Posted on 09/12/2001 7:20:29 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
Of course everyone is uneasy about expressing a guesstimate on the casualties related to this horrific act of war on the United States.
People expecting a few thousand will once again be horrified. With approximately 250 per floor and up to 40-60 floors above the airplane entry point, adding in up to 1,000 casualties from the Pentagon attack, 280 NYC Firemen, people on the street, the numbers here could realistically approach 20,000.
Putting this into perspective, we lost something like 50,000 soldiers in Vietnam I'm told. I'm not sure the deaths at Pearl Harbor but most were obviously military. The casualties here were 99% civilian.
Yes, this is almost unfathomable. We are in this war and we have different rules from these bloodthirsty terrorists. Americans cringe if there is even one civilian casualty in any of our military strikes.
I think we need to punish those involved and we should be making statements that anyone near our targets are going to be treated as the targets themselves so you are forewarned. This historic attack on America MUST have an historic response when appropriate.
We lost 2000 some people total at Pearl, and I think 60 some civilians there.
Though I agree the totals will be staggering, it would have been worse it the planes had of hit an hour or two later.
Kill the terrorists and kill their infrastructure in all environments. The nations which provide aid and comfort must be destroyed.
This WAR may last more than a few decades, but it must be relentlessly thorough and totally successful. I suspect that the terroists want to incite a war between the 400+ million "arabs" and the West. Innocents will be lost on all sides, but tens of thousands of Americans became casualties of this war which terrorists declared yesterday.
We are at war whether we want it or not. It is for the children.
8:45 - WTC North hit
9:03 - WTC South hit
9:59 - WTC South collapses
10:30 - WTC North collapses
I'm not positive on the timeline, but I think this is close. WTC South collapsed 56 minutes after South building hit, 1 hour 14 minutes after North building hit.
WTC North collapsed 1 hour 45 minutes after being hit.
Not everyone would be able to get out, and some might have been trapped on floors above where jets hit, but quite a few folks could have gotten out before the buildings collapsed. I've read of accounts of people who were on floor above where the planes hit that did get out.
Maybe this is just hopeful thinking, but it does not help us at all to speculate.
One other thing, all of the people who survived and were rescued over the night last night were emergency response personnel. We're not seeing large numbers of civilian casualties at the local hospitals. It's quite possible that many, many people got out and went home to be with their families.
Pray.
I don't think it hurts either. I think it puts into perspective just how terrible this was and how IMPORTANT it is to find those involved.
I hate to say this but I am praying for under 10K.
I believe you are off on Vietnam by a factor of 10, and Pearl we lost like 2500.
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