Last updated:  05/30/2008

Did Flight 93 Crash in Shanksville?

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Flight 93 Related Articles

► Crews Begin Investigation Into Somerset County 757 Crash
"We (were) literally surrounded by debris, and there's a very strong odor of scorched earth," Parsons reported. "It doesn't smell like jet fuel, it smells like ... How do you describe it? Burned earth. It smells like burned earth."
A witness told WTAE-TV's Paul Van Osdol that she saw the plane overhead. It made a high-pitched, screeching sound. The plane then made a sharp, 90-degree downward turn and crashed.
Officials said that they believed that the plane took a dip and nose-dived into an abandoned strip mine.
WTAE-TV's Michelle Wright toured the crash scene and said that a crater of about 30 to 40 feet long, 15 to 20 feet wide and 18 feet deep was created by the crash.
Officials told WTAE's Marcie Cipriani that it looked like the plane was headed south when it hit the ground. Most of the plane's debris kept traveling after the plane hit and landed in the woods past the mine. Most of the debris is small." - Pittsburgh Channel (09/11/01)

► American Heroes Changed the Course of United Flight 93

"For Lee Purbaugh, 31, of Listie, the thought of seeing a plane crash right before his eyes still seemed unbelievable to him when interviewed a half-hour later.
"I never in my life thought I would see a plane crash right before my very eyes," said Purbaugh, who was at the wreckage within minutes after the crash.
Purbaugh’s second day on the job at Rollock Inc., a scrap metal company which owns the Diamond T mine, a former PBS Coals dig directly about the crash site, came with a shocking surprise. The crash happened within 200 yards of Purbaugh’s view.
"I happened to hear this noise and looked up," said Purbaugh, who indicated the plane was about 40 to 50 feet above him. "I didn’t know if I should duck or what because this plane was so low but then in a split second it hit."
Purbaugh thought at first it was just a cargo plane carrying some mail because when he ran up to the actual scene, he didn’t notice any carnage, just some mail around. He also noticed a bookbag. He said the pine trees next to the site were on fire from the explosion and the fire was also spreading through the woods.
"I knew about the World Trade Center at the time but I never expected something like this," said Purbaugh. "There was scattered debris everywhere, some in large chunks, but nothing you could identify. I’m just shocked it happened here."
Mark Stahl of Somerset, who went to the scene immediately afterwards, says, "There’s a crater gorged in the earth, the plane is pretty much disintegrated. There’s nothing left but scorched trees."
Michael R. Merringer was out on a mountain bike ride with his wife, Amy, about two miles away from the crash site.
"I heard the engine gun two different times and then I heard a loud bang and the windows of the houses all around rattled," Merringer said. "I looked up and I saw the smoke coming up."
The couple rushed home and drove near the scene.
"Everything was on fire and there was trees knocked down and there was a big hole in the ground," he said.
Purbaugh, Stahl and the Merringers were at the site before state police crews and the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI) arrived to secure the entire site as a crime scene immediately or be arrested. Police helicopters circled overhead every few minutes.
Morrison said everything recovered from the crash site must be thoroughly documented. He says that is why the FBI and state police, in addition to firefighters and other crews, are working together in a "methodical way." - Daily American (09/12/01) [transcribed]

► Cell calls from planes reveal horror

"At 10 a.m., the plane suddenly went down, crashing into rural western Pennsylvania, where it created a crater 30 feet across and 20 feet deep, and scattered debris for half a mile." - MSNBC (09/12/01)

► The crash in Somerset: 'It dropped out of the clouds'

"The United Airlines Boeing 757 came in low, its engines screaming.
A handful of people working near or driving through a rural area of Somerset County watched as the plane flipped over and disappeared with a smoky boom at 10:06 a.m. yesterday, between the tiny communities of Lambertsville and Shanksville.
A few miles north of Lambertsville, yard man Terry Butler, 40, was toiling away at Stoystown Auto Wreckers.
He thought it was odd that a plane was in the area. He'd heard that all air traffic nationwide had been halted after the World Trade Center disaster about an hour earlier.
"It dropped out of the clouds," too low for a commercial flight, Butler said. The plane rose slightly, trying to gain altitude, then "it just went flip to the right and then straight down."
He radioed back to his office, telling coworkers Homer Barron, 49, and Jeff Phillips, 30, what he had seen.
"I told them a plane crashed. At first they didn't believe it, because you know, we do joke around."
Then Barron saw smoke and called 911.
The plane came down on farmland reclaimed from a coal-mining operation. Barron and Phillips drove to the crash scene and found a smoky hole in the ground. A few firefighters had already begun pouring water onto the debris.
"It didn't look like a plane crash because there was nothing that looked like a plane," Barron said.
"There was one part of a seat burning up there," Phillips said. "That was something you could recognize."
"I never seen anything like it," Barron said. "Just like a big pile of charcoal."
The sound of the jet's engines also stuck in the minds of other eyewitnesses.
Lee Purbaugh, 32, working just his second day at Rollock Inc., a scrap yard next to the reclaimed strip-mine land, looked up from operating a burning torch to see the jetliner just 40 feet above him.
"I heard it for 10 or 15 seconds and it sounded like it was going full bore," said Tim Lensbouer, 35, Purbaugh's coworker.
The ground shook and the air thundered as the jetliner slammed into the ground about 300 yards away, Purbaugh said.
A mushroom of flame rose 200 feet and disappeared. Then there was a curtain of black smoke and finally a trail of fire as pieces of the fuselage shot hundreds of yards into the woods.
"My instinct was to run toward it, to try to help" said Nina Lensbouer, Tim's Lensbouer's wife and a former volunteer firefighter. "But I got there and there was nothing, nothing there but charcoal. Instantly, it was charcoal."
Three-quarters of a mile away, at Shanksville-Stonycreek High School, ninth-grader Rose Goodwin, 14, and her classmates had been watching coverage of the World Trade Center catastrophe on a classroom television.
"When the plane hit, it sounded like something just fell on the roof. Everybody sort of panicked," she said. "I went to the window and saw all this smoke coming up and I just pointed and screamed."
Charles Sturtz, 53, who lives just over the hillside from the crash site, said a fireball 200 feet high shot up over the hill. He got to the crash scene even before the firefighters.
"The biggest pieces you could find were probably four feet [long]. Most of the pieces you could put into a shopping bag, and there were clothes hanging from the trees."
Ten miles away, at a warehouse near Berlin, employee Don Miller and co-workers felt their building shake.
Later in the afternoon, state police allowed reporters to enter the crash area. It was incongruously serene. Under a bright sun, the site where all 45 aboard the plane were killed was most remarkable for how unremarkable it appeared.
The apparent point of impact was a dark gash, not more than 30 feet wide, at the base of a gentle slope just before a line of trees.
There were few recognizable remnants of the plane or the passengers and crew. The trees beyond were still faintly smoldering but largely intact.
"If you would go down there, it would look like a trash heap," said state police Capt. Frank Monaco. "There's nothing but tiny pieces of debris. It's just littered with small pieces."

Gov. Tom Ridge arrived later in the afternoon." - post-gazette.com (09/12/01)

► Day of Terror: Outside tiny Shanksville, a fourth deadly stroke

"United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757-200 en route from New Jersey to San Francisco, fell from the sky near Shanksville at 10:06 a.m., about two hours after it took off, leaving a trail of debris five miles long.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) issued a statement denying that United Flight 93 had been shot down by U.S. military aircraft.

Some witnesses reported that the plane was flying upside down for a time before the crash; others said they heard up to three loud booms before the jetliner went down.

Some witnesses reported that the plane was flying upside down for a time before the crash; others said they heard up to three loud booms before the jetliner went down.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, said last night he could only guess that the plane's likely target was "a second shot at the Pentagon or the Capitol or the White House itself."
"The destination sure wasn't an open field," he said. "It's fortunate it didn't come down sooner, on Johnstown."

Flight 93 may have gotten as far west as Ohio before turning around. The Cleveland mayor's office told The Associated Press that an airplane in distress had passed through Cleveland-area airspace before being handed off to Toledo, although it was not clear that the plane was Flight 93.

As the plane neared Pittsburgh, Mayor Tom Murphy stayed in contact with the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration.
"We were in communication with the FBI and the FAA about the jet as to where it was," Murphy said. "They had the jet coming out of Cleveland and losing it when it came into Pittsburgh airspace, and there was no communication with it, and we were concerned."

At the John P. Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport near Johnstown, a call from air traffic controllers in Cleveland set off 10 minutes of high tension before the plane crashed 14 miles southeast of the airport.

Dennis Fritz, the air traffic manager, got a call from controllers in Cleveland warning the Johnstown airport -- which has no radar of its own -- that a large aircraft was 20 miles south and had suddenly turned on a heading for Johnstown.
"It was an aircraft doing some unusual maneuvers at a low level, which is unusual for an aircraft that size," Fritz said last night. "It happened so quickly."

