 129 NUMBER 254 4 SECTIONS TOPIC MANY MEDIA MaryElsaHocker
seesitall C1 By The Associated Press NEW YORK Ten years on,
Americans will come together today where the World Trade Center
soared, where the Pentagon stands as a fortress once breached,
where United Airlines Flight 93 knifed into the earth. They will
gather to pray in cathedrals in our greatest cities and to lay
roses before fire sta- tions in our smallest towns, to remember in
countless ways the anniversary of the most devastating terrorist
attacks since the nations founding, and in the process mark the
mile- stone as history itself. As in earlier observances, bells
will toll again to mourn the loss of those killed in the attacks.
Ceremonies also will consecrate new memori- als in lower Manhattan,
rural Pennsylvania and elsewhere, concrete symbols of the resolve
to remember and rebuild. But much of the weight of this years cere-
monies lies in what will largely go unspoken the anniversarys role
in prompting Amer- icans to consider how the attacks changed them
and the larger world and the continuing struggle to understand
9/11s place in the lore of the nation. A lots going on in the
background, said Ken Foote, author of Shadowed Ground: Americas
Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy, exam- ining the role that
veneration of sites of death and disaster plays in modern life.
These anni- versaries are particularly critical in figuring out
what story to tell, in figuring out what this all means. It forces
people to figure out what happened to us. The ceremonies honor
those who fought the first battle against terrorism and they won,
Anniversaryisaboutremembering,rebuilding The associated press One
World Trade Center has reached the 80th floor in this aerial photo,
taken 10 days ago. See Anniversary, Page A6. 10 Years Later By
Pamela Hitchins [email protected] As the country marks
the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Vicksburg
engineer whose work was key to saving hun- dreds of lives at the
Pentagon that day views it as the highlight of his career. Robert
Hall, 62, is a 38-year veteran of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
most of that at the Engineer Research and Development Center on
Halls Ferry Road. He led the team that developed building sup-
ports and materials credited with keeping a section of the Pentagon
from collapsing in the minutes following the impact of American
Airlines flight 77 at 8:37 a.m. central time. Anytime you do
anything that is used is good, Hall said in a recent interview. The
fact that what youve done has saved lives is its the highlight of
your career. You never dream .... you always hope that your prod-
uct and your research works, but for it to be tested and for it to
be proved to work suc- cessfully, and then for it to save lives
is... its indescribable. The Boeing 757 that terrorists crashed
into the Pentagon at about 345 mph had taken off from Washingtons
Dulles International Airport carrying 10,000 gallons of fuel. The
deaths included 125 Pentagon employees, 55 of them members of the
military, as well as the 59 passengers and crew onboard the
aircraft. The first two floors of the impact section were
obliterated by the crash and firebomb from the jet fuel, but the
third, fourth and fifth floors did not collapse for more than half
an hour, allowing many to get out of the building where sections
continued to burn for hours. In addition, nearby sections that had
recently been renovated with reinforcements devel- oped by Hall and
other ERDC researchers were largely undamaged. We had offices very
close to the impact that were fine, and other offices 100 or 200
feet away that were completely blown out, said Wayne Stroupe,
public information officer at ERDC. Those retrofits saved lives,
Hall said simply. Hall, a native of Crestview, Fla., came to
...Forittosavelivesis...itsindescribable See Windows, Page A6.
