A fire broke out near the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Friday afternoon, seriously damaging a building that housed at least 10 percent of the artifacts that were saved after the plane crashed in a field on Sept. 11, 2001, officials said.
Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Parks Service in Pennsylvania, told the Los Angeles Times that a fire spread through three administration buildings around 3 p.m., including a structure that housed several items set to be stored in a museum near the site next year.
No one was injured, and the cause of the fire was not immediately known, Litterst said. There were nearly a dozen employees in the buildings when the blaze broke out, he said.
More than 90 percent of the artifacts from the memorial site, including many of the notes and remembrances left by visitors, are stored off-site, Litterst said. The Congressional Gold Medal that is displayed at the sites of each of the 9/11 terror attacks was not there at the time of the blaze, according to Litterst.
Earlier on Friday, an official with the Somerset County Office of Emergency Management told The Times most of the items housed in the administrative buildings were seriously damaged.
“What was over there, they were all ruined,” the official said.
Litterst said he had not received a full report on the damage done to the artifacts housed on site. The memorial itself is located roughly two miles from the buildings where the fire broke out, Litterst said.
“We are deeply saddened to learn that a fire occurred at the Flight 93 National Memorial headquarters,” read a statement from Families of Flight 93, a group committed to honoring those who died on the aircraft. “We understand that no one was injured, and we are grateful for that. We await further details as to the extent of the damage, and the cause of the fire.”
Flight 93 was one of four commercial airliners hijacked by al-Qaida terrorists on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The plane crashed in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after crew members and passengers fought back against hijackers in midair.
The flight, which took off from Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey, was destined for San Francisco. There were 182 passengers aboard the aircraft, and none survived.
Despite the damage, Litterst said the memorial will be open on Saturday.