He returned to his role as a safety warden, shining his flashlight around the dust-darkened room and calling for anyone within earshot to follow him through the wreckage. As Brian rounded up colleagues, unaware of the extent of the disaster, a wave of annoyance washed over him. “Oh crap,” he thought. “Look at this mess. We’ve got to come back in here tomorrow and clean it all up.”
Brian led Bobby Coll and five other men toward the 84th floor’s center hallway. He could have gone straight to Stairwell B or turned right to Stairwell C, the closest escape routes, each just a few yards away. Yet for reasons he couldn’t explain, Brian didn’t choose either, despite having no inkling that both those stairwells were destroyed. Perhaps influenced by an internal compass guiding him toward the elevators he normally rode, Brian felt an almost physical presence pushing him to the left, toward the most remote exit. He allowed it to lead him and his group to Stairwell A.
Elsewhere on the 84th floor, unknown to Brian, other Euro Brokers employees remained alive and trapped. A dozen were somewhere on the west side of the floor. Among them was a broker named Randy Scott, a fun-loving, motorcycle-riding, happily married father of three daughters. With no other way to seek help, he scribbled a plea:
84th floor
west office
12 People trapped22
Before tossing it out a window, to flutter among countless bits of paper blown from both towers, Randy Scott pressed a bloodied finger against the note, leaving his unique DNA proof of its authenticity.
On the South Tower’s 81st floor, at the heart of the impact, Stan Praimnath crept out from under his desk. Nothing could adequately explain his survival. Factors might have included the tilt of Flight 175’s wings and the location of his sturdy steel desk near the southwest corner of the building, while the plane entered to the southeast. Stan gave at least as much credit to the ever-present Bible on his desktop and his appeal to the Lord.
Wind blew through what remained of the 81st floor, sucking out papers, fueling fires along the east side, and adding smoke to the dust swirling around Stan’s head. He felt lost in a fog. The ceiling drooped, hanging only feet above his desk. Tangled electric wires swung like vines, water spewed from broken pipes, mangled debris and broken walls surrounded him at shoulder height. He realized he’d been deafened, at least temporarily. He saw no sign of anyone else, never spotting the only other person he thought had returned to the 81st floor, consultant Joseph Zuccala. Stan smelled jet fuel but initially thought it was sulfur.
Stan’s eyes focused on a burning chunk of metal lodged in a doorway twenty feet away: it looked like part of an airplane wing. Small fires burned nearby.
“I’m dead here,” Stan thought.
He tried to climb through the debris toward a stairwell but slipped, slicing open his left calf. As blood dripped toward his shoe, Stan screamed: “Lord, send somebody, anybody! . . . I have two small children! . . . I don’t want to die! . . . Why am I alone? . . . Send someone, Lord!”
No one answered.
Stan began to crawl. He scrambled from Fuji Bank’s wrecked loan department through a ruined office lounge, over mangled desks and broken office dividers. He inched through a jumbled computer room. He lay flat and used a swimming motion to move forward. Somewhere ahead was a stairwell he hoped would bring him closer to his wife, Jenny, and their daughters. Sharp edges of debris shredded his shirt and scraped his skin. His heart and head pounded. His lungs ached. He crept onward.
Bruised, bloody, and filthy, Stan crawled and swam and yelled for help.
Brian Clark and six other men from Euro Brokers hurried downward inside Stairwell A. They rushed past a door to the 83rd floor, not knowing that people were trapped there, one of them a software company manager who frantically tried to reach 9-1-1.
Melissa Doi23 was thirty-two, with a heart-shaped face and a five-foot-two frame that foiled her childhood dream of a ballet career. A graduate of Northwestern University, she lived with her mother in a condo she’d bought for the two of them. At 9:17 a.m., a 9-1-1 call recorder captured Melissa muttering in distress, “Holy Mary, mother of God.” A New York Police dispatcher picked up the call as Melissa fought panic.
Melissa: “Oh, my God, I’m on the eighty-third floor.”