Robert Hall points out a window modeled after the retrofitted
windows he designed at the Pentagon. KATIE CARTERThe Vicksburg Post
Vicksburg team instrumental in saving Pentagon Marshall 26 / USM 20
Ole Miss 42 / Southern Illinois 24 Ark-Pine Bluff 27 / Alcorn 20
Auburn 41 / Miss State 34 LSU 49 / Northwestern State 3 Alabama 27
/ Penn State 11 Jackson State 35 / Tenn State 29 Michigan 35 /
Notre Dame 31 South Carolina 45 / Georgia 42 Belhaven 35 / Miss
College 31 Florida 39 / UAB 0 college scoreboard September 11, 2001
- September 11, 2011 1 YeARS AFTeR A2 Courage of Flight 93 vic-
tims lauded at dedication U.S. denies plot reports A4 An editorial:
Remain vigilant A6 One mans memo- ry, minute by minute A10Taliban
truck bomb kills two in Afghanistan B9 Chopper demand boosts
Sirkorsky in post-9/11 wars C5 9/11 impact stretch- es across globe
WORKING TO BRING RELIEFFROM BONE AND JOINT PAIN. As Vicksburgs rst
rheumatologist, Dr.Ivory specializes in treating patients with
arthritis,osteoporosis, gout and other diseases that cause
muscle,bone,and joint pain. Dedri Ivory,M.D. Rheumatologist Street
Clinic (601) 883-3340
2. A6 Sunday, September 11, 2011 The Vicksburg Post NEW YORK
(AP) Close your eyes and picture Sept. 11. The memories are
cauterized, familiar forever. The second plane banks and slides in,
the fireball blooms, the towers peel away as if unzipped from the
top Start with the Tuesday morning and the blue sky and walk
through the day from two perspectives, inside and out. From that of
a man who managed to survive above the impactzoneinthesouthtower
and from that of the helpless, watching world. In those first two
hours, before anyone could put together the full, awful pic- ture,
chaos filled in the gaps. Brian Clark was working at Euro Brokers,
on the 84th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. He
arrived at about 7:15 a.m., had his cup of coffee. A loud double
boom is the first thing he remembers. Then flickering of the lights
in his office. Something caught his peripheral vision. He spun
around. His view usually looked out over the Hudson River. The
river and the sky. It was filled with flame, he says. Two yards
from my nose is the window, and its right against the glass, almost
swirling. It was 8:46 a.m. For reference, Clark some- times tells
people to imagine a three-by-three grid, like the first nine digits
on a telephone keypad. The north tower sat where 1 would be, the
south tower at 8. Clarks office faced west, near the southwest
corner of the 8 button. American Air- lines Flight 11 had crashed
into the north face of the north tower, the top of the 1 button.
Since the 1993 bombing of the trade centers under- ground garage,
Clark had vol- unteered as a fire marshal for his floor. Now, as if
on autopi- lot, he grabbed the flashlight, grabbed the whistle.
Just then, the network tele- vision morning shows, where the top
stories of the day had included whether Michael Jordan might make a
come- back in the NBA, cut for the first time to a live shot of the
gashed north tower of the World Trade Center.
Thefirstalertonthenational news wire of The Associated
Pressmovedat33secondspast 8:53 a.m.: Plane crashes into World Trade
Center, accord- ing to television reports. It was 8:55 a.m. Clark
remembers a voice over the PA system: Building Two is secure. Eight
minutes later, at 9:03, he was standing outside his office and
talking with a co- worker, Bobby Coll. They were 2 feet to a yard
apart, he thinks, eye to eye. In an instant, the room exploded. The
feeling was of tremen- dous air compression. Then things so secure
no one ever gave them a thought, things like the lights and the
floor, came loose. For several har- rowing, torqueing seconds, it
seemed the building itself might go over. The power went out.
Everything was full of con- struction dust, Clark says. He
remembers terrorism crossing his mind. It was 9:04 a.m. The AP
alert says: Explo- sion rocks second World Trade Center tower. TV
networks were in the middle of interviewing eye- witnesses to the
first explo- sion when United Flight 175 approached, slipped into
the south face of the south tower, and sent a mushrooming fire-
ball out the other side. That looks like a second plane, Charles
Gibson said on ABC. And now, Matt Lauer said on NBCs Today show,
you havetomovefromtalkabouta possible accident to talk about
something deliberate that has happened here. With people around the
world now fixed on live pic- tures of the trade center, the puzzle
was slowly coming into focus. In Sarasota, Fla., President George
W. Bush was read- ing to schoolchildren when Andrew Card, the White
House chief of staff, whispered news of the second crash into his
ear. The color appeared to drain from Bushs face. Inside the south
tower, Clark was trying to lead a small, snaking line of people
toward a central stairway and down from the 84th floor. Three
floors into the trip, they were met by a woman, heading up. Weve
got to go higher, the woman said. A debate ensued. Up or down.
Clark shone his flash- light on whoever was talking. In the middle
of the discus- sion, Clark heard a muffled scream for help coming
from the 81st floor. He and a co- worker, Ron DiFrancesco, went to
investigate. They squeezed through a crack between drywall and door
frame. I have this very clear vision of all my co-workers turning
around and starting up the stairs, Clark says. And they all died.
