Title: February 26, 1993
Text:On February 26, 1993, at 12:18 p.m., a massive terrorist truck bomb exploded on the B-2 level of the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring thousands.
The bomb created a five-story crater underground and caused more than $300 million in damage to the complex, including emergency communications, electricity and water systems. Transmissions from the radio and TV transmitters atop One World Trade Center were also disrupted.
Three days after the 1993 bombing, the World Trade Center started reopening for business. The formal return of office tenants to the complex began three weeks after the attack.
In 1995, on the second anniversary of the bombing, a memorial fountain was dedicated on the World Trade Center's Austin J. Tobin Plaza, between the two towers, over the site where the bomb exploded.
The memorial fountain, designed by sculptor Elyn Zimmerman, was dedicated to the victims: Port Authority employees Robert Kirkpatrick, Stephen Knapp, William Macko, and Monica Rodriguez Smith and her unborn child, to John DiGiovanni, a visitor to the World Trade Center, and to Wilfredo Mercado, an employee of Windows on the World.
Along with the names of the six victims, a message was inscribed: "On February 26, 1993 a bomb set by terrorists exploded below this site. This horrible act of violence killed innocent people, injured thousands, and made victims of us all."
The memorial fountain was comprised of two rose granite circles with water slowly rising from the center of the top circle with the inscription on the lower circle. Around the fountain was a wall of black polished granite encasing slabs of rough gray granite. The gray granite had symbolic cracks running through it, representing the devastation caused by the explosion. The memorial fountain was destroyed on September 11, 2001, as was the rest of the World Trade Center.
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