He said workers in his own tower scanned south, toward the horizon, with binoculars, but couldn't see any aircraft, leading Fritz to believe that the plane was flying somewhere in the 2,800 foot high ridges in that part of the Allegheny front.
Then, somewhere within the air zone, about 15 miles south of Johnstown, the plane turned again toward the south.
Shortly before it went down, another call was made to the Westmoreland County 911 center from a Mount Pleasant Township resident who said he could see a large plane flying low and banking from side to side.

The impact "sounded like dynamite," said Lucy Menear, 83, who lives less than a half-mile from the crash site. "It seems as though everything was falling apart."
Eric Peterson, 28, was working in his shop in the Somerset County village of Lambertsville yesterday morning when he heard a plane, looked up and saw one fly over unusually low.
The plane continued on beyond a nearby hill, then dropped out of sight behind a tree line. As it did so, Peterson said it seemed to be turning end-over-end.
Then Peterson said he saw a fireball, heard an explosion and saw a mushroom cloud of smoke rise into the sky.
Peterson rushed to the scene on an all-terrain vehicle and when he arrived he saw bits and pieces of an airliner spread over a large area of an abandoned strip-mine in Stonycreek Township.

"There was a crater in the ground that was really burning," Peterson said. Strewn about were pieces of clothing hanging from trees and parts of the Boeing 757, but nothing bigger than a couple of feet long, he said. Many of the items were burning.
Peterson said he saw no bodies, but there also was no sign of life.

Throughout the day, as a plume of smoke hung in the sky, a steady stream of firefighters, police cars, emergency management crews, national guard members and local volunteers swarmed over the crash site.

Jeff Killeen, an FBI spokesman from Pittsburgh, said the main thrust of the agency's investigation will begin today when authorities divide the crash scene into grids and comb the area for evidence.

Yesterday, the priority of the FBI and state troopers was to protect the scene.

Gov. Tom Ridge arrived about 6:15 p.m., flying over the crash scene in a National Guard helicopter before being briefed on the ground by state police.

Joseph McKelvey, executive director of the Johnstown-area airport, said he didn't know whether it would be an operations headquarters or serve as a morgue.
But as he spoke, one of the few planes in the skies over America, a United Airlines 727 arrived carrying what McKelvey said was equipment for the recovery, and a half dozen rental trucks pulled into the airport to carry the equipment to the crash scene.
"This is the one airport [in the region] that can handle about any aircraft in the world," McKelvey said. Normally, the Johnstown airport handles five commercial passenger flights a day."" - post-gazette.com (09/12/01)

► Alleged Partial Flight 93 Cockpit Transcript Obtained

"A partial transcript has been obtained by CNN of talk heard by air traffic controllers via an open microphone in the cockpit of United Flight 93, which crashed in Somerset County, Pa.

The first phrase was "There is a bomb on board."
Then there's a shout: "Get out of here!" followed by the sounds of scuffling. And then again, someone says, "Get out of here."
Then, a voice in broken English, acting as the pilot, says, "There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat. There's a bomb on board. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their demands. We are returning to the airport."

The plane departed from Newark and was headed to San Francisco, but diverted from its flight pattern and crashed nose-first in a large field about 60 miles outside Pittsburgh. All 38 passengers and seven crew members were presumed dead.

Anywhere from 130 to 150 troopers would guard the area at one time, according to Lt. Col. Robert Hickes.
Finding any substantial evidence from the plane will be difficult. Any remaining debris is very small. WTAE-TV's Paul Van Osdol also reports that some debris has been spotted up to two miles away from the crash scene. Some has been washing up on shore at nearby Indian Lake.
Several residents gathered debris, placed it in a plastic bag and carried it to police. Officials do not want residents to touch any possible debris. They should contact police, instead.
At least four witnesses who were at the crash scene within five minutes of the crash told WTAE's Paul Van Osdol that they saw another plane in the area.
Somerset County resident Jim Brandt said that he saw another plane in the area. He said it stayed there for one or two minutes before leaving.
Another Somerset County resident, Tom Spinello, said that he saw the plane. He said that it had high back wings.
Both men said that the plane had no markings on it, either civilian or military. The FBI said that it does not think that it was a military plane, but it would not rule out the possibility of it being a civilian plane.
Cellular telephone calls placed from the doomed plane led to suggestions Wednesday that a group effort to crash the craft and stop the attackers from reaching whatever may have been their intended target may have taken place.
The plane first flew near Cleveland but quickly turned around, reportedly flying erratically and losing altitude.
One passenger who called Westmoreland County 911 said he was inside a locked bathroom. Dispatcher Glenn Cramer said the unidentified man repeatedly said, "We're being hijacked!"
"He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer said.
FBI officials had a tape of that call in custody. They would not comment on its contents or the speculation of a struggle on board.
Witnesses reported seeing military aircraft in the air just after the crash, and there were rumors that Flight 93 was shot down. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld said that was not the case, according to Murtha.
As Flight 93 approached Cleveland, radar showed the plane banked left and headed back toward southwest Pennsylvania. Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White said air traffic controllers reported hearing screams on a plane with which they had communicated.
John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport tower chief Dennis Fritz said his tower, located about 20 miles from the crash site, got a warning call from Cleveland Air Traffic Control.
The Cleveland tower said the plane had done some unusual maneuvers, including a 180-degree turn away from Cleveland, and was flying at a low altitude. Johnstown tower controllers also could not see the plane from their tower, leading them to believe the plane was already very low and perhaps obscured by the surrounding topography." - thepittsburghchannel.com (9/12/01)

► Homes, neighbors rattled by crash

"Betty Rhoads thought her furnace had exploded. When she “mostly felt” the blast Tuesday morning, she had no idea a Boeing 757 had crashed less than a mile from her rural Somerset County home, killing all 45 people aboard.
The windows of her home were latched shut, but the explosion blasted them open. When the elderly couple looked outside, they saw smoke billowing from the abandoned strip mine behind their house where United Airlines Flight 93 had crashed, carving a crater in the earth.

There were no survivors.
Eric Peterson, 28, an off-duty corrections officer, was an eyewitness to the crash.
“It was burning when it hit the ground,” Peterson said. “When it went down, it was in one piece. It was flying low, real low.
“We couldn’t see past the tree line, but we knew it crashed. I didn’t think it was going to clear these places. It looked like it tumbled.”
Mark Stahl of Somerset, a 32-year-old petroleum salesman, was working on his office computer when he heard the crash. He followed plumes of billowing smoke to the scene. Carrying a digital camera, Stahl arrived at the site 15 minutes after the plane fell from the sky.
He began taking photographs of the still-smoking scene. Later, he showed them to people who crowded around his car in a cornfield filled with reporters, photographers and large television trucks spouting giant satellite dishes.
“I heard the boom, followed the smoke and came up on this,” Stahl said as he displayed an 8-by-10-inch photo of the crash site.
About 30 firemen were at the scene when he arrived, Stahl said. He didn’t realize a passenger jet had crashed until a firefighter told him.
Ron Delano, who lives about two miles from the crash site, also rushed to the scene after hearing about the crash.
Delano said the plane hit a wooded area near a strip mine where he frequently hunts. He was stunned by what he saw.
“If they hadn’t told us a plane had wrecked, you wouldn’t have known. It looked like it hit and disintegrated,” Delano said.
Georgetta Guynn and her husband, Alvin, of Vanderbilt, Fayette County, had been out with relatives when they heard about the attack on the World Trade Center.
“We looked up and there was this big jet going overhead and it was pretty low and we could not hear the engines. It was like they were off. And then about a minute or two later, we got some binoculars and we were looking through them and there was all this smoke in the air and we knew it crashed.
Rosemary Tipton, principal of Shanksville-Stonycreek Elementary School, was in her office when the building shook. From her window, she could see smoke rising from the ridge.
Jim Stop of Somerset was fishing at the Indian Lake marina, about three miles from the crash site, when he looked up and saw the plane overhead.
“I heard the engine whine and scream,” Stop said.
He then heard an explosion and saw a fireball.
Barry Lichty, the mayor of Indian Lake Borough, said the ground shook and the town’s electricity went out. He called the utility company to find out the cause.
Later, Lichty learned that a plane crash had disrupted service to the borough.
At least two witnesses in Shanksville said they saw a large plane circling the crash site following the explosion. About two or three minutes after the explosion, the airplane climbed into the sky almost vertically, the witnesses said.
“It sure wasn’t no puddle jumper,” said Bob Page, general sales manager at Shanksville Dodge.
Page said he could not see if there were any markings on the plane or what kind it was. State and federal officials could not confirm reports of a possible second plane in the area." - pittsburghlive.com (09/12/01)

► Frantic 911 call preceded crash outside Pittsburgh

"Moments before United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a grassy southwestern Pennsylvania field, a passenger on the plane apparently called 911 to report a hijacking.
The FBI confirmed yesterday that it had confiscated and was analyzing the emergency phone call, which was recorded by the Westmoreland County 911 center, several miles west of where the plane exploded into the ground, killing all 45 people aboard.
''We are being hijacked! We are being hijacked!'' the man said, according to a transcript. The call was received at 9:58 a.m., and the caller said he was locked in a lavatory on Flight 93.
Witness Joe Wilt, 63, said he heard a whistling like a missile, then a loud boom as he stood in the doorway of his Shanksville home across the road from the site. His view was blocked by a group of trees, but he said he saw a fireball rise 800 feet into the air, then give way to black smoke.
''It exploded and you could see flames and debris everywhere, right over that tree over there,'' Wilt said, pointing. He heard from a relative who worked at a small business less than one mile to the west that the plane had passed low overhead, heading southeast before crashing.
The Boeing 757 passenger plane hit the ground in a large open field, creating a crater nearly 20 feet wide and 15 feet deep before slamming into the forest line. It left a charred image burnt into the tall grass, but nothing recognizable as an airplane. Captain Frank Monaco, commanding officer of the Pennsylvania State Police, said nothing larger than a telephone book remained. There were no survivors.
Gay Wilt, 63, said the impact shattered a basement window and sent things flying around her living room. She and her husband had been watching television coverage of the crashes in New York and near Washington.
''I was doing my hair in the bathroom, and I ran up and started screaming,'' she said of her reaction upon catching sight of the plume of black smoke.
Another neighbor, Lu Ray Rhoads, 23, said, ''It was right behind our house.'' She had also been watching the news. ''Obviously, being here I didn't expect it had to do with anything else that was going on,'' in New York or Washington." - Boston Globe (09/12/01)

► Jetliner Was Diverted Toward Washington Before Crash in Pa.