Mid-rescue on the 81st floor, DiFrancesco was overcome by smoke,
coughed and sturned back. Clark continued toward the strangers
voice. It was Stanley Praimnath, an execu- tive with Fuji Bank It
was just after 9:30 a.m. To the outside world, it was about to
become clear that the disaster, whatever it was, was not limited to
two skyscrapers in New York. Today weve had a national tragedy, the
president told reporters and young children at the Florida
elementary school. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade
Center in an apparent terror- ist attack on our country. It was
seven seconds past 9:43 a.m. Another alert on the AP wire: An
aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon, witnesses say. It was
American Flight 77. Seconds later, anotheralert said that the White
House had been evacuated. Clark and Praimnath wound up at Trinity
Church, two blocks downtown. They stood gripping the iron railing
around the cemetery, close to what they later learned was the
burial site of Alexander Hamilton. It was, Clark says, as if they
had been invited to witness the destruction of the south tower.
Floor by floor, it kind of dis- solved in front of us, he says. The
white wave. It was 10:29 a.m. A second flash on the AP wire: Second
World Trade Center tower collapses. It was 10:37 a.m. Large plane
crashes in western Pennsylvania, offi- cials at Somerset County
Air- port confirm. The official times were 10:03, for the crash of
United Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pa., and 10:28 a.m., for the
collapse of the north tower of the World Trade Center. In all, it
had taken under two hours and almost 3,000 souls. The count was 40
in Penn- sylvania, 184 at the Pentagon and 2,753 at the World Trade
Center. Clark, who lived then and lives today in Mahwah, N.J., got
off the island of Manhattan by ferry. He walked east and found that
ferries to Jersey City. He remembers chugging through the dust of
Sept. 11. Only when the boat got to the Jersey side did Clark
realize that both towers had collapsed. Minutebyminute Pentagon
Interior Damage Without ERDC Technology 300 feet north of impact
With ERDC Technology 50 feet north of impact Typical third floor
views Ware said. Its something I dont want to miss. Its become a
part of my life. The nations focus today turns to ceremonies at the
Pentagon, just outside Wash- ington, D.C., and in lower Manhattan
for the dedication of the national Sept. 11 memo- rial. President
Barack Obama planned to attend ceremonies at the sites of all three
attacks and was scheduled to speak this evening at a service at the
Kennedy Center. The New York ceremony begins at 8:30 a.m., with a
moment of silence 16 min- utes later coinciding with the exact time
a decade ago when the first tower of the trade center was struck by
a hijacked jet. And then, one by one, the reading of the names of
the 2,977 killed on Sept. 11 those who died in New York, as well as
those who died at the Pentagon and in rural Pennsylvania. They
include the names of 37 of Lt. Patrick Lims fellow offi- cers from
the police depart- ment of the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey. Lim, assigned to patrol the trade center with an explo-
sives detection dog, rushed in to the north tower after it was hit
to help evacuate work- ers. He and a few others sur- vived despite
still being inside a fifth-floor stairwell when the building fell.
In the years since, Lim said he has wrestled with survi- vors
guilt, realizing the last of those hed urged ahead of him were
crushed when the tower collapsed. The 10th anniversary has forced
Lim to revisit an expe- rience hes worried too many people have
pushed from their minds. But the approach of todays ceremonies has
con- vinced him of the value of revisiting Sept.11, both for
himself and others. Some of the most powerful ceremonies will
likely be the smallest and most personal. In Brown City, Mich. with
a population of about 1,300 and no direct connection to the attacks
firefighters will lay 343 roses on a 15,000-pound steel beam
salvaged from the World Trade Center, in honor of the New York City
brethren who perished in the disaster. Since venturing to New York
in June to claim the beam and bring it home, the Michigan
firefighters have finished building a brick plaza, lighted around
the clock and crowned by three flagpoles. Already, this has become
a local shrine, Chief Jim Groat says. A few days ago, a couple from
St. Joseph, Mich. who happened to be driving through, pulled into
the fire station lot when they spotted a sign for the memorial.
Groat came out to speak with them and the woman explained that she
was a flight attendant for American Airlines whod been aboard a
plane the morning of the attacks. Then she turned to face the steel
beam from the trade center. She just stood there and cried. She
said she was just honored that somebody still cares, Groat
recalled. The chief observed silently, before offering an
invitation. Will I see you here on Sept. 11? he asked. Ill be here,
she answered. Windows Continued from Page A1. Vicksburg in 1971 as
a Mis- sissippi State University graduate student working with the
Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District. Within a year he moved over
to what was then called Waterways Experiment Station. I came here
to work on my masters and then go to a better life, he said with a
chuckle. Then they sent me off to school to get my Ph.D. ... and
Hall ended up staying, rising to chief of the Geosciences and
Struc- tures Division of the ERDCs Geotechnical and Structures
Laboratory before retiring in 2009. Scientists at ERDC began
looking at improving the abil- ity of structures to withstand
explosives in the 1980s, Hall said, first against smaller briefcase
explosives and then progressing as terror- ists built larger and
more destructive bombs. ERDC has been involved in anti-terrorism
ever since the bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks (in 1983), the
Khobar Towers (1996), Oklahoma City (1995), the first bombing of
the New York City Twin Towers (1993), all of those, Hall said.
