September 11 Attacks
Silverstein has said on interviews that he usually spent his mornings in breakfast meetings at Windows on the World on top of the World Trade Center North Tower, and with new tenants in the building. However, the morning of September 11, 2001, his wife insisted on him to attend a medical appointment with his dermatologist. He was at his home at the time of the attacks.
All of the buildings at the World Trade Center, including buildings 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 were destroyed or damaged beyond repair on September 11, 2001. After a protracted dispute with insurers over the amount of coverage available for rebuilding World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5, a series of court decisions determined that a maximum of $4.55 billion was payable and settlements were reached with the insurers in 2007.
Silverstein stated in a September 2002 PBS documentary, 'America Rebuilds', "I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse." Conspiracy theorists claim this saying meant actively demolishing the building using explosives presumably stored in advance in the building. Initially, however, this was understood as a call to simply stop the fire fighting efforts and watch the building collapse due to the fires with no people in the building at the time.
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