Shortly After 9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001: Police Officers Find WTC 7 Is Locked and on Fire

A group of police officers tries to enter World Trade Center Building 7 in order to get out of the WTC plaza, but they find the door is locked and the building is on fire. The seven officers are members of New York Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit (ESU). They were about 60 yards north of the South Tower when it collapsed, at 9:59 a.m. (see 9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001). When the dust began to clear, they made their way to the WTC plaza. But as they then tried to get out of the plaza, they found that every corner they ran to was blocked.
Officers Find the Door to WTC 7 Is Locked – The ESU officers now notice the bridge that leads from the plaza to WTC 7, and wonder if they can get out of the plaza by entering WTC 7 and then making their way down to the street below. [Tactical Edge, 6/2002 ; Appel, 2009, pp. 99-100] WTC 7, a 47-story office building, is located to the north of the Twin Towers. It is linked to the main WTC complex by a glass-enclosed pedestrian bridge at the third-floor level. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 5-2; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 11/2008, pp. 2] The officers walk across the bridge, but when they reach the door that leads into WTC 7 they find it is locked. “Why anyone would lock a door under these circumstances was anybody’s guess,” author Anthea Appel will later comment.
Officers Find WTC 7 Is on Fire – One officer, Steve Lanoce, decides to try to break the door. He takes out his handgun and fires a shot at the bottom glass pane of the door. The glass, however, turns out to be bullet-proof and cracks but does not break. Furthermore, Lanoce’s shot sets off the burglar alarm in WTC 7. Fortunately, Lanoce’s colleagues are able to kick in the cracked glass and create an opening large enough to crawl through. They find, though, that the building on the other side of the door is on fire and they have to jump back to avoid the flames. [Tactical Edge, 6/2002 ; Appel, 2009, pp. 99-100]
WTC 7 Suffered Only Minor Damage When the South Tower Collapsed – The cause of the fire in WTC 7 is unclear. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which will investigate the collapse of WTC 7 that occurs later today (see (5:20 p.m.) September 11, 2001), will state that the building suffered only minor damage when the South Tower collapsed. “A few windows on lower floors of the south face of WTC 7 were broken, and dust and small debris were deposited in the third-floor lobby,” it will describe. However, it will add, “None of the large pieces of debris from [the South Tower] hit WTC 7 because of the large distance between the two buildings and there was no evidence of structural damage to WTC 7.” [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 11/2008, pp. 16] The ESU officers then notice a stream of people making their way out of the North Tower. They therefore abandon their plan to get out of the WTC complex and instead go to help evacuate the civilians from the tower. [Tactical Edge, 6/2002 ; Appel, 2009, pp. 101]