After the bombings of all the embassies overseas, weve worked with
the Department of State and several differ- ent government agencies
in protection of their critical infrastructure. Tests were carried
out on small- and full-scale models within ERDCs experimental
buildings and areas as well as off-site test areas at the Big Black
River and Louisi- anas Fort Polk, he said. In cases where the
full-scale is the size of the Pentagon, theyd work on components or
quarter-scale models of components, such as a park- ing garage.
Yes, he laughed, they gave us permission to blow things up, but
also (to) simu- late with computer applica- tions. Physical
experiments are very expensive, so you want to be able to do that
numerically on the computer as much as possible. They worked to
predict how a wall would react to an explosion how it would break,
how much debris would be cast around inside the room, what would
happen to bricks used in its con- struction or to embedded windows.
You have to tie that window frame to the floor above and below,
otherwise you just blow the wall out, he said. When that blast
comes in, one of the great- est hazards is the breaking of the
glass, and also that unreinforced masonry then becomes a
projectile. In addition to structural supports, Hall and his team
experimented with lining the inside of walls with a mem- brane, a
so-called geo-fabric. We started anchoring it at the floor and the
ceiling, and it turned out that that mate- rial ended up preventing
those unreinforced masonry pieces from becoming pro- jectiles, and
protecting the people inside, he said. That technology was further
developed by the Protective Design Center, a sort-of sister Corps
agency of ERDCs in Omaha, Neb., he said. They took that technology
and matured it, and that got transferred to the Pentagon, he said.
The window-wall retrofit had been completed in most of the areas of
one wedge of the Pentagon on the day of the attack. It is a
terrible way to get the increased visibility and attention ERDC
received after 9/11, but Im glad we had the kinds of people who
were able to tackle those problems and to produce solutions that
really work, said Dr. Jeffery Holland, ERDCs director. After Sept.
11, the Corps worked with military offi- cials to get the Pentagon
rebuilt within a year. Since, ERDC, which today spends about $1.2
billion annually at its seven research labs, has stepped up
anti-terror research. Some of that over- laps with work done to
pro- tect overseas military. We always knew that what ERDC was
doing was impor- tant, but the impact of what we were doing to
support the nations military just really accelerated tremendously
after Sept. 11, Holland said. I would say half of todays total ERDC
budget is anti- terrorism-related, and our budget has tripled since
Sept. 11. So our largest increases are all in antiterrorism-
related work efforts that sup- port our military and our nation.
Some of the specific tech- nologies are protected by security
concerns, but areas include all of the locks and dams the Corps of
Engineers manages, most of the major tunnels and bridges in the
U.S., border security, and even terrain and data analy- sis,
Holland said. In retirement, Hall has con- tinued his association
with ERDC as a contractor, and is a consultant to other agen- cies
and businesses. Hall and his wife, Jeanine, the presi- dent of
Engineering Innova- tions, have two daughters one who lives in
Vicks- burg and like her father is an engineer at ERDC, and one a
doctor of internal medi- cine in Mobile and five grandchildren. He
has been a member of Bowmar Baptist Church since his coming to the
city, serv- ing as church deacon and elder, a member of the strate-
gic planning committee and a teacher of youth and adult Sunday
school classes for many years. I enjoy that, he said. I enjoy the
people. He also likes to hunt and fish and serves on the board of
Habitat for Humanity. As Hall looks back on the 10-year response of
Ameri- cans to the Sept. 11 attacks, he said he is proud of the
role his work played but thinks people need to enjoy the free- doms
they have. Even though we work so much in this protection area, I
think people have to real- ize that if we try to protect
everything, we protect noth- ing, he said. We are in a free society
and freedom has risk. I think the society has to learn not to
overreact to these terrorist activities, but appreciate the freedom
that we have and realize that that freedom has a cost. We need to
focus more on our freedom than on trying to hide behind reinforced
structures. 1 YeArS AFter September 11, 2001 - September 11, 2011
Anniversary Continued from Page A1.