Photo Gallery The Towers Across the Water
6:30 a.m.: Early in the morning on Sept. 11, 2001, Reinhard Karger awoke on his brother's sailboat, moored at a marina across the water from the World Trade Center. The sun has not yet risen when Karger photographs the skyline of Manhattan, complete with the twin towers.
6:45 a.m.: Karger and his brother have breakfast on the afterdeck and watch as the sun rises from behind the World Trade Center towers.
When this photo was taken, there was still over an hour to go before American Airlines Flight 11 would crash into the north tower.
9:30 a.m.: After breakfast, Karger took a short nap before being awakened by a phone call. When he goes up on deck, he sees the smoking twin towers. Three-quarters of an hour before, the north tower had been struck. When the south tower was hit by United flight 175, it became clear it was a terror attack.
9:59 a.m.: The fire in the south tower spread quickly before the building collapsed 56 minutes after it had been struck.
The tower's collapse sent a gigantic dust cloud throug the streets on the southern tip of Manhattan.
10:15 a.m.: As smoke continues to pour from the top of the north tower, the south tower's collapse has enveloped the entire southern tip of Manhattan in a thick cloud of dust and smoke.
10:20 a.m.: Reinhard Karger's father calls from Germany to tell him that an American Airlines passenger jet had crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. A column of smoke continues to rise from the north tower.
10:28 a.m.: The north tower begins to collapse into itself...
...as the heat from the fire fueled by jet kerosene became too hot for the building's steel frame.
As it collapsed, the column of smoke seemed to outline where the world-famous tower had stood just seconds before.
10:29 a.m.: 102 minutes after the hijacked plane crashed into the side of the north tower, it has completely collapsed. Until the very last moment, the New York fire department had tried to save those caught inside and then to evacuate its own people. In total, 343 fire fighters lost their lives at the World Trade Center.
As the north tower collapsed, it too sent up a gigantic cloud of toxic smoke and dust.
10:30 a.m.: Once again, a gigantic cloud of dust and ash spreads through lower Manhattan.
11:00 a.m.: The cloud is so thick that the entire New York skyline disappears and only begins to reappear about a half hour later.
6:00 p.m.: Smoke continues to pour into the sky over Manhattan all day and into the evening. The entire city is at a standstill and much of lower Manhattan is evacuated.
6:30 p.m.: The sunset bathed the harbor in an orange light. Yet the disaster continued just on the other side of the water.
7:00 p.m.: As the sun sets, the search continued for survivors of the disaster on lower Manhattan. Ultimately, the number of dead in New York was determined to be 2,606.
