Impact of September 11 Attacks
Two hours after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, Baltimore's World Trade Center was evacuated and closed. This was a response to a "credible" threat that the Baltimore building would also be attacked. A resident of southwest Baltimore was arrested that night and accused of giving the police a false warning.
Unsubstantiated bomb threats received on September 12 and September 14 further contributed to security concerns at the building. A temporary barrier of concrete walls was erected around the brick plaza between the building and Pratt Street, closing the area to pedestrian and vehicle access. Four barges were moved to the building's harbor side to protect it from attack by boats.
Due to the building's name and its prominent location on Baltimore's skyline, state officials presumed that a similar attack on other American cities would likely target the Baltimore World Trade Center. Their response was criticized, because "such drastic steps" were not taken at world trade center buildings in other cities. As security was relaxed later in the year, the concrete barriers and barges were removed.
The exterior lighting system was turned off and remained dark until the end of 2007. The waterfront walkway beneath the building, an extension of the Harborplace promenade, is now only open to the public during daylight hours.
Read more about this topic: Baltimore World Trade Center
Famous quotes containing the words impact of, impact, september and/or attacks:
“The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.”
—Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)