Arlington County September 11, 2001 Memorial

On September 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attack on the United States killed 2,977 people after 16 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and turned them into weapons against symbolic targets across the country, drawing the United States into the longest war in its history, the Global War on Terrorism. In Arlington, at 9:37am, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon and killed 184 people ranging in age from 3 to 71 years old. At Arlington County Fire Department Station 5, whose apparatus and personnel were among the first to respond, an interim memorial serves as the first stage of a permanent memorial and includes a pentagonal raised bed oriented toward the Pentagon, a structural steel I-beam from the World Trade Center gifted by the City of New York and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and, for ceremonies and special days, flags from the Pentagon, New York City, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It honors those who perished, the police, fire, EMS, and military personnel who ran toward the disaster, members of the Armed Forces who deployed afterward in support of the Global War on Terrorism, and those left behind.

Arlington, Virginia · United States