After some confusion and crosstalk, Dispatcher Vanessa Barnes tried to soothe Melissa, her voice alternating between pragmatic and sympathetic.
Dispatcher Barnes: “Hi there, ma’am, how are you doing?”
Melissa: “Is it . . . is it . . . are they going to be able to get somebody up here?”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Well, of course, ma’am. We’re coming up to you.”
Melissa: “Well, there’s no one here yet, and the floor’s completely engulfed. We’re on the floor and we can’t breathe. . . . And it’s very, very, very hot.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “It’s very . . . are the lights still on?”
Melissa grew agitated. She answered: “The lights are on, but it’s very hot!”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Ma’am, now ma’am . . .”
Melissa: “Very hot! We’re all on the other side of Liberty [Street], and it’s very, very hot!”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Well, the lights, can you turn the lights off?”
Melissa: “No, no. The lights are off.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Okay, good. Now everybody stay calm. You’re doing a good job . . .”
Melissa: “Please!”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Ma’am listen, everybody’s coming, everybody knows. Everybody knows what happened, okay? . . . They have to take time to come up there, you know that. You gotta be very careful.”
Melissa: “Very hot!”
Dispatcher Barnes: “I understand. You gotta be very, very careful. How they approach you, okay? . . . Now, you stay calm. How many people where you’re at right now?”
Melissa: “There’s, like, five people here with me.”
Melissa explained that her companions were conscious, though some were worse off than others. All struggled to breathe. Coughs could be heard in the background of the call. Melissa said she couldn’t see fire but believed that it must be somewhere near, as the heat and smoke intensified.
Dispatcher Barnes told Melissa the authorities were doing everything possible to help. Melissa’s anguish worsened. She grew upset, then resigned. Melissa’s words became a heartbreaking litany of sorrow.
Melissa: “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
Dispatcher Barnes: “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”
Melissa: “I’m going to die. I know I am.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Ma’am. Say your . . . ma’am, say your prayers.”
Melissa: “I’m going to die.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “You gotta think positive, because you gotta help each other get off the floor.”
Melissa: “I’m going to die.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Now look, stay calm. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.”
Melissa: “Please, God.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “You’re doing a good job, ma’am. You’re doing a good job.”
Melissa: “No. It’s so hot. I’m burning up.”
Desperate to offer advice, Vanessa Barnes urged Melissa to get off the hot floor, either forgetting or not realizing that rising heat and smoke would make the floor the safest option. She continued to encourage Melissa while simultaneously trying to hurry responders to the 83rd floor. As Vanessa Barnes spoke to another dispatcher, Melissa interrupted with a burst of optimism: “Wait! Wait! We hear voices!”
Vanessa Barnes urged her to stay calm.
Melissa screamed: “Hello! Help! . . . Heeeeeelp! . . . Heeeeeelp!”
She got no response. Melissa returned to the 9-1-1 call.
Melissa: “Oh, my God. . . . Find out if there’s anybody here on the eighty-third floor.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Ma’am, don’t you worry. You stay on the phone with me and we’ll . . .”
Melissa: “Can you find out if there’s anybody on
the eighty-third floor, because we thought we heard somebody!”
Dispatcher Barnes didn’t know if emergency responders had reached that high. She told Melissa she’d already notified a lieutenant that five people were trapped on the 83rd floor of the South Tower amid smoke and fire. She assured Melissa, “They won’t overlook you.”
Melissa’s spirits flagged: “Can you, can you stay on the line with me, please? I feel like I’m dying.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Yes, ma’am, I’m going to stay with you.”
Melissa perked up again, apparently believing that she heard someone coming. She called out the name Karen, likely meaning her colleague Karen Schmidt, a software engineer from Long Island. But again, hope ebbed.
Near the end of their telephone call, Melissa spelled out her mother’s name and asked if they could arrange a three-way connection. Vanessa Barnes said that wasn’t possible but promised to call Melissa’s mother. Melissa gasped for air, sensing that time was running out. She had one more request for the 9-1-1 dispatcher, a message for her mother: “Tell her,” Melissa said, halting between words, “I love her, with all my heart and soul, and that she was the best mother a person could ever have.”