"United Flight 93, originating in Newark, followed a seemingly normal course until it reached Cleveland, where it suddenly made a sharp turn south, followed by another turn toward the southeast, according to Federal Aviation Administration radar tracking reports. The reports were published on the Web by Flight Explorer at www.flightexplorer.com.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) issued a statement denying that United Flight 93 had been shot down by U.S. military aircraft.
Eyewitnesses near the crash scene said the plane, a Boeing 757-200 loaded with more than 11,000 gallons of fuel for the six-hour flight, flew low and then suddenly fell from the sky, producing a huge fireball and a 10-by-20-foot crater in a field near this rural Pennsylvania town, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
"When it decided to drop, it dropped all of a sudden -- like a stone," said Tom Fritz, 63. Fritz was sitting on his porch along Lambertsville Road, about a quarter-mile from the crash site, when he heard a sound that "wasn't quite right" and looked up in the sky.
"It was sort of whistling," he said. "It was going so fast that you couldn't even make out what color it was."
The ensuing firestorm lasted five or 10 minutes and reached several hundred yards into the sky, said Joe Wilt, 63, who also lives a quarter-mile from the crash site.
"The first thing I thought it was, was a missile," Wilt said. The impact shattered a window in his basement and knocked down household objects from a shelf.
Westmoreland County emergency dispatchers said they received a last-ditch 911 cell phone call from a passenger at 9:58 a.m., just minutes before the crash. Dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer told the Associated Press that the call came from a passenger who had locked himself inside one of the plane's lavatories. "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked," Cramer quoted the caller from a transcript of the call.
The caller described the plane as "going down," Cramer told AP. "He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane, and we lost contact with him."
FBI agents quickly took possession of the tape of that 911 call, which constitutes the only public evidence so far of what went on during the doomed plane's last moments. The FBI declined to provide any information about the tape's contents or the identity of the caller. At the crash site, FBI Special Agent Jeff Killeen said he was unaware if there had been any communication from the pilot.
Authorities late today recovered the plane's flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders, government sources said. These should permit authorities to reconstruct what went on in the cockpit during the flight.
The woods surrounding the crash site was strewn with body parts, said local resident Fred Waugh, who was among the first on the scene. Waugh "got scared and left," he said. "I couldn't help nobody. I couldn't hear nobody."
United Flight 93 would have arrived at San Francisco International Airport at 11:14 a.m. Pacific time, after six hours and fourteen minutes in the air. Today's flight -- with 38 passengers, five flight attendants and two pilots on board -- was relatively empty; the Boeing 757-200's full capacity is 182 passengers. At the time of the crash, passengers should have been just finishing their breakfast, one of two meals they were to receive on board." - Washington Post (09/12/01)

► Scene of utter destruction

"Two Somerset County men rushed to the scene of Tuesday’s plane crash hoping to help with the rescue effort. They found a scene of devastation.
“You couldn’t see nothing,” said Nick Tweardy, 20, of Stonycreek Township. “We couldn’t tell what we were looking at. There’s just a huge crater in the woods.”
Little remained of United Airlines Flight 93, which had departed from Newark, N.J., at 8:42 a.m. yesterday on its way to San Francisco with 45 people aboard. It crashed in what FBI agents are calling a “terrorist act,” likely linked to yesterday’s attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
FBI Special Agent Jeff Killeen said air traffic controllers had no communication with the pilot of the Boeing 757 before the crash.

And he said the investigation will be slow because the impact of the plane left “scant” evidence that will require “painstaking collection.”
“The tail was a short distance from the rest of the wreckage,” said would-be rescuer Brad Reiman, 19, who lives near Berlin in Somerset County. “It looked like the plane hit once and flopped down into the woods.”
The largest piece of wreckage he could identify looked like a section of the plane’s tail, he said.
The crash site is a former strip mine owned by PBS Coal Co. and is known locally as the Diamond T. Mine. The impact left a blackened crater at least 45 feet in diameter, said Mark Stahl of Somerset, who arrived at the scene carrying a digital camera just minutes after the plane crashed.
Paula Pluta of Stonycreek Township was watching a television rerun of “Little House on the Prairie” when the plane went down about 1,500 yards from her home along Lambertsville Road at Little Prairie Lane.
“I looked out the window and saw the plane nose-dive right into the ground,” she said, barefoot and shaken just 45 minutes after the crash.
The explosion buckled her garage doors and blasted open a latched window on her home, she said.
“It was just a streak of silver. Then a fireball shot up as high as the clouds. There was no way anybody could have survived. I called 911 right away.
“There was no way anything was left,” Pluta added. “There was just charred pieces of metal and a big hole. The plane didn’t slide into the crash. It went straight into the ground. Wings out. Nose down.”
Bits of metal were thrown against a tree line like shrapnel, said state police spokesman Trooper Thomas Spallone of Troop A in Greensburg.
“Once it hit, everything just disintegrated,” he said. “There are just shreds of metal. The longest piece I saw was 2 feet long.”
Hours after the crash, teams of crime scene analysts from the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, plus state police, the Pennsylvania National Guard, and state agencies — Department of Emergency Management and the Department of Environmental Protection — cordoned off the area within a 4-mile radius of the crash and began the painstaking task of collecting evidence.
“We’re finding more debris in various locations,” Spallone said.
“Over 100 state troopers secured the area. Our job is not to let anybody in here until the federal accident reconstruction teams from the FBI and (Federal Aviation Administration) can get in here and examine the shreds of evidence left,” said Capt. Frank Monaco, commander of Troop A.
“All that is left is small pieces of the airplane.”
FBI Agent Bill Crowley in Pittsburgh said the bureau has classified the crash as a terrorist act and “not so much as a hijacking.”
Not long before the crash, the plane approached the Johnstown/Cambria County Airport, descending from 6,000 feet, airport director Joe McKelvey said. Airport controllers had no verbal contact with the pilots, McKelvey said.
McKelvey said officials at the Cleveland En Route Air Traffic Control Center in Oberlin, Ohio, ordered Johnstown controllers to abandon the tower and close the airport.
Coroners from Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver and Cambria counties arrived at the scene yesterday afternoon to help Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller. Joanne Bytheway, a forensic pathologist from the University of Pittsburgh, was brought in to help identify the remains.
As the investigation began, police and federal agents began utilizing abandoned buildings at the strip mine. Verizon installed phone lines, and GPU Energy powered lights.
A local motorcycle dealer provided all-terrain vehicles to transport officials.
Somerset County officials scrambled to coordinate a makeshift morgue and establish a command center and counseling sites for relatives who may come to the crash scene." - pittsburghlive.com (09/12/01)

► Fourth crash 75 miles from Morgantown
"The Pennsylvania State Police received the call shortly after 10 a.m., trooper Tom Spallone said, and Capt. Frank Monaco added that “there were people here in minutes.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge described the crash site as a large, gaping hole, and Killeen stated that the crash “appears to be a very high impact into the earth.”
Capt. Monaco stood at the scene as he described the black earth “where the plane initially struck and continued on into the south,” disappearing into the woods. Monaco stated that there was a lot of debris, although little was larger than the size of a phone book.
Given the minuscule size of most debris, Monaco said, as far as survivors or bodies are concerned, “none have been seen at this point.”
Downed power lines, blackened trees and yellow police tape also marked the scene, secured by state police.
The only structures on the site are small hunting cabins, none of which were damaged by the impact, according to Monaco.
“The FBI and state police consider this a criminal investigation site,” Gov. Ridge said after flying over the scene by helicopter.
“Our goal right now is to preserve everything as it is for tonight,” Killeen said, adding that further investigation would continue in the morning.
A second United Airlines plane flew over the crash site in midafternoon to photograph the scene, Spallone said. Hazmat crews called to the site were standard operating procedure, and there was no reason to believe hazardous materials were on board, according to Ridge.
Indian Lake residents Alex and Louise Majesky said their house shook from the impact.
“It just kind of rattled,” Alex Majesky said. “I thought a tree fell on the house. I figured, what else could it be?”
Jim Patrick, a Johnstown resident, believed the crash to be “nothing out of the ordinary and just a coincidence.” - Daily Athenaeum/West Virginia Univ. (09/12/01)

► 'Black box' from Pennsylvania crash found

"Searchers Thursday found one of the so-called black boxes from United Airlines Flight 93, the hijacked airliner that crashed Tuesday in western Pennsylvania.
The flight data recorder was found in the crater the plane created when it slammed into the ground Tuesday morning, according to FBI spokesman Bill Crowley.

