It still gives me nightmares and I always pray for these sailors in their horrible slow death, just as I pray for the poor people entombed under the WTC, who also took weeks to die.
I had not heard about people being trapped at the WTC, who took weeks to die.
Where did you get that information?
It was in the NYC press later, and in fact even during the weeks afterwards they knew that there were people they simply would not be able to reach. When they finally excavated areas at the bottom, they found pockets (such as under stairs) with people who had been trapped in them.