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Coping with the 9.11.01 Aftermath

Accounts of Survivors 

A Race to Safety
What Was It Like Inside One World Trade Center?

By Greg Trevor

My life was spared by 11 minutes.

On Sept. 11, my coworkers and I escaped One World Trade Center at 10:18 a.m. The building collapsed seconds before 10:29 a.m.

I owe my life to three things: a knit tie; a quick-thinking Port Authority Police officer; and the foresight of the architects and engineers who designed the World Trade Center strong enough to withstand direct hits from jets – and enable an estimated 25,000 people to escape.

When the first of two 767s hit the Twin Towers at 8:46 a.m., I was standing behind my desk on the south side of the 68th floor of One World Trade Center, in the Public Affairs Department of The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

I had been working for nearly two hours, and had just finished a phone call to a colleague at Newark International Airport. I stood to stretch my legs and looked out the window at the Statue of Liberty, which sparkled from the sunlight of that unusually bright morning.

I was nearly knocked to the floor by the impact of the first plane, which slammed into the north side of Tower One more than 20 floors above me. I heard a loud thud, followed by an explosion. The building felt like it swayed about 10 feet to the south. It shuddered back to the north, then shimmied back and forth.

Out the window I saw a parabola of flame fall toward the street, followed by a blizzard of paper and glass. Then I heard two sounds: emergency sirens on the street, and phones ringing across the 68th floor – calls from reporters wondering what had happened.

Dazed but anxious to get out, I ran to the office of my department Director, Kayla Bergeron. She was already on the phone to the Port Authority’s Chief Operating Officer, Ernesto Butcher. I got on Kayla’s other line and contacted the Port Authority Police Department’s headquarters in Jersey City.

Within a few minutes, we gathered the staff, threw files and notepads into our bags, and prepared to evacuate the floor. It began to fill with grainy smoke.

We forwarded the office phones to the Port Authority’s Central Police Desk in Jersey City, so the media could leave messages while we escaped. Ana Abelians, a member of our staff, said two media calls were holding. I replied, "You get one, I’ll get the other one, we’ll get rid of them and get the hell out of here."

I picked up the phone. "Greg Trevor here."

"Hi, I’m with NBC national news. If you could hold on for about 5 minutes, we’re going to put you on for a live phone interview."

"I’m sorry, I can’t. We’re evacuating the building."

"But this will only take a minute."

"I’m sorry, you don’t understand. We’re leaving the building right now."

He seemed stunned. "But, but, this is NBC NATIONAL news." (Apparently, I don’t have to risk my life for the local NBC affiliate, but no sacrifice is too great for the NATIONAL news.)

I said "I’m sorry" once more, then hung up.

For more than an hour, we joined thousands of fellow World Trade Center workers who patiently descended the emergency stairwells.

I wasn’t scared at first. My initial feelings were disorientation and disbelief. When we entered the stairwell, all we knew was that a plane had struck the building. It didn’t make sense. (How could a plane hit a 110-story building on such a clear day?) Because we were in the stairwell, we didn’t feel the impact of the second plane hitting Two World Trade Center.

I tried to call my wife, Allison, several times by cell phone, but couldn’t get through. Fortunately, I reached my colleague, Pasquale DiFulco, through my interactive pager.

Pasquale, who began the day on vacation and was watching CNN, called Allison to let her know I was safe. He also used his pager to tell us what was really going on.

9:32 a.m. page from Pasquale: AA 676 from Boston crashed into 1wtc. FBI reporting plane was hijacked moments before crash saw second plane crash live on CNN into 2 wtc. Bush just made announcement possible terrorist attack.

9:36 a.m.: At least 1,000 injuries -- CNN

9:41 a.m.: Fire at the Pentagon

9:43 a.m. page to Pasquale: Oh Christ.

9:43 a.m. page from Pasquale: Pentagon and White House being evacuated.

9:46 a.m.: Fire on mall in Washington.

9:49 a.m.: FAA closes all flights nationwide.

9:52 a.m.: Plane hit Pentagon.

9:54 a.m.: Capitol treasury also evacuated.

Despite this news, our long walk in search of safety remained calm and orderly. We had conducted regular fire drills, so we knew what to do. Every few floors, we would stop, move to the right of the stairwell and make room for injured people walking down – and firefighters and Port Authority Police officers running up.

Then we reached the fifth floor just before 10 a.m.

We heard a loud rumble. The building shook violently. I was thrown from one side of the stairwell to the other.

We didn’t know it at the time, but Tower Two had just collapsed.

Our stairwell filled with smoke and concrete dust. Breathing became difficult. The lights died. A steady stream of water, about 4 inches deep, began running down the stairs. It felt like we were wading through a dark, dirty, rapid river – at night in the middle of a forest fire.

The smartest decision I made that day was to wear a knit tie to work. I put the blue tie over my nose and mouth to block the smoke and dust. To keep from hyperventilating, I remembered the breathing exercises my wife and I learned in our Lamaze classes.

Someone yelled that we should put our right hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us and keep walking down. We descended one more flight, to the fourth floor, when I heard someone say: "Oh shit, the door’s blocked."

The force from the collapse of Tower Two had apparently jammed the emergency exit. We were ordered to turn around and head back up the stairs, to see if we could transfer to another stairwell.

Now we were wading against the current of that dark, dirty river. Others were still trying to walk down. People were starting to panic.

For the first time, I was afraid we wouldn’t make it. I whispered a quick prayer: "Lord, please let me see my family again."

Then I closed my eyes, and made mental pictures of my family’s faces: Allison’s beautiful brown eyes; our 5-year-old son Gabriel’s deep blue eyes and dimples; our 2-year-old son Lucas’ blond ringlets.

