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THE STORY OF THE DEPOSITORY TRUST & CLEARING CORPORATION
Donahue made a beeline to the data center, and when he returned to the 49th floor of the Water Street building, the elevator lobby was filled with people who were all trying to evacuate. By that point, a second plane had struck the South Tower. “People were looking out the west side of our building,” Donahue said. “They had a front-row seat to what happened, and they were completely freaked out. I remember getting everyone to take a deep breath and calm down from the horrible thing that they had just seen, but that was easier said than done.” Despite the chaos, DTCC employees immediately went back to work. The firm had approximately $250 billion worth of transactions being processed at that time and had to make sure that all transactions proceeded toward completion. “People really did go back to their desks,” Donahue said. “I remember standing in the data center, which looked out over FDR Drive, and seeing it was jammed with pedestrians walking north, leaving the financial district. Meanwhile, all of the DTCC people are at their desks continuing to do their jobs because we would need to close out settlement that day. Everybody was very focused on, ‘We have to keep this thing going, we have to settle, we have to make sure that things remain on track and on course.’ I think having that to cling to was psychologically a very good thing for all of us that day.”
Despite surviving a terrorist truck-bomb attack on February 26, 1993, the World Trade Center remained a target. On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, deliberately crashing two of the aircraft into the upper floors of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center complex and a third aircraft into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The Twin Towers ultimately collapsed (pictured) due to damage from the impacts and the heat from the resulting fires. Passengers on the fourth hijacked airliner, Flight 93, fought back against the terrorists. Utlimately, the aircraft was forced down in an empty field located in western Pennsylvania, about 20 minutes by air from Washington, DC. (Photo by Julien Maculan courtesy of Unsplash.)
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