Melissa Doi stopped talking, but Vanessa Barnes heard breathing. It seemed as though Melissa and her companions might have passed out from smoke inhalation. Just as she promised, the dispatcher stayed on the line. She called Melissa’s name more than sixty times. As minutes passed, Vanessa Barnes stopped being an anonymous police dispatcher and became motherly. “Ma’am” and “Melissa” gave way to “dear.” Soon Vanessa Barnes began to call her “baby.”
Dispatcher Barnes: “Please don’t give up, Melissa. . . . Oh, my God. Melissa? Melissa? Melissa? Please don’t give up, Melissa. . . . Hold on, baby, hold on. You’re going to be fine, baby, can you hear me? You’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine.”
Despite a long stretch with no response, despite an unprecedented torrent of incoming 9-1-1 calls, Vanessa Barnes refused to disconnect. She was Melissa Doi’s last connection to a world that wasn’t on fire. The dispatcher turned to a colleague, although it sounded as though she was still speaking to Melissa and even to herself.
“Not dead, not dead,” Vanessa Barnes said. “I don’t know if she’s unconscious or just out of breath. . . . That’s why I keep talking to her.”
After passing the door to the 83rd floor, Brian Clark and six others from Euro Brokers navigated down two more flights of Stairwell A. They moved in smoky semidarkness, guided by Brian’s flashlight and reflective tape applied to the stairs after the 1993 bombing. On the stairwell’s 81st floor landing, they encountered a heavyset woman and a frail man, neither of whom Brian knew, laboring as they headed upstairs. Breathing heavily, her arms stretched wide, the woman blocked their way. She insisted that Brian’s group turn around and head upstairs with them.
“Stop, stop. You’ve got to go up! You can’t go down!” the woman said. “We’ve just come off a floor in flames.”
Brian illuminated her face with his flashlight, then aimed the beam toward the faces of his colleagues as they debated what to do. Then he turned the light back toward the woman, who spoke for her silent companion. Maybe they could make it to the roof, someone said, or find shelter on a floor above the flames until firefighters reached them. Or maybe they should continue down. No one but the woman felt certain what to do.
As the debate continued, a sound from nearby distracted Brian. He stepped closer to a door that led onto the 81st floor, its frame twisted out of shape by the impact.
Brian heard a banging noise and a muffled call for help:
“I’m buried. Is there anyone there? I can’t breathe!”
Brian pointed the light through the ragged opening next to the door but saw no one. The 81st floor looked smoky but not consumed in flames, and the anxious calls for help continued. Brian grabbed the shoulder of the man closest to him, a soft-spoken broker named Ron DiFrancesco, a fellow Canadian who lived with his wife and four children in the same New Jersey suburb as Brian and his family.
“C’mon, Ron,” Brian said, “we’ve got to get this guy.”
The two men pushed away the broken drywall, enlarging the entrance enough to squeeze through the opening next to the locked stairwell door. Briefly looking back, Brian noticed that the argument had been settled—Bobby Coll and a Euro Brokers senior vice president, Kevin York, each took one of the woman’s elbows and began to climb. “It’s okay, lady,” one said. “We’re in this together. We’ll help you.”
Leading the group upstairs was Dave Vera, a senior telecommunications specialist at Euro Brokers, carrying a walkie-talkie that he used in his job. The others followed them up as Brian Clark and Ron DiFrancesco forced their way onto the 81st floor.
Brian and Ron found themselves amid a quarry of broken office furnishings. Chalky clouds of demolition dust obscured the daylight from blown-out windows. Brian waved his flashlight, calling “Who’s there? Where are you?”
Before they heard a reply, Ron DiFrancesco felt overwhelmed by smoke. He pressed the fabric of a gym bag to his mouth as a filter, but it didn’t help. Fearing he’d pass out, Ron scrambled back to the stairwell. Knowing that the others in their group had acquiesced to the woman’s pleas and gone upstairs, Ron climbed24 after them.
