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“[I]t was [like a] professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear ‘Pop, pop, pop,<br />
pop, pop’.”<br />
--Paramedic Daniel Rivera<br />
“First I thought it was an explosion. I thought maybe there was a bomb on the plane, but delayed type of thing, you know<br />
secondary device. . . . I just heard like an explosion and then a cracking type of noise, and then it sounded like a freight<br />
train, rumbling and picking up speed, and I remember I looked up, and I saw it coming down.” --Firefighter Timothy Julian<br />
“[W]e heard a rumble, some twisting metal, we looked up in the air, and . . . it looked to me just like an explosion. It didn’t<br />
look like the building was coming down, it looked like just one floor had blown completely outside of it. . . . I didn’t think<br />
they were coming down. I just froze and stood there looking at it.” -Michael Ober<br />
“There was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides,<br />
materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the<br />
collapse.”<br />
--Chief Frank Cruthers<br />
“I felt the ground shake, I turned around and ran for my life. I made it as far as the Financial Center when the collapse<br />
happened.”<br />
--Lonnie Penn<br />
“Shortly before the first tower came down,” he said, “I remember feeling the ground shaking. I heard a terrible noise, and<br />
then debris just started flying everywhere. People started running.” Then, after they had returned to the area, he said, “we<br />
basically had the same thing: The ground shook again, and we heard another terrible noise and the next thing we knew<br />
the second tower was coming down.” --Lieutenant Bradley Mann<br />
“I started walking back up towards Vesey Street. I heard three explosions, and then we heard like groaning and grinding,<br />
and tower two started to come down.” --Paramedic Kevin Darnowski<br />
“I heard 3 loud explosions. I look up and the north tower is coming down now.”<br />
Gregg Brady<br />
“it almost sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight.” – Thomas Turilli<br />
“heard explosions coming from building two, the south tower. It seemed like it took forever, but there were about ten explosions.<br />
. . . We then realized the building started to come down.” --Craig Carlsen<br />
“As my officer and I were looking at the south tower, it just gave. It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the<br />
plane hit. . . . [W]e originally had thought there was like an internal detonation, explosives, because it went in succession,<br />
boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down.” --Edward Cachia<br />
“Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was<br />
just one flash.”<br />
--Captain Karin Deshore<br />
“Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping<br />
sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it<br />
would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were<br />
getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.”<br />
--Captain Karin Deshore<br />
“I was . . . hearing a noise and looking up. . . . [T]he lowest floor of fire in the south tower actually looked like someone had<br />
planted explosives around it because . . . everything blew out on the one floor. I thought, geez, this looks like an explosion<br />
up there, it blew out.”<br />
--Battalion Chief Brian Dixon<br />
“It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion.”<br />
--Battalion Chief Dominick DeRubbio,