I remember thinking: Their faces will keep me calm. And if I die, they will be the last thing on my mind.

During this ordeal, Pasquale sent me a series of frantic pages that didn’t go through.

10 a.m. page from Pasquale: Please tell me u r OK Please respond. Another explosion at WTC

10:02 a.m.: Part of 2 wtc has collapsed. Is everyone ok?

10:06 a.m.: Please respond.

10:12 a.m.: Where are you? 2 wtc just collapsed?

I don’t know how many minutes it took for emergency workers to clear the exit. But when they did, thank God that Port Authority Police Officer David Lim was there.

David is a K-9 officer whose partner, Sirius, was killed in the attacks. He was later trapped in the rubble for nearly five hours. David had the presence of mind to figure out a way to get us all turned around and headed back downstairs. Over and over, he shouted: "Down is good! Down is good!"

When I heard that, I shouted "Down is good!" up the stairwell. Like an echo, I heard others shout "Down is good!" up the line.

Now we darted down the stairs as quickly as possible.

The emergency exit led to the mezzanine level of Tower One. We walked several hundred feet to a glass door that led outside.

The mezzanine was filled with dull-beige concrete dust – on the floor, in the air, caked against the floor-to-ceiling windows. It felt like we were walking through a huge, dirty snow globe that had just been shaken.

It was even worse when we walked outside, near Six World Trade Center. The plaza was a minefield of twisted metal, covered by a layer of concrete dust several inches thick. I am grateful for that dust, because it means I didn’t see any bodies.

As we were leaving the building, my pager buzzed with a message from Al Frank, a reporter with the Newark Star-Ledger who has covered the Port Authority for years.

10:17 a.m. page from Al Frank: are you okay?

I replied a minute later, as we were walking along the outside of Six World Trade: We're out of the building. Everyone is fine.

Relieved but fatigued, we sprinted down the stairs between Six and Five World Trade, then turned up Church Street and headed north.

I looked back at the Trade Center. The upper third of Tower One was on fire. There was so much smoke and dust, I couldn’t tell that Tower Two had collapsed.

At 10:24 a.m., I received a page from Kayla, my boss, who was walking about half a block behind me: Where shall we go?

I walked back to her and said we should go to the entrance of the Holland Tunnel, because I knew Port Authority Police officers would be there.

We continued walking north toward the Holland. A few minutes later, we heard an NYPD officer shout: "Run for your lives!"

We ran north for several blocks. We felt a deafening rumble, followed by a thick cloud of black smoke and brown dust.

When we finally outraced the cloud, we had almost reached the Holland Tunnel. I was standing next to a coworker, John Toth, who was limping with a bloody knee.

"John, are you all right?"

"They’re gone, Greg."

"Who’s gone, John?"

"Not who. Both towers, they’re gone."

I didn’t believe him. Then I looked back to where the Twin Towers should have been.

All I saw was smoke and sky. One World Trade Center had stayed up for more than 1 hour and 40 minutes after the first attack, enabling thousands of us to escape.

We walked the remaining blocks to the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. Military jets flew overhead.

Our clothes, hair and faces still covered with dust, we crammed into Port Authority Police cars, which took us to our temporary offices in Jersey City.

About an hour later, I wrote the first draft of our first statement after the attacks on the only form of communication I had left – my interactive pager.

Our hearts and our prayers go out to the families of the countless people – including many members of the Port Authority family – who were killed today in this brutal and cowardly attack. All PA facilities are closed until further notice. We at the PA are doing everything within our power to assist the families of the victims, and to co-operate with federal, state and local authorities to capture the perpetrators of this attack and bring them to justice.

My personal recovery has been steady in the months that have followed the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Our department worked out of Jersey City for more than two months – at first, in rotating 12-hour shifts. As we mourn the loss of 75 friends and colleagues, we have answered the deluge of questions from media around the world – about security, the recovery and our own experiences.

I returned to Ground Zero four days after the attacks. The experience was unnerving and humbling – not because of what’s there, but what used to be there. I looked up at the hole in the sky where our offices used to be, and thought about how easily we could have been trapped up there.

I often feel waves of sadness, thinking about the loss and the suffering.

I think about the 37 Port Authority Police officers and commanders who died helping others escape – particularly Captain Kathy Mazza, the first woman Commandant of the Port Authority Police Academy.

She led a group of Police Academy instructors into Tower One a few minutes after the first attack. Most of them didn’t make it out. Kathy, a former operating room nurse and one of the finest people I’ve ever known, was the first female Port Authority Police officer in the department’s 73-year history to be killed in the line of duty.

Sometimes when I’m walking down a street, I stop, lean back my head, take a deep breath of clean air – and remember those frightful minutes when we were denied this pleasure.

Cigarette smoke bothers me a lot, but food tastes much better.

My thighs ached for four days from the stairwell evacuation. My wife says my skin was dull gray for the first two days.

In mid-December, I was in bed for a week with pneumonia – a condition caused in part by the stress and exhaustion from September 11 and its aftermath.

Although my children don’t fully understand what happened, they want to cuddle more.

Therapy has been very helpful. It has shown me that I am at the beginning of a very long journey. Some days I make a lot of progress; other days I stand still.

My goal is to get as far down the road as possible. But no matter how far I go, I know that there’s no way I’ll get back to Sept. 10.

I’ve saved my tie – still caked in smoke and dust – in a sealed bag. I’ve also saved my dust-covered shoes.

God willing, if I have grandchildren, I plan to give these tragic remnants to them, along with another historic item that my grandfather gave me before he died – a baseball fouled off by Babe Ruth at the Polo Grounds in 1922.

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