9/11/01 was definitely not a Jewish holiday. I was at work that day, thisclose to the towers.
Rosh HaShannah was a week later, on 9/18.
Zev Steinhardt
Dead at WTC: 2,893 (as of Jan. 2002)
Dead at Pentagon: 184
Dead in Pennsylvania: 40
Dead hijackers: 19 (not included above)
Four people at or above the crash zones in the WTC Towers survived.
USA Today estimated 5,000 to 7,000 people were in each tower when the attack began. Earlier estimates ranged from 10,000 to 25,000 per tower. But company head counts showed many desks were empty at 8:46 a.m. There were few tourists; the observation deck wasn’t scheduled to open until 9:30 a.m.
I should have given a more up-to-date figure for the WTC.
Dead at WTC: 2,795 (as of Nov. 2002)
One point you’re overlooking is that the south tower wasn’t struck until seventeen minutes after the north tower, and a fair number of people above the 80th floor had already evacuated to lower floors in the intervening time. I’m too tired to look for a cite, though I’ve read this in numerous articles (as an slight hijack though, I did come across this remarkably detailed and cite-laden timeline of 9/11 in my googling.)
Despite my grammar train-wreck at the end there, I did find this cite buried in the aforementioned timeline:
The page that it links to, however, is a bit less than satisfying in explaining how they came up with that estimate.
343 New York City firefighters died that day. May they rest in peace.
Walloon wrote
Are you sure? I understood noone at or above the crash zones survived. How did they get past it?
Flight 175 destroyed only two of the three stairwells in the South Tower. Stairwell A, the stairwell farthest from the crash, remained unobstructed from the top floor to the bottom. It was through that stairwell that four people at or above the crash site were able to escape. Many more could have escaped, but believing the stairway below to be obstructed, they went upward toward the roof, which was locked, and waited in vain to be rescued there.
More specifically, over 470 people above the floors of impact (78-84) in the South Tower could have safely taken Stairwell A downward. That is particularly sad to contemplate.
Interviews with two of the four people who escaped from above the crash site in the South Tower.
It was not a Jewish holiday, but, as it was in the week prior to Rosh Hashanah, “Selichot” services were said before the morning prayers, which may have caused a good number of Jews to head for work later than usual in the morning. Not much later…mayber 15-30 minutes…but at that time of the morning, it certainly is a significant 15-30 minutes.
Although I’d say that would only apply to a very small fraction of the employees. Either way - and I’m not trying to say cmkeller implies this - it surely doesn’t justify the idea that Jews were warned in advance or didn’t show up in great numbers.