Sacramento State students and faculty were in shock Tuesday morning after reports of three hijacked airliners crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reached the campus.

Thousands were feared dead after two commercial airliners slammed into the Trade Center?s two towers within 20 minutes of each other. The towers later collapsed.

A third plane crashed into the Pentagon shortly after 7 a.m. (10 a.m. EST), about an hour after the attacks began. At the time The State Hornet went to press, the casualties from the incidents are unknown.

A fourth plane later crashed outside of Pittsburgh, and another aircraft reportedly crashed near the Pentagon building.

All California State universities were closed at 10:30 a.m. after Gov. Gray Davis made the decision to send home all non-essential state employees. Universities were reopened Wednesday morning.

On Tuesdsay students were herded off campus by university staff shortly after the decision to cancel classes.

Laura Labanieh, an entering freshman at the University of California, Davis who graduated from Mira Loma High School, first heard the news at 6:04 a.m. when her sister called her from the World Trade Center.

“My sister?s a Wall Street stock trader on the 16th floor of the second tower,” Labanieh said. “She was on the phone with me about 30 seconds before the second tower was hit.”Labanieh?s sister was able to escape from the building before it collapsed, but Labanieh claimed there were initially no plans to evacuate the second tower.

“She was going back to work when we hung up,” Labanieh said. “She said they had no intentions of evacuating the building.”

Students gathered around television sets in the University Union to watch media coverage of the incident.

“I heard them say on the radio it?s like Pearl Harbor,” said junior Jeremy Wilson. “It?s so unreal, almost like a movie scene.”

Sophomore Alicia Counts said her boyfriend?s mother was supposed to be in the area of the Washington D.C. attack.

“My boyfriend?s mom was at the Pentagon for a security defense thing, and no one?s heard from her,” Counts said.

Witnesses to the explosions in New York City said the city was in chaos. Thomas Deeny, who works a block away from the location of the World Trade Center, said the towers were decimated.

“I could see World Trade One, (and) the top 20 or so floors weren?t visible,” Deeny told the Hornet. “Twenty minutes later, when I was at my office, I heard a loud boom.” He initially thought the first building was collapsing, but it turned out to be the second plane colliding.

Madalynn Bohm, a freshman at New York University, observed the scene from her home.

“I?m standing at my dorm window, and I see huge plumes of smoke,” she said. “The streets are empty of cars, and there are so many sirens right now.”

All Sac State facilities were closed with the exception of the residence halls, food services, psychological services, library, facilities management and university and college administrative offices, according to Public Affairs.

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The following State Hornet staff members contributed to this report: Danielle Anselmo, Layla Bohm, Justin Hoeger, Jon Ortiz and Matt Wagar.