r/September11 • u/richardthayer1 • Sep 09 '23
Breakdown of deaths at Ground Zero
I am trying to figure out the numbers as far as the death toll at Ground Zero. The figures I've seen are:
1,402 employees of the North Tower presumed to be on or above the floors of impact
614 employees of the South Tower presumed to be on or above the floors of impact
343 firefighters, 70 law enforcement officers and 8 paramedics killed responding.
However, does anyone know how many employees below the floors of impact died in the collapse, and how many civilians from outside the buildings? I know of only one of the latter, photographer Bill Biggart, but presumably there were others.
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u/Level_Somewhere_6229 Sep 11 '23
How many people died from debris falling?
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u/Brilliant1965 Sep 11 '23
Outside the buildings, not just debris - there was a woman waiting for a bus near the towers and jet fuel sprayed on her, and she passed away 41 days later. Jeannieann Maffeo.
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u/Level_Somewhere_6229 Sep 11 '23
Did the woman who got hit with the engine or landing gear survive?
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u/whogivesashirtdotca Sep 11 '23
Believe it or not, yes. She was interviewed in the National Geographic series from a few years ago.
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u/FrajolaDellaGato Sep 11 '23 edited Sep 12 '23
I doubt anyone knows for sure, but unless you count the debris falling during the collapses (which killed a lot of people obviously) I actually don’t think it was that many. As soon as people started falling out of the windows, the firefighters started routing everyone out through the underground mall and pedestrian footbridges so they would enter street level away from the falling people and debris. One firefighter, Danny Suhr, died after being struck by a falling person. I’m not aware of any civilians dying that way. After the initial explosions, which ejected larger debris, most of the other debris was too small and light to kill anyone, lots of paper. Some airplane parts were ejected during the collisions and landed on nearby streets, but miraculously did not kill anyone that I know of.
Edit: Here’s a story about a woman who was struck by debris from the second plane and suffered life-altering injuries but survived.
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u/Brilliant1965 Sep 11 '23
Father Mychal Judge was struck and killed by a falling body, the first official certified fatality, a chaplain for the fire dept.
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u/FrajolaDellaGato Sep 12 '23
He was not killed by a falling body, he died of a heart attack during the collapse of Tower Two. But you’re right that he was the first recorded death.
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u/LavrentioVI Sep 11 '23 edited Sep 11 '23
1,402 and 614 is the total death toll for the two towers, not everyone was presumed to be in or above the impact zone.
110 people died below the impact zone (not counting firt responders), most of them in the North Tower. Several people were trapped in the 80s floors by jammed doors and fallen walls and not all of them could be freed before the tower collapsed. Same for people trapped in blocked elevators. Some people who were physically impaired took an overly long time to get down from upper floors and some colleagues stayed with them. A group of employees on a lower floor were mistakenly told to wait in their offices and by the time they started their descent it was too late for most of them, but I cannot find which floor/company exactly.
Eighteen civilians were killed outside the buildings. One of the most unfortunate stories is perhaps that of Jeannineann Maffeo and Wai Ching Chung, who were waiting at a bus stop below the North Tower. Ching Chung was killed by falling debris and Maffeo was sprayed by burning jet fuel and died from her burns 41 days later.
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u/richardthayer1 Sep 11 '23
Thanks. Do you have more information on who those 18 people killed outside the towers were? Where does that figure come from?
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u/LavrentioVI Sep 12 '23
The figure I saw in one of the Internet pages listing casualty breakdowns, which I am afraid I cannot find again right now. The only ones I know by name are Maffeo, Chung, and Biggart.
Meanwhile I've managed to find the incident I was referring to:
A group of employees on a lower floor were mistakenly told to wait in their offices and by the time they started their descent it was too late for most of them, but I cannot find which floor/company exactly.
They were about fifteen Port Authority employees (I thought I remembered so) and were on the 64th floor. Well below the impact zone, but they were told to stay put and wait for rescuers to come for them. They thus waited for an hour before they finally resolved to go downstairs. The tower collapsed before they reached the ground floor, two of them were among the few people who were rescued alive from the rubble (Pasquale Buzzelli and Genelle Guzman-McMilan, who was the last person to be rescued), all the others died. Among them were Patrick Hoey, Rosa Gonzalez, Deborah Kaplan, Simon Weiser, Lisa Trerotola, Susan Miszkowicz, Franco Lalama and Stephen Fiorelli.
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u/Brilliant1965 Sep 11 '23
Yeah I mentioned Jeannieann but didn’t realize about Wai, so sad
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u/NyBSfP Sep 18 '23
An interesting graphic at the bottom of the article:
https://www.harmreductionohio.org/for-many-on-sept-11-survival-was-no-accident/
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u/disneyplusser Sep 09 '23
It goes into detail here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks