Fire destroys three buildings at Pennsylvania memorial for 9/11 victims

[October 04, 2014]  (Reuters) - A major fire destroyed three buildings on Friday at the Flight 93 National Memorial's headquarters complex in Pennsylvania, near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, crash of a hijacked airliner, but no one was reported injured.

The National Park Service said there was no damage to the memorial site itself, in a field where a United Airlines flight went down in one of four suicide hijackings committed by al Qaeda militants on that day.

The three-building headquarters complex is 2 miles (3.2 km) away from the crash site.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, the service said in a statement.

The three buildings gutted by the blaze held at least 10 percent of the memorial's collection of artifacts, many in boxes designed to be fire proof, Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst said.

Agency staff were unable to gain immediate access to the scene after the fire to determine exactly what contents were damaged.
 

Litterst said employees managed to save a photo collection and an oral history collection from the flames, but the fate of an American flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 11 was not known.

The 2,200-acre (890-hectare) memorial park near Shanksville, about 80 miles (130 km) southeast of Pittsburgh, features a wall of names that partially surrounds a field where the flight went down, killing all 44 people on board, including four hijackers.

A visitors' center is under construction and slated to open in late 2015. The fire did not affect the center, the service said.

"Initial reports are of extensive damage to the complex," it said in a statement. "All employees and volunteers were safely evacuated."

Seven fire companies responded to the alarm, a Somerset County dispatcher said.

Television footage showed thick, black smoke billowing in the distance across a rolling field, with a construction crane at the unfinished visitors center seen in the foreground.

On the same day of the Flight 93 attack, hijacked airliners crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington and the World Trade Center in New York. Some 3,000 people were killed.

The memorial is expected to reopen to the public on Saturday, the Park Service said.

(Reporting by Daniel Kelley in Philadelphia; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Scott Malone, Eric Beech and Mohammad Zargham)

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