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Nearly 17 years after passengers on a hijacked flight between New Jersey and California fought a gang of terrorists who crashed into a rural field in Pennsylvania, a symbol of their bravery and sacrifice will be unveiled Sunday Earth.
The Tower of Voices, a concrete and steel structure approximately 93 feet high, contains a wind chime for each of the 40 passengers and crew members who were killed on September 11, 2001 and represents the phase final of flight 93. Memorial. Each chime will generate its own distinctive sound.
"Together, their voices will resonate forever, with this beautiful wind from Somerset County, Pennsylvania," said Park Director Stephen Clark.
The first chimes of the voices tower pic.twitter.com/aWPkfIcaTv
– Chris Lovingood WTAE (@CLovingoodWTAE) September 9, 2018
The memorial at the accident site, about two miles north of Shanksville, already includes a commemorative 10th anniversary commemorative square in 2011 and a visitor center that opened three years ago.
Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, who was the country's first Secretary of Homeland Security after September 11, will deliver the keynote speech.
At the heart of the voices tower are the aluminum tubes 5 to 10 feet (1.5 to 3 meters) long and weighing up to 68 kilos (150 pounds). They have been fixed, but no one can be sure of how they will sound before being installed.
"We wanted to do it, I would call it a living memorial, because the last memory of many people on the plane was their voice on phone calls," said Paul Murdoch, architect of the Los Angeles Memorial. "And we wanted to use the natural forces of the site to activate the chimes."
READ MORE: Opening of Flight 93 Memorial to 'Stand Up' in Pennsylvania
Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks when terrorists took control of four planes. They stole two from the skyscrapers of the World Trade Center in New York and the fourth from the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC.
Passengers on Flight 93 learned, in mid-flight, that they had been hijacked and reacted heroically by saying "let us ride" as they acted to confront their opponents inside the plane. The officials concluded that the terrorists were targeting the Boeing 757 towards Washington, to be used as a huge airborne weapon.
Thirteen airline passengers made 37 phone calls during the attack, obtaining information on the other three hijackings and accidents.
"When they learned that, it galvanized them as a group," Clark said. "They said, 'We will not go back to any airport. This is a suicide mission. "
While some passengers were apparently attempting to storm the cabin, the flying pirate then drove the plane, trying to unbalance them, before reversing and stealing. crush at 903 km / h on the edge of a recovered mine at 10:30
The impact triggered a hundred hemlock trees. The Hemlocks are used as symbols in the design of the memorial.
A 17 tonne (15 metric tonnes) sandstone marks the impact site, located in a 44-acre (17.8-hectare) fenced area of the impact debris field known as "sacred ground". Access to this part of the park is restricted to members of the family of passengers and crew. On June 21, four 40-foot (12.2-meter) containers of remaining debris from the crashed plane were buried in the sacred ground during a private ceremony.
The memorial was funded at $ 46 million by 110,000 private donors, including $ 6 million for the design and construction of the Tower of Voices. Volunteers are on track to achieve the goal of planting 150,000 seedlings around the 2,200-acre (890-hectare) park. Last year it attracted around 400,000 visitors.
The dedication takes place two days before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. President Donald Trump is expected to attend the commemorative ceremony Tuesday in Shanksville, along with Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke.
Shanksville is about 75 miles (121 kilometers) southeast of Pittsburgh.
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