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Am 11. September 2001 tauchte das Gebäude in einer Nebenrolle auf. Firefighter Dean Beltrami beschreibt in einem WTC Task Force Interview vom 17.12.2001 die entsprechende Situation (Hervorhebungen von mir):
Just maybe about minute had gone by, and somebody said “Look the building is starting to bulge.” We looked up, and you could see the entire facade starting to buckle on the upper floors.
Immediatly nobody said anything. We just turned and ran as fast as we possibly could.
I could see that no heavy debris was going to hit me, but I still ran as fast as I could all the way to Stuyvesant High School, and I got to about - right before I got to Stuyvesant High School, the cloud caught up to me.
[...]
We got to within a hundred feet or so of where the north tower stood, and the chief ordered us back saying that there was - I don’t know the chief’s name, but he ordered us back saying there was a gas main underneath us, and it could blow.
We proceeded to go back one block to that post. Then slowly but surely every two minutes or so when we started to regroup we were pulled back further, and further and further until we were behind - until we were past Stuyvesant High School.
At that time, there was a bomb threat in Stuyvesant High School, and we evacuated that area and went furter up West Street until we were a good distance away [...]
Ein Timeline-Dokument des Port Authority Police Departments erwähnt den Evakuierungsgrund:
10:50 a.m.: PADP enters local school to set up CP
Rumors of gas leak and or a secondary device in school leads to evacuation
Der banal wirkende Zusammenhang zwischen potentiell berstender Gasleitung und angeblicher Bombendrohung wird in der 911-Edition des Stuyvesant-Spectator angesprochen (S. 15):
Rumor: Stuyvesant received a bomb threat shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center. Some say that a bomb was detonated outside of the school.
Truth: Teitel said that Stuyvesant did not receive a bomb threat and that a bomb definitely never exploded near the school. However, “down the street, a pipe had been ruptured,” he said.
“Somebody heard about a gas leak a few blocks away, and now we have a ‘bomb threat’.” Teitel asked, “Ever play the game ‘Telephone’?”
Das Stille-Post-Prinzip.
Die chaotischen Stunden des 11. September 2001 und der mediale Overkill boten perfekte Rahmenbedingungen für zahllose Falschmeldungen. Der Fehlalarm an der Stuyvesant High School gehörte offensichtlich dazu.
Eine Filmaufnahme dokumentierte die unmittelbare Reaktion von Feuerwehrleuten, die den Hintergrund der Alarmmeldung nicht abschätzen konnten. Im CameraPlanet Archive findet sich ein Videoclip mit der Überschrift Fireman: "bomb in the building start clearing out"
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