They are still searching for the voice data recorder." - CNN (09/13/01)

► No evidence of 'military involvement' in Pittsburg crash

"Bill Crowley, FBI, has told reporters in Pittsburg, that debris from the hi-jacked plane which crashed there has been found six miles away.

He also stated that there was "absolutely no evidence of military involvement."
Revering to earlier speculations that the US military brought the plane down by force to prevent it reaching it's target." - TCM Breaking News (09/13/01)

► America Under Attack: FBI and State Police Cordon Off Debris Area Six to Eight Miles from Crater Where Plane Went Down
"DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, we want to take our viewers live to Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Our Brian Cabell is standing by. This of course is the site where United Airlines flight 93 crashed on its way from Newark to San Francisco, crashed on Tuesday, and I understand, in this investigation, there's some breaking news.  Brian, what can you tell us?
BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, in the last hour or so, the FBI and the state police here have confirmed that have they cordoned off a second area about six to eight miles away from the crater here where plane went down. This is apparently another debris site, which raises a number of questions. Why would debris from the plane -- and they identified it specifically as being from this plane -- why would debris be located 6 miles away. Could it have blown that far away. It seems highly unlikely. Almost all the debris found at this site is within 100 yards, 200 yards, so it raises some question. We don't want to overspeculate of course. But there were some cell phone callers, one cell phone caller in particular, who said saw a bomb, or something that looked like a bomb with one of the hijackers. Also, the man who took over the plane apparently announced at one point, he had -- there was a bomb on board the plane.
Again, we don't want to speculate, we don't want to jump to conclusions. But what we do know is that there's a site about half mile behind me, where the plane went down, where most of the debris is, and then about six miles away up by a lake, there is another area that's been cordoned off, and state police and the FBI have said definitely there is debris from the plane located there. We have a crew on the way right now. We should have pictures of that a little bit later on.
KAGAN: Which was first question, so I'll move on to my next one, Brian.
WE don't want to speculate about this large debris field. But it seems to me from covering a number of plane crashes on the scene, that if nothing else, this is not typical for a plane crash to be spread across an area this large.
CABELL: It's certainly doesn't make sense, because most of the debris has been found in a very compact area, within 100 yards, 200 yards, maybe a little bit beyond that. Then all of a sudden they're telling us six miles away, they have another concentration of debris, very small pieces. Most peoples here no bigger than the size of briefcase. The debris six miles away may be smaller. We have talked to a number of individuals here. They say they have talked to people who saw this plane during the final moments. They haven't confirmed whether they saw -- whether they talked to anybody who saw this plane actually land, or crash rather, and as to whether it broke up on the way, we don't know that. The FBI being very tight-lipped about that.
But again, at It leads to that possibility. It certainly leads to a number of questions.
KAGAN: You mentioned they have yet to find the black box. It would seems to me when you compare the four plane crashes of Tuesday, this would be the site where they would be most likely to find a black box.
CABELL: That's what they told us initially, and I think they're somewhat disappointed they haven't found it. It's been 48 hours, but they are still hopeful they will find it. There is a pond nearby this particular site. They may have to send divers into the pond. They haven't done that yet, but conceivably, it could be in the pond, it could be anywhere, it could be at this other debris side. They've also found some other debris scattered around this area. They say in fact some individuals have been collecting it. Again, we're talking about very, very tiny parts. The biggest part they found at this site is an engine, an engine part, and most of the other pieces are probably no bigger than this particular notebook.
So again, very small pieces. They had hoped to find the black box by now. They're still voicing optimism they will find it." - CNN (09/13/01)

► Investigators locate 'black box' from Flight 93; widen search area in Somerset crash

"Investigators this afternoon discovered the "black box" containing flight data recordings from United Flight 93 at the crash site in rural Somerset County.

Pittsburgh FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said the flight data recorder was found about 4:50 p.m. in the main crater at the crash site, located near Shanksville. Crowley said he didn't know whether the recorder was operable, or whether officials would be able to gather information from it.
Finding the flight data recorder had been the focus of investigators as they widened their search area today following the discoveries of more debris, including what appeared to be human remains, miles from the point of impact at a reclaimed coal mine.
Residents and workers at businesses outside Shanksville, Somerset County, reported discovering clothing, books, papers and what appeared to be human remains. Some residents said they collected bags-full of items to be turned over to investigators. Others reported what appeared to be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly six miles from the immediate crash scene.
Workers at Indian Lake Marina said that they saw a cloud of confetti-like debris descend on the lake and nearby farms minutes after hearing the explosion that signaled the crash at 10:06 a.m. Tuesday.
Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller said that, at the same time, the first human remains have been removed from the site in a prelude to the somber challenge of identifying the 45 victims of the crash.
Whether that search will yield usable information was one of the key questions hanging over this stage of the investigation. If it does, it could provide insight into what may have been a terrifying struggle between hijackers and passengers that kept the Boeing 757 from hitting an intended target in a populated area.
Cell phone calls from passengers have fueled the speculation about such a scenario, along with the fact that this was the only one of the four planes that crashed Tuesday that did not hit a populated, high-profile target.
He also said the National Transportation Safety Board has told investigators that the plane, which began its flight in Newark, N.J., was flying east when it crashed but could provide no other information about its path or intended target.
In a morning briefing, state Police Major Lyle Szupinka confirmed that debris from the plane had turned up in relatively far-flung sites, including the residential area of Indian Lake. Investigators appealed to any residents who had come across such debris, in the surrounding countryside or even in their yards, to contact them, emphasizing that even the smallest remnants could prove to be important clues.
In response to a question on recurring rumors that the plane might have been shot down, Crowley said that at this stage of the investigation, no possibility was being ruled out. He stressed, however, that no evidence had surfaced to support that theory.
Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, noted and discounted the same speculation here Tuesday, saying that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield had assured him that the government had not shot down the hijacked plane to prevent it from hitting a potential target." - Pittsburg Post Gazette (09/13/01)

► Passengers Thwarted Hijackers

"Evidence mounted Wednesday that the fate of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into the cornfields of rural Western Pennsylvania Tuesday, was determined by a group of passengers who apparently attacked the plane's hijackers.
U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said Wednesday he has "no doubts" passengers heroically struggled with terrorists to stop the plane from reaching a target in Washington.
"I personally believe there was a struggle on that plane and some people made a heroic effort to make sure that plane didn't hit a populated area," said Murtha, who served as an intelligence officer in the Vietnam War. "I think those heroic people said to themselves, 'We know we are going to die, so let's make sure they can't get to anyone else.'?"
Flight 93 was the only one of four hijacked planes Tuesday that did not hit a major target. Two struck the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and another hit the Pentagon. Flight 93 left Newark, N.J., at 8:01 a.m. headed for San Francisco. It crashed about 10 a.m., roughly an hour or so after the trade center was hit. All 45 on board were killed.
According to the news report, Glick told his wife the plane had been taken over by three Middle Eastern men wearing red headbands. The hijackers, wielding knives and brandishing a red box they claimed contained a bomb, ordered the passengers, pilots and flight attendants toward the rear of the plane, then took over the cockpit.
Bingham, a 31-year-old public relations executive, also said he plane had been taken over by "three guys who say they have a bomb," said Hoglan, who is a United Airlines flight attendant.
The accounts from these relatives, indicating possible turmoil in the cockpit, dovetail with the account of one witness from the ground, who saw the plan rollover shortly before the crash.
"It came in low over the trees and started wobbling," said Tim Thornsberg, a resident of Somerset County, who was working near an old strip mine when he saw the plane.
"Then it just rolled over and was flying upside down for a few seconds ... and then it kind of stalled and did a nose dive over the trees. It was just unreal to see something like that."
Thornsberg has given his account to FBI agents.
These accounts refute speculation that the plane might have been shot down to prevent another suicide attack on Washington -- a theory Rep. Murtha also denied.
Charles Sturtz, who lives about a half-mile from the crash site, said he saw the plane in the air for a few seconds, and saw no smoke, heard no explosions before the crash and saw no other planes in the sky.
The plane was heading southeast he said, and had its engines running.
"It was really roaring, you know. Like it was trying to go someplace, I guess, " the 53-year-old carpenter said.
Murtha said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told him directly the plane not been shot down, and Westmoreland County Public Safety spokesman Dan Stevens reacted strongly to such talk.
"No, that's false. That's false," Stevens said. "There was contact with the plane through the whole thing and there's radio transmissions that people could have been listening to that know what was going on. So that information was not true."
The crash impact left a crater estimated to be 10-feet deep and 20-feet wide. The site was still smoldering Wednesday afternoon and investigators said "hot spots" caused by jet fuel had flared up in the early morning hours. Small patches of smoke could be seen billowing into the trees next to the crater." - Pittsburgh 11 News (09/13/01)

