The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

    
Ramzi Yousef and his friend Eyad Ismoil from Jordan drove a yellow Ryder van that they had hired into Lower Manhattan and pulled into the public car park beneath the World Trade Center at around noon on February 26th. Yousef and Ismoil got out of the van and then Yousef lit the 20 foot fuse of the bomb and fled. Twelve minutes later at 12:17 pm the bomb exploded in the public car park beneath the World Trade Center, it opened up a 30 meter wide whole through four sublevels of concreate and initial news reports thought that a main transformer had blown. Some of the effects of the explosion was that it cut off the World Trade Centers main electrical power line wich then knocked out the emergency lighting system as well, as a result of the explosion it caused smoke to rise up to the 93rd floors of both the North and South towers of the World Trade Center, this included the stairwells as well because they had not been pressurized when the buildings had been bilt. Hundreds of people got trapped in elevators when the buildings lost power including 17 kindergartners who were on their way down from the South Tower observation deck, they were trapped between the 35th and 36th floors for five hours. All together 1042 people were injured and six people were killed, they were Monica Smith age 35, Robert (Bob) Kirkpatrick, age 61, Bill Macko, age 47, Stephen Knapp, age 48, John DiGiovanni, age 45 and Wilfredo Mercado, age 37. Yousef's plan was to park the van in the right place  so that when the bomb exploded  the North tower would fall on to the South tower collapsing them both, but his plan failed because it only damaged the car park underneath the World Trade Center. It is thought that if Yousef had parked the van closer to the WTC's poured concrete foundations his plan might have succeeded, Ramzi Yousef escaped to Pakistan several hours after the bomb exploded. Yousef's fellow conspirator Mahmud Abouhalima later stated that their original plan was to attack the United Nations headquarters earlier in the morning, Author Simon Reeve theorized that something must have gone wrong such as Yousef encountering to much security so then the target was changed to the World Trade Center.