Brian remained on the 81st floor, yelling and waving the flashlight. With his hearing affected by the crash, Stan Praimnath could barely hear the calls of his would-be rescuer. Fortunately, above his head he saw a small ray of light behaving like a lighthouse beam, sweeping back and forth.
“I can see your light!” Stan yelled, and started to call out “left” and “right” to help his rescuer line up the beam with his location, moving toward it until only a nine-foot wall separated the two men. The office’s false ceiling had fallen, so above the wall a gap revealed the steel bones of the South Tower, the support trusses that held up whatever remained of the 82nd floor.
Stan gathered his strength, reached back, and called upon his karate training. He punched a hole through the sheetrock wall, thrust his arm through and waved madly. “Can you see my hand?” he screamed.
Brian followed the waving hand up the length of the arm, through the hole to a soot-coated face. From the other side of the wall, the trapped man’s brown eyes locked onto his would-be liberator’s blue eyes.
“Hallelujah!” Stan yelled. “I’ve been saved!”
Yet the wall still separated them. Before they tried to breach the divide, Stan asked Brian what he considered to be the most important question of all: “One thing I gotta know. Do you believe in Jesus Christ?”
Unprepared for a theological inquiry, Brian stammered something about church on Sundays. He wondered if the man he was trying to save had lost his mind. Brian changed the subject to the task before them.
“C’mon, we’ve gotta get you out of there,” Brian said. He dragged a desk to the wall, turned it on one end, and climbed on. He looked over the top of the wall to see a man standing in a wretched pit of debris. “If you want to live, climb over this wall,” Brian demanded.
Stan reached up and jumped, but he missed the top of the wall. Brian tried but couldn’t catch him. During his jump, Stan grabbed a piece of wood that hung from the collapsed ceiling, driving a black sheetrock screw into his right palm. Still in the debris pit, Stan yelped in pain.
“Bite it out and try again!” Brian said.
“I can’t do it!”
Brian told Stan to pound on the wood, to rip the screw from his flesh. It worked, painfully. A golf-ball-sized swelling ballooned at the puncture wound. Convinced that he couldn’t use the injured hand to grip the wall, Stan cried: “I’m not going to make it over.” He shouted to the heavens, invoking Jenny and their daughters in his pleas: “Lord, if you wanted me to die, why did you bring me all the way here to leave me? Why, Lord, why?”
Fires grew closer. Smoke grew thicker. Worried about himself and his own family, Brian had heard enough: “You
’ve got to think about your children. Think about your family. Climb over or you’re going to die!”
Stan tried again, half-jumping and half-scrambling up the wall, his new rubber-soled shoes helping him gain traction. When Stan reached his apex, Brian hooked him and slung him over the wall. They fell backward in a heap, off the upturned desk and into a debris pile, with Brian on his back and Stan atop him. Overcome with emotion, Stan planted a kiss on Brian’s cheek.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Brian said, pulling back. He stood, brushed himself off, and straightened the tie he incongruously still wore.
“I’m Brian,” he said, holding out his hand.
“I’m Stanley. We’ll be brothers for life.”
The stranger’s comment touched Brian, an only child who’d always wanted a sibling. Brian noticed that during his exertions he’d cut his right palm, too. To his surprise, and Stan’s as well, Brian took Stan’s wounded hand and pressed it against his.
“In fact,” Brian said, “we’ll be blood brothers for life.”
Their bond sealed, Brian draped his arm around Stan’s shoulder.
“Let’s go home.”
After American Flight 11 hit the North Tower, Alayne Gentul went higher in the South Tower, to the 97th floor, to evacuate six technology consultants hired to prepare Fiduciary Trust for a theoretical disaster that was suddenly all too real. The company’s training director, Ed Emery, joined her there after leading other colleagues into elevators on the 78th floor. Now that United Flight 175 had struck the tower beneath them, they were trapped.
Alayne called her husband, Jack,25 in his office as dean of students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Jack’s secretary interrupted a telephone conversation between Jack and a friend who’d called to alert him that a plane had crashed into the North Tower.
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