► Human remains recovered in Somerset

"Evidence collection teams late Wednesday recovered the first recognizable human remains from the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Somerset County.
High-ranking law enforcement officials confirmed that an arm and other body parts from victims have been found by investigators who are combing an abandoned strip mine in Stonycreek Township near Lambertsville.
Meanwhile, investigators also are combing a second crime scene in nearby Indian Lake, where residents reported hearing the doomed jetliner flying over at a low altitude before "falling apart on their homes."
"People were calling in and reporting pieces of plane falling," a state trooper said.
Jim Stop reported he had seen the hijacked Boeing 757 fly over him as he was fishing. He said he could see parts falling from the plane.
As yet, there have been no official reports of any human remains recovered from the lake area.
The remains from the main crash site have been taken to a makeshift morgue at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory near the Somerset County Airport. State police escorted a tractor-trailer truck into the back of the armory late yesterday evening, according to a resident who lives nearby.
The lights were turned off briefly as the truck was directed to the rear of the armory. A short time later, the lights were turned on as the police cars and the truck left, said the man, who declined to be identified.
Investigators made the discovery while walking shoulder-to-shoulder in a search that is expected to take as long as five weeks. The crash site has been divided into grids where evidence collection teams will mark and photograph every piece of debris and any human remains before anything is removed from the location.
By late yesterday evening, the area surrounding the crash scene was relatively quiet as federal investigators and state police, who had been working since daybreak, changed shifts with colleagues assigned to guard the area through the night.
State Police Lt. Col. Robert Hickes said there are 280 state troopers protecting the crash site, which FBI investigators consider a crime scene. Using horses and helicopters, state police have created a double ring of security around the area that spans several miles.
Searchers still have not found the voice data recorder for the doomed flight.
Investigators and the families of the dead wondered if the recorder had captured a heroic tale of passengers turning on their hijackers, refusing to go down without a fight.
Before the plane crashed Tuesday morning, killing all 45 on board, several passengers called loved ones, telling them that their plane had been hijacked and that their captors said they had a bomb. At least two of the callers said they would fight back.
If they did, it makes the hunt for the so-called ``black box'' all the more important, because it might tell why the aircraft -- apparently intended as a jet-powered missile like those that smashed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon -- crashed into a previously insignificant field 80 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.
Some surmised that, upon learning the hijackers intended to slam the plane into a significant structure in a much more populated area, some of the passengers or crew gave their lives to ditch the plane.
The plane left Newark, N.J., bound for San Francisco about 8 a.m. But before it reached Cleveland, it abruptly turned back east, losing altitude and flying erratically across Pennsylvania, veering toward Maryland and Washington, D.C.
CNN reported obtaining a partial transcript of chatter from the plane recorded by air traffic controllers as the jetliner approached Cleveland. The network said tower workers heard someone in the cockpit shout, "Get out of here,'' through an open microphone.
A second transmission from the plane is heard amid sounds of scuffling with someone again yelling, "Get out of here.''
Next to be heard is a voice saying:
"There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat. There is a bomb on board. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their demands. We are returning to the airport.''
CNN said an unidentified source who heard the tape claimed that transmission was of a voice speaking in broken English. The microphone then went dead, CNN reported.
United spokeswoman Liz Meagher had no comment on the transcript.
"Somebody made a heroic effort to keep the plane from hitting a populated area,'' said Rep. John Murtha, a Johnstown Democrat. "I would conclude there was a struggle and a heroic individual decided 'I'm going to die anyway; I might as well bring the plane down here.'''
Murtha said finding the cockpit voice recorder might tell the tale of what happened on Flight 93. But after touring the site yesterday, he said he has his doubts it will be found, given that the plane was pulverized into a 10-foot-deep V-shaped gouge." - Pittsburg Tribune-Review (09/13/01)

► Data box found from plane downed in Pa.
"Federal investigators yesterday found the flight data recorder of the hijacked plane that crashed near Pittsburgh, a discovery that could yield important clues in understanding the plane's final moments.
The other so-called black box, the cockpit voice recorder, still hasn't been found. But the recovery of the data recorder, which contains information on the mechanical workings of the jet, shows that the investigation of the Pennsylvania crash has advanced far beyond the inquiries for the three other planes that were hijacked Tuesday.
Of the four crashes, this was the only one that occurred outside a populous area.
As the authorities piece together the story of United Airlines Flight 93, which reportedly tore into a southwestern Pennsylvania field at a 45-degree angle...
There have been rumors that the plane was shot down by the military, which the Pentagon has vehemently denied. But the FBI is investigating eyewitness reports that an F-16 fighter jet was flying near Flight 93, Newsday reported.
A congressional aide who attended a briefing in Washington yesterday by Federal Aviation Administration head Jane Garvey confirmed that the Defense Department was watching the flight, but did not say whether a fighter jet was involved.
"It dug a deep crater, so it had to be coming in at a steep angle. I think at that point, somebody was struggling with the hijackers, and nobody really had control of that plane,'' said Barnes McCormick, a pilot and an aeronautical engineering professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University." - boston.com (09/14/01)

► Black box recovered at Shanksville site

"Federal investigators hope the flight data recorder recovered from United Airlines Flight 93 will reveal what caused the Boeing 757 jetliner to crash into an abandoned Somerset County strip mine in a deadly sequence of terrorist attacks.
FBI Agent William Crowley announced Thursday afternoon that investigators using heavy equipment found the recorder in a crater at the crash site near Lambertsville in Stonycreek Township.

Searchers yesterday also found one of the hijacked jetliner’s engines. But by evening, the cockpit voice recorder had not been recovered.

Crowley confirmed that there were two other aircraft within 25 miles of the United flight that were heading east when it crashed, scattering debris over 8 miles.

Crowley said the recorders from Flight 93 did not send out any emissions. It was discovered by an “integrated search team” of state police and federal investigators using heavy equipment to unearth the device from the crater cut into the ground on impact.

A passenger, Mark Bingham, 31, of San Francisco, Calif., was able to call Westmoreland County 911 and tell a communications officer that the plane had been hijacked and the terrorists had a bomb.
There was a sound of an explosion before 911 lost contact with Bingham.

Forensic archaeologists and anthropologists were among experts who came to the site yesterday to aid investigators in searching the wide debris field to help retrieve potential evidence and human remains.
Crowley said the FBI and NTSB have not determined whether a bomb exploded inside the aircraft before it crashed. Residents of nearby Indian Lake reported seeing debris falling from the jetliner as it overflew the area shortly before crashing.

State police Maj. Lyle Szupinka said investigators also will be searching a pond behind the crash site looking for the other recorder and other debris. If necessary, divers may be brought in to assist search teams, or the pond may be drained, he said.
Szupinka said searchers found one of the large engines from the aircraft “at a considerable distance from the crash site.”
“It appears to be the whole engine,” he added.
Szupinka said most of the remaining debris, scattered over a perimeter that stretches for several miles, are in pieces no bigger than a “briefcase.”

“If you were to go down there, you wouldn’t know that was a plane crash,” he continued. “You would look around and say, ‘I wonder what happened here?’ The first impression looking around you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, looks like a plane crash. The debris is very, very small.
“The best I can describe it is if you’ve ever been to a commercial landfill. When it’s covered and you have papers flying around. You have papers blowing around and bits and pieces of shredded metal. That’s probably about the best way to describe that scene itself.” - Pittsburgh Live (09/14/01)

