Posted on: Saturday, August 13, 2005

In their own words

Excerpts from Newsday

Stephen King and his aide, Bobby Crawford, arrive inside the North Tower before the second plane hits and begin checking the elevators and stairwells:

We ran into the lobby ... I said, "Bobby, this is not going to be a good day." ... Though I never expected that a tower might collapse ... so we got into the lobby ... We looked around at the elevator banks. Nothing was in use. We went around to the escalators ... They weren't functioning ... We walked into the first stairwell and walked up one flight of stairs. There were people coming down ... I would say that there was no panic. Probably shock but quite orderly ... As we started going up to the third floor, people were coming down the stairwell. There was a large woman coming down the stairs, and I'm a big guy myself. When I was trying to pass her, she had bumped into me and caught me off balance. Anyway, I ended up kind of falling backwards ... I popped something in my knee anyway at that point in time ... It felt like I had popped a ligament ... I got like a piercing pain in my head ... After that we started to go up to the third floor and it became very clear to me that I could not do stairs very well. My left foot, between the knee and the ankle, was killing me. That woman literally probably saved my life as things turned out ...

(Bobby) said, "Chief, I'm going to look in the hallway here at the second-floor level again." I said, "OK, Bobby." ... (King looked for Crawford after that but never found him.) Anyway, I report back in . . . I'm at the command post at this point ... I'm in the North Tower. I hear something about an aircraft just struck the South Tower. And I don't know that a plane has hit the North Tower ... I remember hearing something to the effect that the tower is collapsing or coming down. I hear that and then I hear a rumble. I remember a terrific rumbling, getting louder. Now I believe ... that my tower that I'm in, the North Tower, is collapsing. This is the South Tower collapsing ... The noise becomes deafening. I can feel the ground shaking ... I think I hollered out to the guys that were along with me, "Come back here under the arch." ... The next thing I know I'm getting buried in debris. The windows are shattering. Again, I think it's my tower ... You can't miss the noise. You can feel the air pressure building up. I mean, literally, it blows the windows in ... I noticed the guys next to me were alive and I'm like — I'm in shock ... We can't see each other. We're blind. We're kind of gagging. I know everybody is absolutely in shock ... Anyway, we work our way out of the building ... "

Lt. William Ryan was en route by foot from the Staten Island ferry.

We picked up our first Mayday ... the guy told us, "Mayday. Mayday. Engine 65 with a Mayday. I'm stuck in my rig. My rig is on fire." The chief just asked him, "Where are you?" He said, "The last I remember, I was parked on West Street about 50 yards north of Liberty."

We couldn't tell where we were. I mean, I'd even worked down there seven years. I didn't know where I was standing in the street. Visibility possibly 30 feet at best, and you could only see shadows. You could see several fires, dozens of fires, things blowing up, cars on fire, fire trucks, 113 where I was working for a while on fire. I've never seen anything like it. No one ever has. Chaos.

So we find a street post and we dust off the sign and we see we're at Liberty and West ...

Guys got in there and they ended up getting the guy from 65 out, and he was banged up pretty good. That was the chauffeur. I don't even know his name ... I assume he was under about two or three stories of I-beams.

I ran into the probie from 5 Truck that I knew, Frucci, Bill Frucci, and he survived both collapses ... I found him stumbling around. He was covered with debris. I asked him where the rest of 5 was and he was like, "They're all dead." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, they're in the tower ... "

He ended up telling me later that Lt. Warchola wouldn't let him in the building. He ordered him to stay outside ...

I know now that they were in the North Tower ... 24 Engine was in the same house with them. They survived. A lieutenant from there told me they were both on the 37th floor together and some chief came running by and told them to drop their gear and get out. He said they had no communications on the handie-talkies. That was the only message they got. 5 Truck went right. 24 Engine went left. 5 is all dead. 24 is all alive.

They have a story of their own. They ended up carrying some woman down the whole way, not the whole way, nine stories.

Capt. Howard Sickles was in the lobby of Tower 1.

Actually as I exited the building I thought somebody hit me from the back, tapped me on my back. I turned around and didn't see anything. Somebody pointed to my feet. I looked, and there was a body on the floor. So apparently he's what brushed against me, hitting me in the back, because it wasn't there, it was behind me ...

