When the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001, they made a sound audible throughout New York like a distant roar or thunder. The South Tower was the first to fall. Its upper floors tilted briefly before falling and causing the building to collapse directly to the ground. Many people died and many others were lucky enough to make it out alive. Twenty-nine minutes later the North Tower collapsed with the same result as the first. The two symbols of the American economy were gone, and not even the so-called World Trade Center Seven, a relatively new forty-seven-story tower that stood independently across the street from the complex, was left standing. The building burned persistently throughout the day, and that evening became the first steel-framed skyscraper in history to collapse solely due to fire. (Online) There was more extensive damage than the World Trade Center buildings suffered, and on the scale of ordinary disasters, it was heavy. For about thirty years the Twin Towers had remained above the streets, like all tall buildings, like a sort of bomb, a storehouse for the prodigious energy originally needed to lift such a heavy weight. Now, in just one morning, the towers have released that energy back into the city. Huge steel beams flew through the neighborhood like giant spears, penetrating subway lines and underground passages to a depth of ten meters, crushing them, breaking water and gas pipes, and stabbing high into the sides of nearby towers of offices, where they were housed. The telephone system, fiber optic network and electricity grid were knocked out. Ambulances, cars and fire trucks were crushed by falling debris, and some were thrown five stories or so off the street into the mad chaos and... middle of paper... to prioritize debris removal. This caused clashes with firefighters. The firefighters and police were in a bad situation with each other. Physical and mental fights broke out. People died as a result of the mess and disorder that occurred in those few days after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Work cited American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center. Public administration: concepts and cases. (8th edition) Access My Library (2002). High Beam Research (2002). http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-26076873_ITMLe Atlantic Online