INDIANA – Governor Eric J. Holcomb is directing flags at state facilities across Indiana to be flown at half-staff in honor of Patriot Day. Flags should be flown at half-staff from sunrise to sunset on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.
Governor Holcomb also asks businesses and residents statewide to lower their flags to half-staff in remembrance of the victims of the terror attacks on September 11, 2001.
September 11 attacks, a series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against targets in the United States, were the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in U.S. history.
Some 2,750 people were killed in New York, 184 at the Pentagon, and 40 in Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked planes crashed into the ground after the passengers attempted to retake the plane; all 19 terrorists died.
On Tuesday, 23 years ago, at 8:46 a.m., the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, which had originated from Boston, was piloted into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, also from Boston, struck the south tower 17 minutes later. Each structure was severely damaged by the impact and erupted into flames. Office workers who were trapped above the points of impact, in some cases, leaped to their deaths rather than face the infernos now raging inside the towers.
The Pentagon awoke to a day like any other. But at 9:37 a.m., the routine of the morning was shattered by the explosion of fire and steel as hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, taking off from Dulles Airport near Washington D.C., was flown into the west wall of the Pentagon, touching off a fire in that section of the structure.
Within the next hour, at 10:03 a.m., the fourth aircraft, United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark, New Jersey, crashed near Shanksville in the Pennsylvania countryside after its passengers—informed of events via cellular phone—attempted to overpower their assailants.
At 9:59 a.m., the World Trade Center’s heavily damaged south tower collapsed, and the north tower fell 29 minutes later. Clouds of smoke and debris quickly filled the streets of Lower Manhattan. Office workers and residents ran in panic as they tried to outpace the billowing debris clouds. Several other buildings adjacent to the Twin Towers suffered severe damage, and several subsequently fell. Fires at the World Trade Center site smoldered for more than three months.