We heard a rumbling. We thought it was another plane. We looked up, and you actually saw the towers just starting to roll down at you. You saw the building portions coming down. I stood there and couldn't move. I just couldn't move. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. A couple seconds later I turned around and started to go. You just saw a sea of humanity. Before that we were at the command post. Chief Nigro and Chief Ganci were behind me, and they just couldn't believe the human devastation of watching people jumping out of the upper floors. They were hitting the ground and because of the force of hitting the ground, they would break open and blood was splattering and body parts and you could see them hitting the ground and bouncing and parts bouncing up ...

You just heard a rumbling and you heard things, and it got very black. You couldn't see anything, nothing. There was no light. I couldn't move my legs. I couldn't move myself. I really thought at one point I was dead. I couldn't see my hand. I couldn't think of anything. I was in no pain. I just really thought I was dead... . I started talking to myself, and then Roger Moore, in a couple of seconds, moans and tells me to "shut up. You're not dead ... "

Later on, a couple of hours into this, Chief Peruggia turned white as a ghost. He grabs everybody and tells them that they found the commissioner and they found Chief Ganci, and they were both killed. We couldn't get body bags. We were talking to corrections, and we kept telling them where to bring the bags. Not hard. You couldn't understand why they couldn't figure out where it was, because there was no street. There were no street signs. There were no markings. The bridge took everything down, the walkway."

EMT William Truocollo, on how he was rescued.

"There was people running all over the place. A lot of emergency vehicles going back and forth. People almost getting hit by police cars and everything shooting around over there... . We got in front of the — I believe it was the Marriott. I just heard somebody yell 'run.' I tried to run ... I woke up. I was partially underneath a — I don't know. It had to be some type of motor vehicle, because I could see the exhaust and there was a firemen digging (out) my leg, because my legs got buried, the rest of me was underneath the car ... I remember he pulled me out and I actually thought a plane was coming because of the roaring sound. That's when he told me the tower collapsed."

Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer:

" ... Sometime about 8:15 or so in the morning we got a call to Lispenard and Church for a gas leak in the street. We were there for a while checking on the gas leak, and then we heard the loud roar of the plane come over, and we turned around and we looked and we saw the plane coming down, heading south towards the Trade Center, and made a direct hit on the Trade Center. I saw it hit. Within about 10 seconds after that or so I gave the first report on the radio and transmitted a second alarm for a plane into the Trade Center ...

I went into the lobby. There were people injured ... I tried to gather information, where the plane hit, what floor, and the best we could get is somewhere around 80. As the units were coming in, we checked for the elevators to see if we had any elevator service. There wasn't any ... I started to send people up to perform a rescue because we knew there were people trapped above the fire and we were getting reports in the lobby people were trapped in the elevators ...

I believe we started sending units up ... I told engines, half the group to take hose, the other half not to, at least early on, and started their way up. Also, I saw my brother, who was a lieutenant in 33, and we spoke a little bit, and then he went up also.

Then the plane hit the second tower, the south tower... . Right before that we discussed the operation of the radio. Any time in a high-rise building, communications is difficult. We tried to get repeaters to work. The Trade Center had a repeater... . That did not work for some reason, and there were problems with the repeater in the car also.

So communications from the onset was difficult ... We tried it numerous times and we couldn't get the repeaters to operate properly, so we had to rely just on handie-talkie communication, which is at best hit or miss in any high-rise.

At one point I was asked to get the operations with the helicopter into motion. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I could not get ahold of the dispatcher to do that. One of the citywide radios got moved around and I couldn't grab that ... The phone lines were out, and nobody was picking up or the lines were busy to the dispatcher, so I couldn't get through to them on a landline or a cell line.

We weren't getting good reports from the police at all ...

At one point after the second plane hit, I think, I'm not positive of the time line, I know Chief Callen asked over the radio to come down to the lobby. But with difficulty with communications, that didn't happen. It didn't fully happen. I'm not too sure who heard that or how many people came down. There was no way of really telling at that point.

But right before the south tower collapsed, I noticed a lot of people just left the lobby, and I heard we had a crew of all different people, high-level people in government, everybody was gone, almost like they had information that we didn't have. Some of them were moved across the street to the command post.

At one point the Fire Safety Director, Mike Hurley, asked us if we wanted the building evacuated. I'm not too sure if he meant both buildings or he was just talking about this. In either case, I believe he was talking about both buildings. I turned to Chief Hayden and said do you want to evacuate the buildings? He said yes.

I turned to Mike and I told him evacuate the buildings.

So there were definite communications back and forth that we wanted the buildings evacuated. I forget what stage that was at that time. Again, I can't put that on a time line. But it was before the second building collapsed for sure ...

As things were collapsing into the lobby of the north tower, I pushed everybody around the corner. I knew where I was, so I pushed people around the corner.