► Flight Data Recorder Is Found at Pa. Site

Federal Investigator Says Military Was Not Involved in United Airlines Crash

"Investigators uncovered the flight data recorder today from the crater left here by United Airlines Flight 93, a discovery that could provide the first solid evidence into what happened on board before it crashed.
Investigators also found small pieces of wreckage today as far as eight miles from the southwestern Pennsylvania crash site -- much farther than previously discovered.
Crowley declined to comment on the possible significance of the widely dispersed wreckage and said investigators have not ruled out the possibility of an explosion. He did, however, comment on questions as to whether the military was involved in the crash.
"There was no military involvement in what happened here," he said. He also said there were two other planes within 25 miles of the United flight when it crashed but said neither was involved.
The first refrigerated truck of human remains recovered from the crash site arrived today at a makeshift morgue at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory about 15 miles away.
Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic pathologist from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., said the remains had suffered "extreme fragmentation" and most would have to be identified through DNA analysis. He said experts also would use dental records, X-rays, and fingerprints and footprints.
Only small pieces of the plane were found at the crash site, an old coal strip mine surrounded by farms and some homes. "If you were to go down there and you did not know this was a plane crash you would say, 'I wonder what happened here,' " said Maj. Lyle Szupinka of the Pennsylvania State Police. "The debris is very, very small."
One of the Boeing 757's engines, nearly intact, was recovered, but aside from that, the largest piece of debris was no larger than a briefcase, Szupinka said.
Witnesses have said they saw an intact plane with wobbling wings that dipped to the right before it nose-dived into the ground.
Linda Shepley, 47, of Stoystown, Pa., said she saw the plane fly over her back yard as she hung laundry on her clothesline. "I could see there was no landing gear down," she said.
Witnesses also reported seeing another plane pass above the crash site shortly after Flight 93 went down.
Robert Blair, 41, also of Stoystown, was driving his coal-hauling route when he saw the plane crash a few miles away. He noticed the second plane because he had heard on his truck radio earlier that the FAA had grounded all aircraft, and he said it was flying east -- the same direction as Flight 93. He said the FBI asked him whether it looked like a military plane, but Blair remembered only that it was "a big jet flying low."
Crowley said tiny pieces of debris were found in a residential area near New Baltimore, about eight miles away. He said it would not be unusual for light debris such as paper and thin nylon to blow that far because the wind was blowing in that direction when the plane crashed.
A layer of dirt and dust has settled on the crash site, further hampering the search for plane debris and remains, Szupinka said.
Reporters and photographers have been driven by bus to the crash site but are kept several hundred yards from the crater.
Pennsylvania State Police said they arrested two free-lance photographers from New York this afternoon after a trooper saw them trying to enter the cordoned-off crash site. The FBI's twice-daily briefings have become increasingly controlled. One agent said any details concerning the criminal investigation are "very tightly controlled by the attorney general and even higher." - Washington Post (09/14/01)

► Flight 93 crash shook his house like a tornado

"His windows all are shattered and blown out of their frames, his garage door has disappeared and his ceilings have crumbled and fallen onto floor tiles that have been blasted loose from their moorings.
He's not sure when he'll be able to return to what's left of the once-cozy stone cottage nestled in a thick stand of trees with a view of the sun-dappled cornfields below and the rolling hills beyond. But Barry Hoover said his sorrow at seeing his home nearly destroyed is dwarfed by his grief and sympathy for the 45 people who died Tuesday when United Airlines Flight 93 slammed into the hilltop that he calls home.
No people on the ground were killed in that crash. But the shock waves set off by the impact of that crash heavily damaged Hoover's home, which lies, literally, a stone's throw from the crater gouged into the earth by the doomed plane.
"Obviously, I was upset when I saw my house. Who wouldn't be?" said Hoover, 34, whose home off Lambertsville Road is believed to be the local structure most seriously damaged by the crash. "But you know, it's a house and there's nothing there that can't be replaced. The people who died can't be replaced."
Hoover, who was at work at a lumber yard 10 miles away in Somerset when the Boeing 757 crashed Tuesday morning, said he rushed home after friends telephoned him and told him they believed the plane came down dangerously close to his property.
Already jumpy and heartsick from news reports he'd heard about the morning's other plane crashes at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Hoover said he didn't realize at first that the downed plane near his home was also an airliner and that its fall from the sky was linked to those other hijackings.
Wreckage was still burning and emergency workers were still speeding to the scene when Hoover neared his house. While it was still standing, every window and door had been blown off and obliterated, its ceilings and floor tiles had been blasted loose and much of the interior was wrecked.
"It looked like what you see after a tornado or hurricane goes through -- a total ruin," he said.
Hoover spent a few minutes unsuccessfully searching for his cat, Woody, but then walked back outside because he was afraid the house might collapse on him. Police then told him he'd have to leave because the house was considered to be part of the crash crime scene.
He hasn't been permitted to return or retrieve belongings since then, so he's been staying in a Somerset hotel and making do with newly purchased or borrowed clothes and toiletries. But he said he understands why the FBI and state police have barred him from his home and property and doesn't mind staying away until their work is finished there. - post-gazette.com (09/14/01)

► Setback over Pittsburgh black box

"The cockpit voice recorder recovered from the crash site of the hijacked airliner which came down in Pennsylvania has been sent to the manufacturer to try to extract information.
Federal Bureau of Investigation officials had hoped to gain valuable clues into how the hijackers took over United Airlines Flight 93, saying the recorder had been found in "fairly good condition."
However, initial attempts to extract information from the tapes have proved fruitless, and the unit has been sent to the manufacturer, a Justice Department official told reporters in Washington.

Investigators had hoped that the recorder from the Pennsylvania crash might yield the most clues, as it was the only one from the four downed airliners which was not subjected to a prolonged fire.
All 45 passengers and crew members on board Flight 93 that took off from Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco were killed.
Investigators hoped that the voice recorder, and the data recorder, recovered a day earlier, could reveal whether passengers tried to gain control of the airliner before it crashed.

Black boxes - an aircraft's flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) - are two of the most important contributions to air safety since the beginning of the era of commercial flights.
The data collection devices - which are actually orange - are mounted in the tail of an aircraft.
Under internationally agreed regulations, commercial aircraft must carry the equipment to record the performance and the condition of the aircraft in flight.

The recorders are housed in immensely strong materials, such as titanium, and insulated to withstand a crash impact many times the force of gravity and temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.
The recording material is itself insulated against accidental deletion.
Modern black boxes record up to 300 factors of flight including:
* speed and altitude
* aircraft pitch
* cockpit conversations
* radio communications." - BBC (09/15/01)

► FBI Explains Other Planes At Flight 93 Crash

"Hoping to dispel rumors that United Airlines Flight 93 might have been shot down by military aircraft, the FBI Saturday said that two other planes were in the area but had nothing to do with the hijacked flight crashing in western Pennsylvania.

The FBI said that a civilian business jet flying to Johnstown was within 20 miles of the low-flying airliner, but at an altitude of 37,000 feet.
That plane was asked to descend to 5,000 feet -- an unusual maneuver -- to help locate the crash site for responding emergency crews.
The FBI said that is probably why some witnesses say they saw another plane in the sky shortly after Flight 93 crashed at 10:10 a.m. Tuesday in a grassy field near Shanksville, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

The FBI said there was also a C-130 military cargo aircraft about 17 miles away that saw smoke or dust near the crash site, but that plane wasn't armed and had no role in the crash. That plane was flying at 24,000 feet.
Earlier in the week, witnesses described seeing more planes to WTAE-TV reporters. Click here for video of those accounts.
On Friday, WTAE-TV reported that the mystery pilot in the white plane may have been an area farmer.

James K. Will, a Berlin, Pa., farmer who pilots a white Cessna with red stripes (pictured at right) and who has an airstrip near his farm, told Team 4 reporter Paul Van Osdol that he circled the scene about 45 minutes after the crash.
Will said he had just returned from Altoona and, when he'd heard about the crash, flew to the site to take photos of the wreckage. Pennsylvania State Police said that his plane may have been the one that many saw.
Will's flight was intercepted by a state police helicopter and was escorted to the Johnstown-area airport. His plane was searched and he was released." - ThePittsburghChannel (09/15/01)

► 2 planes had no part in crash of Flight 93; Business jet, military cargo plane were in area of hijacked United Flight 93

"Two other airplanes were flying near the hijacked United Airlines jet when it crashed in Somerset County, but neither had anything to do with the airliner's fate, the FBI said yesterday.
In fact, one of the planes, a Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet, was directed to the crash site to help rescuers. The request for the jet to fly low and obtain the coordinates for the crash explains reports by people in the vicinity who said a white or silver jet flew by moments after the crash.
A C-130 military cargo plane was also within 25 miles of the passenger jet when it crashed, FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said yesterday, but was not diverted.
"There was a hole in the ground -- that was it," said Yates Caldwell, the pilot who was at the controls of the 10-passenger corporate jet for Greensboro, N.C.-based apparel maker VF Corp. "There was no way to know what it was .... I didn't know there had been a crash until I landed, until I was on the ground in Johnstown."
The voice recorder would have picked up the last 30 minutes of conversation in the cockpit, unless the hijackers turned it off or it was too severely damaged in the crash. It was found around 8:25 p.m. Thursday, 25 feet below the ground in the crater gouged out by the doomed jet. It appeared to be in good condition.
Debris from the crash has been found up to 8 miles from the crash site, but searchers are concentrating on the crater where most of the remains are located. Papers and other light objects were carried aloft by the explosion after impact of the plane and they were transported by a nine-knot wind.
Crowley said investigators have found no evidence of a bomb. According to news reports, a crew member keyed a cockpit microphone so that air traffic controllers could hear conversations. One voice, in broken English and Arabic accent said, "There is a bomb on board."
One part of the recovery effort involves about 100 volunteers from the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team. The team includes specialists such as anthropologists, pathologists, radiologists, and dentists who have been trained in disaster recovery procedures.
The team, led by Paul Sledzik of the Armed Forces Institute of Technology, set up and began working on Friday.
As agents find items -- bones, jewelry, clothing -- they hand-deliver them to deputy coroners stationed at the perimeter of the crime scene. The deputies deliver the items to a temporary morgue.
Each unique item is numbered, photographed, X-rayed, and described in writing. Items are separated by categories and sent to stations of specialists.
Although the items collected are "extremely fragmentary," Dirkmaat said, he is 100 percent certain that individuals will be identified. So far, none have been identified.
As remains and personal affects are identified, that information will be turned over to Somerset Coroner Wallace Miller. He will work with families to determine what becomes of the remains.
Miller said it might take quite some time before remains are identified. DNA evidence, he said, will be one of the most useful tools. But the labs capable of analyzing that evidence will be overwhelmed by DNA evidence from the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Families will be taken to the viewing area over the next few days. They will not be allowed at the crater itself, because that is still considered a crime scene. State police, the FBI and United Airline officials plan to keep the families away from reporters, "to ensure their privacy once they get there," Capt. Frank Monaco said.
More than 200 people are working at the site, from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, Pennsylvania State Police, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, and local volunteer fire departments.
Cooler weather has made the work a bit easier. Searchers are wearing Hazmat suits that are sealed." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (09/16/01)

