The firefighters of Company 10 who were stationed one block south felt the rumble and headed over to check it out. At first, they suspected that a main transformer had blown, but they soon learned that the situation was far worse.
Officials quickly realized that a massive bomb had been detonated in the tower’s subterranean parking garage, creating an enormous hole in its concrete sublevels and sending smoke up through the stairwells and elevator shafts. Thankfully, however, there was no serious structural damage outside of the garage and the death toll was limited to six. Before the smoke even cleared, investigators were hot on the trail of the terrorists behind the attack, arresting several within weeks and ultimately catching the bombing’s mastermind Ramzi Yousef two years later. Evidence soon revealed that Yousef’s intent was to fully destroy both towers and that he had been wired a significant sum of money by his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, just before the bombing. And six years later, on September 11, 2001, Mohammed’s operatives in al-Qaeda would succeed where Yousef had failed.