They were just pushed around a wall literally and then the whole area went black. We heard things collapse. There was debris falling in and everything was black.

At that time I went around to Chief Hayden and said `I'm going to evacuate the building.' I got on the radio and I called up to the battalion chief upstairs, which I got an acknowledgment to evacuate the building for a number of times.

I don't know what chief. But I did get acknowledgment, like I said, a number of times firefighters said they heard me and that's why they got out. And that was just in the blackness where at that point we didn't even know our way out.

Then Father Judge was there and he was lying on the ground and I went over to him, took off his collar, I opened up his shirt, checked for a pulse, and I knew at that point that he didn't have any ...

We wound up walking out into the street on Vesey and West pretty much standing in front of One, the north tower, or hopefully the north tower, just north of the bridge ...

It was all smoke. It looked like a fire. But it was the buildings. So still I didn't know the whole thing collapsed. I knew we had a big collapse but I had no idea. What people saw on TV I didn't see and nobody told me that's what had occurred and I didn't hear any radio communications of that either.

But standing out there, at one point, we just heard a loud, thunderous, rumble sound, and that's when people really were saying run, run. I must have had my back to the building or was talking to one of the chiefs because I never saw it. I just heard the sound and ran about 50 yards west up Vesey Street towards the river and got about half a block at most and dove behind a car or between cars in the street.

Everything was coming at us, and as it started to turn brown, we dove behind the car, and then the whole street went black and at that point I thought that was it. When the whole street goes black in the middle of the day, that's not a good thing. At that point it was real difficult to breathe. You couldn't see anything now with the debris being under a lot of force.

Then after a while it started to clear."

Pfeifer is asked if his brother made it out.

"No. That's the toughest part. And that's the story."

Deputy Chief Charles R. Blaich, who had been off-duty and arrived on the Staten Island ferry after the second tower fell.

"I got my volunteers together. We had a contractor giving us an assortment of shovels and picks and whatever and we proceeded further up to the west. I bumped into Dr. Prezant, who looked like he had just been put in a bag of flour and shaken up and down several times. ...

One of the volunteer ambulances that were there, gave us some face masks to wear at that point. We grabbed a pile of those and proceeded further north. We attempted to establish a command post. We were attempting to establish it on top of the roof of the van.

There were numerous fires burning through the pile. We were tentatively directing the volunteers to start fanning out on top of the pile to see if we could make any spot rescues, if anyone was alive.

At the same time we were informed that there was no water in the hydrant system and what engine companies we had that were still remaining, were reporting they had no water.

At some point during this, the difficult part was people were trying to make rescues of victims that they could see in the pile and we had to force them away because people had I beams through them and things like that.

We just didn't have the time to invest in bringing out dead bodies. We were trying to find live bodies."

Chief of Operations Salvatore Cassano:

"When the south tower collapsed, what we did was we either ran, got blown or fell down that garage, into that garage. That's where we all went. And after the dust and smoke cleared, someone showed us an exit. I went up an exit stairway and came out the lobby of the building ...

I started to walk north to try to get people to set up a command post farther north ... I realized we have people up there (in the north tower). The building is loaded with our guys. We got to get them out of there... . There was no debris on that street at all from the first plane. I drove right up there and then like I said, I had just opened my door and the second — I thought it was the secondary explosion. I didn't know it was another plane in the south tower, because when I heard it, I looked up and I saw debris. It had to be debris flying over from the south tower. Not much, but there was enough coming down in the street where I took off and I ducked into a garage until it cleared up.

After the secondary explosion in the north tower, I didn't know what the hell — I didn't know it was another plane that had hit until I got around to the command post ...

I saw Father (Mychal) Judge as I was walking to the Millenium (hotel) ... and I walked up to him, gave him a smile. I told him, 'Father Judge, we are going to need a lot of help here. You better get some more chaplains.' He smiled and said something. I forget what he said. I don't remember what he said. That was the last time I saw him."

Lt. Brendan Whelan recalls his journey to the World Trade Center from 2-3 minutes north:

On the way down, we heard the upper collapse of the first building. That's probably one of the things that I'll never forget, because after the initial collapse, there was total silence on the radios, the department radio. The next thing, members that were trapped in vehicles were screaming over their handsets ... A couple guys were saying that they were trapped, they were buried, they couldn't breathe, they were running out of air. It was pretty eerie to hear that over the department radio, something that I never thought I would hear and I never want to hear again. Who those members were, I don't know. What their outcome was, I don't know.