► Somerset Crash Site

"FBI and other investigators at the scene have excavated the crash site down to a depth of about 45 feet looking for clues. Digging a trench that deep requires special care to avoid cave-ins and constant monitoring to ensure any fumes from soil contaminated with jet fuel and hydraulic fluid do not present a hazard to emergency workers." - dep.state.pa.us (09/16/01)

► Bound by fate, determination; The final hours of the passengers aboard S.F.-bound Flight 93

"Marcin took her seat on a jetliner that was practically empty. Just 37 passengers had tickets on a plane that could hold about 200.
Los Gatos native Todd Beamer, 32, had just come back last Monday night from a week in Italy with his wife, Lisa, to their home in Cranbury, N.J. But there was no time to rest -- Beamer had to catch Flight 93 to make a meeting of sales representatives at Oracle Corp. headquarters in Redwood Shores.
Deora Bodley, 20, was eager to start her junior year at Santa Clara University after visiting friends in Newark. She was supposed to take United Flight 91, but decided the night before to take one an hour earlier so she could get home sooner to her family and boyfriend, Ryan Lindow.
"They had changed the gate, and she didn't hear it because she had her headphones on, listening to music," Vera Lindow said. In the end, she decided to go to Newark because she didn't want to stand up her old friends.
Like Bodley, Thomas Burnett was leaving New Jersey early to be with his family. The 38-year-old San Ramon resident was supposed to have flown out that afternoon on Delta, but switched to Flight 93 to get home to his wife, Deena, and their three daughters.
Jeremy Glick, a 31-year-old New Jersey resident who worked for a San Francisco Internet company, had been booked on a flight the night before, but it was canceled.
Nicole Miller's flight last Monday had also been canceled. The 21-year-old college student and waitress at a Chili's in San Jose had gone back East at the urging of her boyfriend, who wanted her with him when he visited his family. Because she had agreed to go at the last minute, Miller and her boyfriend had to make return reservations on different flights.
Mark Bingham, 31, was also supposed to have flown to San Francisco last Monday. But he hadn't recovered sufficiently from the 30th birthday celebration of his roommate in Manhattan, so he decided to wait until Tuesday morning.
He overslept a 6 a.m. alarm and just made his flight when his friend Matt Hall of Denville, N.J., rushed through traffic to get him there.
Hall remembered the 6-foot-5 Bingham running to the terminal. The former rugby star at the University of California at Berkeley was lugging his old team canvas bag, emblazoned with his name and number. Flying on a companion pass from his aunt, a flight attendant, Bingham was the last to board.
Driving to work, Hall got a call from Bingham to say he had made the flight and was sitting in seat 4D in first class.
No one had an inkling about the attack on New York's World Trade Center. The first plane hit the North Tower at 8:45 a.m. EDT. Twenty minutes later, the South Tower was struck. At 9:39 a.m., a third plane smashed into the Pentagon -- and Flight 93 suddenly made a U-turn.
Air traffic control picked up a transmission from the San Francisco-bound flight as it neared Cleveland. A stuck microphone revealed something wrong in the cockpit. "Get out of here," controllers heard.
The microphone cut off but then came back on, with the sounds of an apparent scuffle. "Get out of here!" someone yelled.
Eventually, a man speaking in broken English announced: "There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat. There is a bomb on board. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their demands. We are returning to the airport."
The captain, Jason Dahl, found himself under siege.
Dahl, 43, who lived in Littleton, Colo., with wife Sandy and 15-year-old son Matthew, had tried the day before to find another pilot for Flight 93 so he could spend time with his family.
With no takers, Dahl called his mother in San Jose on Monday night to let her know he would be flying in and would have time to visit her Tuesday.
The four men who are suspected of having hijacked the plane had trained for years, authorities believe, learning to fly, practicing martial arts and procuring some of the information they needed over the Internet.
Passengers saw men with red headbands, holding a red box that they said contained a bomb. They were armed with ceramic knives and box cutters.
Minutes after the plane turned, passengers and a flight attendant called the outside world to tell authorities and family members of the unfolding terror.
When Tom Burnett phoned his wife, Deena, she was getting their twin daughters ready for school.
When Tom phoned Tuesday morning, he spoke quickly but quietly.
"I'm on the airplane. They've already knifed a guy. Call the authorities," Tom told his wife over his cell phone.
Deena called 911 and was patched through to the FBI. A few minutes later, Tom's second call came through.
"They are talking about flying the airplane into the ground," Tom said to his wife, who in turn told him what she knew about the two jets that had slammed into the World Trade Center towers.
Tom asked several questions. Suddenly, he had to go.
Tom called back to tell her the man who had been stabbed, possibly the pilot, was dead.
Deena, a former flight attendant, remembered her own training and urged Tom to keep a low profile. "Please sit down and don't call attention to yourself," she begged.
He refused. In his final call, he told her that he and two other passengers had decided to act rather than face certain death. "We're going to try to do something," he said.
Jeremy Glick called his wife, Lyzbeth, who was staying with her parents in upstate New York.
Glick asked whether there had been such an attack. His wife hesitated, then told him. In the ensuing 20-minute conversation, he calmed his wife as best he could, joking that he and his fellow passengers might assault the hijackers with butter knives from the in-flight breakfast.
Lyzbeth's mother, JoAnne Makely, got on the cell phone with 911, and with state troopers taking down information, Glick described the hijackers and mulled over the situation. The troopers asked whether the plane was over water, was it banking, could he see anything below.
Lyzbeth's father, Richard Makely, said the call ended when the 6-foot-4 Jeremy told his wife about the plan to "jump the hijackers."
About the same time, Todd Beamer was on an Airphone to a GTE supervisor. He, nine other passengers and five flight attendants had been herded to the back of the plane, said Beamer's friend Doug MacMillan, who heard a transcript of the call. The rest of the passengers were in first class. The pilot and co- pilot had been taken from the cockpit and were nowhere to be seen.
"It doesn't seem like they know how to fly the plane," Beamer said of the hijackers.
His group was being guarded by a man who claimed to have explosives strapped to his midsection. Beamer, a basketball and baseball player in college and a take-charge guy, said he thought he and the others could "jump the terrorist with the bomb."
In the background, the supervisor could hear screaming. But Beamer's voice never wavered.
Beamer, a devout Christian, and the GTE supervisor recited the Lord's Prayer. He made the supervisor promise she would call his wife, who is five months' pregnant, and his sons Andrew, 3, and David, 1. He wanted them to know he loved them dearly and that he didn't think he'd make it.
Beamer dropped the phone and was heard saying: "God help me. Jesus help me. Are you ready? Let's roll."
At the Beamer home, the phone rang twice, stopped, then moments later, rang once more.
"When I picked it up, it was dead air," Lisa Beamer said. "I feel fairly confident that it was Todd. It would be on his mind to call me, to protect me."
At her parents' house, Lyzbeth Glick couldn't stand it anymore and handed the phone to her father.
"I'm waiting, hoping Jeremy or somebody will come back and say it worked," Richard Makely recalled. The silence lasted two minutes, then there was screaming. More silence, followed by more screams.
Finally, there was a mechanical sound, followed by nothing. The family held the phone line open for two hours.
Then, at 9:58 a.m., a Westmoreland County emergency dispatcher fielded a call from a passenger barricaded inside a bathroom aboard Flight 93: "We're being hijacked."
Authorities have assumed Flight 93 was heading for a Washington landmark such as the White House or the Capitol. President Bush had given the military the order to shoot down any plane headed into the city.
Shortly after 10 a.m., workers on farms and scrap yards in Somerset County looked up to see an airliner flying low and erratic at an estimated 450 mph.
Bob Blair of Stoystown was driving a coal truck on state Route 30 when he saw the jet plummet "straight down." Barn windowpanes for half a mile around shattered as the jet dived into a reclaimed strip mine and exploded at 10:10 a. m.
"I just watched with my mouth open as this yellow mushroom cloud rose up just like an atomic bomb over the hill where I like to go hunting," said 72- year-old John Walsh.
Barefoot and in his bathrobe, he drove up the dirt road to rescue anyone he could find. There would be nothing he could do.
Debris, including photographs and other papers that survived the fireball, was strewn over a wide area. Residents have spent days collecting it.
Among the remnants may be the treasured family photos and records that Hilda Marcin packed for her trip. She had carefully swathed them with clothes in her luggage.

