’93 World Trade Center bombing marked

NEW YORK — Thirty years after a bomb killed six people, one of them pregnant, victims’ relatives, survivors, dignitaries and others gathered at the World Trade Center on Sunday for a ceremony that included the reading of the names of the victims. The anniversary was also being marked at a Sunday Mass at a nearby church and a panel discussion today at the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

A bell was tolled and a moment of silence held to mark the time of the attack, 12:18 p.m., and victims’ relatives and others laid roses next to their names, which are inscribed on one of the Sept. 11 memorial pools.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer were among speakers honoring the lives lost and mourning the loss of innocence in the attack’s wake.

“Today, 30 years later, we still feel the impact of that event,” said Stanley Brezenoff, who survived the bombing as then- head of the government agency that owns the World Trade Center. “The grief we hold for the ones we lost — we feel and share the hurt that the families have felt these many years. That will not change, even years into the future.”

Charlie Maikish, the executive in charge of the World Trade Center at the time, said the bombing was a “wake- up call” and that safety protocols enacted afterward — including evacuation drills, emergency lighting in stairwells and new fire command stations — likely saved thousands of lives on Sept. 11, 2001.

The noontime explosion, set off in a rented van parked in an underground garage, served notice that Islamic extremists yearned to destroy the trade center’s twin towers. But the public memory of the attack was largely subsumed after 9/11. Even the fountain that memorialized the bombing was crushed in the 2001 attacks.

But for some survivors and victims’ relatives, the 1993 attack still echoes as a warning that was unheeded, a loss that feels overlooked and a lesson that still needs learning.

“The ’ 93 World Trade Center bombing was the powder keg for the 9/ 11 attacks,” said Andrew Colabella, a cousin of bombing victim John DiGiovanni. Colabella said he feels the earlier attack is largely remembered as “a blip,” rather than a siren, in the history of international terror.

“These two historical events that have taken place should be instilled in our hearts and minds to think united and to be united,” Colabella said. Now a town council member in Westport, Conn., he regularly attends ground zero anniversary ceremonies for the bombing and 9/ 11 to honor the cousin he lost as a small child but can still picture.

DiGiovanni was at the trade center as a visiting salesperson. Other victims all worked in the complex. They were Robert Kirkpatrick, Stephen A. Knapp, William Macko, Wilfredo Mercado and Monica Rodriguez Smith, who was scheduled to start maternity leave the next day.

“Every part of our effort has considered the ’93 bombing as a part of the story that we are telling,” museum director Clifford Chanin said.

The explosive was planted by Muslim extremists who sought to punish the U.S. for its Middle East policies, particularly Washington’s support for Israel, according to federal prosecutors.

Six people were convicted and imprisoned, including accused ringleader Ramzi Yousef. A seventh suspect in the bombing remains on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Yousef hoped the bomb would fell the twin towers by making one collapse into the other, according to the FBI.

Yousef ’ s uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would later become the self- proclaimed mastermind of 9/11, when hijacked planes were used as missiles to strike the buildings.

Although the towers endured the 1993 bombing, it knocked out power, backup generators and the public address system. Tens of thousands of people picked their way down the stairs; others were rescued from stalled elevators and the wrecked garage. Some workers kicked out windows for air, a group of 120 kindergartners was stranded for a time on an observation deck and police helicopters flew to rooftops to pick up two dozen people.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the trade center, apologized to the victims’ relatives on the 25th anniversary, saying the complex and the country weren’t prepared for the attack.