... I realized everybody that had heard those transmissions thought they were going into hell, basically... .

One of the funny things was — I don't know if you'd want to say it was funny. But I remember looking up at the building and seeing the volume of fire that was in the building, and I grabbed Mark Ferran by his turnout coat and I pulled him at me and I said, `You know what, Chief, we're in a collapse zone here.' He looked at me and he said, 'That's not coming down ... '

"A huge cloud of I guess it was just smoke from the collapse itself shot out ... It was easily 20, 30 stories high, this cloud.

As you were running, you were watching the cloud catching up to you ... You didn't know what was in it, if there was heat in it — actually I was thinking there was going to be huge boulders coming down right down West Street and basically knock us over like bowling pins.

Firefighter Timothy Brown:

(Office of Emergency Management) offices are in 7 World Trade Center, so we were there when the first plane hit ... I walked in the walkway between (World Trade Center) 5 and 6 ... The whole plaza area was burning debris, plane parts and bodies ... I went into the lobby of 1 World Trade Center. A lot of people were self-evacuating very orderly, quickly. People were helping each other ... I went past the core of the building where the stairwells were.

There were a lot of firemen there ... The people I remember seeing were Terry Hatton and Chris Blackwell. Terry Hatton from Rescue 1 and Chris Blackwell from Rescue 3. I gave them both hugs. Terry said to me, "I love you, brother. It might be the last time I see you." Then he went in the stairwell. Then Chris Blackwell looked at me and said, `This isn't good, Tim.' That was the last I saw him also ...

I ran into the doors of the 2 World Trade on the Liberty Street side ... Again, an orderly evacuation of 2. A lot of people were leaving ... Someone had come to me and said that there were people trapped in one of those elevators. So I ran around the corner, and the ... doors were open, but the elevator car was only showing about two feet at the top of the door.

You could see all the legs of the people that were in the elevator. I would guess there were about eight people in the elevator. The elevator pit was on fire with the jet fuel. People were screaming in the elevator. They were getting smoked and cooked ... I grabbed some of the Port Authority employees and asked them where the fire extinguishers were and told them to get as many fire extinguishers as they could so we could try and fight this fire. As they were doing that, firemen started showing up ...

Stephen Gregory was the Assistant Commissioner for Communications.

... At that point in time we heard a rumble, we heard a noise, and then the building came down. All we saw was dust and everything just started to get very chaotic.

At that point in time all of us at the command post — firefighters, chiefs, myself — we turned around, we started to run south, down West Street toward Albany. Looking back over my shoulder, I realized that I wasn't able to outrun whatever was coming because it looked like a giant wave behind us, so I went up against a chain-link fence, I got down on one knee, I put my hands over my head to hold my helmet on so I wouldn't get hit in the head with anything, and we just proceeded to get clobbered with all kinds of debris.

It got very black. It got very quiet. It was very peacefully quiet; so peaceful that I thought I was dead.

Firefighter Maureen McArdle-Schulman:

We went to the command center ... There was already 75 to 100 firefighters standing in this parking garage, at the entrance, waiting for assignments.

Somebody yelled something was falling. We didn't know if it was part of an airplane coming out, if it was desks. It turned out it was people, and they started coming out, one after another.

We saw the jumpers coming. We didn't know what it was at first, but then the first body hit and then after that we knew what it was. And they were just, like, constant ...

I didn't see anyone landing on the ground in front of us. Most of them were hitting the setback. I'm still across the street in the parking lot ... I was getting sick. I felt like I was intruding on a sacrament.

They were choosing to die, and I was watching them and shouldn't have been. So me and another guy turned away and looked at the wall and we could still hear them hit ...

"We're standing at the command center, listening to everybody give their positions. You know, what stairway they were using. You know, escape stairway, rescue stairway. Things like that or what floor they're on.

Someone comes running over to the table and said, "A firefighter was hit by a jumper. He needs last rites ... "

So a couple of guys went to the right to give this guy last rites with Father (Mychal) Judge, I guess.

We're standing there, and we're looking up, and we're trying not to look at people jumping. We really felt like we were intruding on them.

And the building had red fire, a ring of fire. They started pumping and bouncing and I'm standing there staring.

Finally somebody yelled, "Run." It took everybody out of that trance we were in. We ran back into the garage.

Anybody that went to the right was killed. People that went to the left were OK.

I was just mesmerized, absolutely mesmerized by this building ... watching people jump. You just can't believe what you're seeing and you're just standing there like idiots, staring.