--------------------------

The toll of terror Estimates of casualties as of yesterday:
PENNSYLVANIA
Dead: 44" - sfgate.com (09/17/01)

► Flight 93 crash site touted as memorial to victims

"Until last week, it was a few remote acres that, like a lot of this part of Somerset County, had been farmed, strip-mined, back-filled and planted over with grass.
Then, nine days ago, in the final nightmarish episode of America's morning of horror, United Flight 93 crashed nose-first into that stretch of ground, killing all 44 people aboard.
The landowners, a pair of coal companies, said yesterday that they are inclined to donate the ground to become a permanent memorial to the passengers and crew of the Boeing 757.
"If we have a say about it, there's no problem with it," John Weir, land manager with PBS Coals Inc., said yesterday.
"I'd be willing to cooperate in whatever way I could," said Michael Svonavec, secretary-treasurer of the local coal company Svonavec Inc. "It's a site of national interest -- certainly, the way I see it, where we as Americans fought back against terrorism."
Precisely which parts of the site PBS Coals and Svonavec own has yet to be determined. It is hidden from nearby roads, and officials from the companies have not been allowed to examine the well-guarded site.
For now the land is a crime scene, marked by a 40-foot crater and tarp-covered piles of earth. The FBI is overseeing the search for human remains and airplane fragments, a painstaking hunt-and-dig process that could continue for more than a month." - Post-Gazette.com (09/20/01)

► Coroner identifies seven more victims of Flight 93 crash

"Seven victims of the Sept. 11 United Airlines Flight 93 crash in Somerset County were positively identified over the weekend, bringing the number of identified bodies to 11.
But Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller said that additional identifications could take months. There were 44 passengers and crew members on the flight.
The coroner's office was able to identify victims with help from FBI fingerprint experts, but Miller said they did not release identifications until investigators were all "comfortable" with the identity of each victim.
Four bodies had been identified as of Friday.
Miller would not name the victims, or say whether they were crew or passengers, saying his "No. 1 priority" was protecting the privacy of families.
"The identifications up to now were not [based on] DNA," said Miller. "The method now will be [to use] DNA [testing]."
Most evidence from the site has been taken away, he said.
"Everything's been collected from the site that's going to be," he said.
The coroner also said he was working as hard as he could to return remains to family members.
It is a difficult task, he said, in part because Somerset, a sixth-class county with only 78,000 people, has little support staff.
"We don't have staff doing it; I'm doing it," said Miller.
That made the help of outside investigators, including pathologists from Honolulu and Washington, D.C., all the more valuable.
"I've accumulated a wealth of information," said Miller." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (09/24/01)

► FBI finished with Pennsylvania crash site probe

"The FBI announced Monday that its investigation of the site where a hijacked jet slammed into a field here is complete and that 95 percent of the plane was recovered.
Evidence-gathering was halted Saturday afternoon and the pieces of United Airlines Flight 93 that had been recovered were turned over Sunday to the airline, with the exception of the flight data recorder and the voice recorder, which are being held and analyzed by the FBI, according to FBI agent Bill Crowley.
Crowley said the biggest piece of the plane that was recovered was a 6-by-7-foot piece of the fuselage skin, including about four windows. The heaviest piece, Crowley said, was part of an engine fan, weighing about 1,000 pounds. " - CNN (09/24/01)

► FBI Completes Flight 93 Investigation

"FBI investigators have concluded that no explosive was involved in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, the only one of four aircraft hijacked Sept. 11 which did not claim a life on the ground.

Passengers on the flight, in cell phone calls made before the crash, said one of their captors had what appeared to be a bomb strapped to him. At least three of the passengers said they planned to confront the hijackers just before the plane crashed in Somerset County, Pa., killing all 44 on board.
At a news conference, FBI agent Bill Crowley said that the field near Shanksville, Somerset County, has been turned over to the county coroner and that 95 percent of the plane found at the site has been turned over to United Airlines.

Crowley said the FBI has determined from the on-site investigation that no explosive was involved in the crash.
He said that no bomb residue was found at the crash site and that there was no evidence that the plane broke up before it hit the ground.
"Nothing was found that was inconsistent with the plane going into the ground intact," Crowley said.

He said that Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller will take over responsibility for the crash site, which will be enclosed with a fence and patrolled. Eventually, the hole where the plane crashed will be filled in and replanted.
After the crash about 10 a.m. Sept. 11, FBI officials said they expected the work at the site to take three to five weeks. On Monday, Crowley said good weather and a large number of workers -- as many as 1,500 in less than two weeks' time -- allowed the work to go more quickly.

Meanwhile, seven more victims of Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania were identified using fingerprints and dental records, a coroner said Sunday, bringing the total of those confirmed dead to 11.

The remaining 33 victims will likely require DNA testing, which could take months, Miller said." - WTAE Pittsburgh (09/24/01)

► FBI ends site work, says no bomb used
"The FBI said yesterday that it has finished its work at the crash scene of United Flight 93 after recovering about 95 percent of the downed airliner and concluding that explosives were not responsible for bringing it down.
At the same time, the Somerset County coroner said that he has ended his own search for remains of the 44 people aboard the airliner.

The inventory of jetliner debris gives testimony to the devastation of the Boeing 757 when it hit a Somerset County field at somewhere between 400 and 580 mph, the last of four domestic flights to crash that morning after being seized by terrorists.

FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said that the largest piece of plane recovered was a shred of fuselage skin that covered four windows -- a piece seven feet long from a jetliner that was 155 feet long.

The heaviest piece, he said, was a half-ton section of engine fan.

The jetliner exploded in a fireball, witnesses said -- but not a fireball caused by a bomb, according to Crowley.

He said that the remains of 11 of the 44 people aboard the jetliner have been identified through fingerprints and dental records. Among the tasks left for Miller is to get DNA identification of the remains of the other 33 passengers and crew." - post-gazette.com (09/25/01)

► Witnesses Recall Plane Crash
"Shortly after 10 a.m., workers on farms and scrap yards in Somerset County looked up to see an airliner flying low and erratic at an estimated 450 mph.
Larry Williams, a former state police trooper who is now a private investigator, was golfing on the 17th green at Oakbrook Golf Course about eight miles away when he heard the engines "roar real loud and shut off."
Bob Blair was completing a routine drive to Shade Creek just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, when he saw a huge silver plane fly past him just above the treetops and crash into the woods along Lambertsville Road.
Blair, of Stoystown, a driver with Jim Barron Trucking of Somerset, was traveling in a coal truck along with Doug Miller of Somerset, when they saw the plane spiraling to the ground and then explode on the outskirts of Lambertsville.
"I saw the plane flying upside down overhead and crash into the nearby trees. My buddy, Doug, and I grabbed our fire extinguishers and ran to the scene," said Blair.
"I saw the mushroom cloud and we called 911 right away," added Blair. "I knew with that crash that it wasn't likely there were survivors, but we had to go anyways. The plane was coming in on a slant and really hit the treeline at an angle."
Lambertsville resident George Beckett was going to visit his mother-in-law Lucy Menear, when the accident occured. "I had been planning to go in those woods (where the plane crashed) and start looking for some hunting sites. I was going to start right where the plane came down."
Menear, who lives across from the Lambertsville Road at the intersection where a graveled road leads to the crash site near the strip mine, said, "I felt the ground shake with the impact. I didn't know the plane had crashed. It was just a big jolt."
Laura Temyer of Hooversville RD1 was hanging her clothes outside to dry before she went to work Tuesday morning when she heard what she thought was an airplane.
"Normally I wouldn't look up, but I just heard on the news that all the planes were grounded and thought this was probably the last one I would see for a while, so I looked up," she said. "I didn't see the plane but I heard the plane's engine. Then I heard a loud thump that echoed off the hills and then I heard the plane's engine. I heard two more loud thumps and didn't hear the plane's engine anymore after that."
She thinks it might have been the plane that went down near Indian Lake in Somerset County.
A plane going over Shanksville wasn't anything unusual because it is a military flight corridor, said Kelly Leverknight, who lives in Shanksville, just a couple miles from the crash scene.
"I was sitting in my living room when I heard a plane. I ran out to the front porch and watched it go down," she said. "There was no smoke, it just went straight down. I saw the belly of the plane."
She said she heard the explosion, felt the blast, then saw smoke and fire coming out.
"I thought it hit the school," she said.
She didn't have a car, so she ran to the neighbor's house and the two drove to where the plane had crashed and went into the trees.
"The grass was burned. We saw a bunch of paper and pieces no bigger than a foot around scattered all over the place," she said. "We didn't think there were people on the plane because we didn't see anybody."
Kim Custer, 15, a tenth grader at Shanksville Stonycreek High School, said she was on the second floor of the school, located only a few miles from the crash site, when the plane went down.
"I looked up and saw the ceiling tiles jump up and down, then I felt the whole building shake," she said. "Then we heard a big boom, and a few minutes later the fire alarm system went off, so we all got out of there," she said.
Custer and other classmates had been following the events unfolding in New York City and Washington, DC when the plane went down.
"I was very scared," she said." - Daily American (2001) [Reprinted:  us-pentagon.tripod.com]

► Environmental Restoration Begins At Somerset Site, Residents Concerned About Well Water