The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

Harry Ramos, an investment banker from the 87th floor of the WTC’s South Tower, insisted on staying to help an obese man on the stairs; both men died. Those escaping the towers were shocked to see the scene at the base of the towers; bodies and debris filled the streets.

John Cartier rode his motorcycle from the Lower East Side toward the WTC, hoping to find his siblings: Michele, who worked in the North Tower, and James, who worked in the South Tower. He found Michele. James perished in the South Tower.

Family members continued to receive calls of love and distress from loved ones trapped above the crash sites; the air was smokey and increasingly, unbearably hot. FDNY lieutenant Gregg Hansson, in the North Tower, heard a radio order to leave the building. The South Tower had collapsed.

The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 am. Witnesses remember the tremendous noise of the collapsing building as well as the immense wall of debris, dust, and smoke that traveled with frightening speed through the surrounding streets. People ran for their lives. In the South Tower lobby, William Jimeno, a PAPD officer, felt intense shaking. He started to run, following his partner, Dominick.

Guests were trapped in the Marriott hotel, between the two buildings. Firefighter Jeff Johnson helped Frank Razanno out of the wrecked fire escape stairwell. Beverly Eckert, on the phone with her husband, Sean Rooney, who was on the 98th floor of the South Tower, heard his final seconds as the building explosively collapsed around him. People who escaped the WTC towers without injury watched, shocked, from the Brooklyn Bridge as the tower collapsed. On television, millions more watched. The New York Stock Exchange closed for the day.

The massive, tornado-speed wind generated by the collapse of the South Tower threw a dark cloud of smoke and debris, so thick that it looked solid, across Manhattan. People ran or threw themselves beneath cars or building eaves as the streets were cast into darkness; others were thrown off their feet by the force of the wind. Debris then started to land, killing and injuring people as they tried to escape. Lieutenant Joseph Torrillo was hit over the head with a piece of steel and heard bones in his body breaking. He was buried.

People struggled to breath in the debris cloud. NYPD Captain Sean Crowley describes the feeling as similar to trying to breathe through a mouthful of flour. Elia Zedeño, who had escaped from the 73rd floor of the North Tower, remembers physically digging debris and dust from her mouth, throat, and nose to breathe.

HSLPS students and teachers fled across the Brooklyn Bridge. William Jimeno was alive but trapped in rubble with his partner, Dominick, and their leader, Sergeant McLoughin. Their other team members, Christopher Amoroso and Antonio Rodrigues, were dead.

US Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides watched the live footage, stunned to see the South Tower collapsing. The group tried to make sense of incoming information to know which planes were still threats. A feeling of terror and danger, as well as a frustrated desire to do something, hovered pervasively. NEADs Colonel Bob Marr reflects that they were used to handling situations of conflict overseas rather than on their own shores; radars point away from the US, not within it.

The vice president gave permission for hijacked commercial aircrafts to be shot down. He drew on emergency training aimed at developing skills for managing catastrophes such as nuclear war; this helped him stay calm.

Military aircraft were scrambled (quickly deployed). Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville and Lieutenant Heather “Lucky” Penney took off; they considered their options for disabling a commercial plane should they receive the order to do so.

Ed Felt called 911 from the bathroom of Flight 93, explaining that the plane he was on had been hijacked. Tom Burnett called his wife, Deena, explaining that they planned to wait until they were over a rural area and then try to take back the plane. Todd Beamer, on the phone to Verizon Airfone Supervisor Lisa Jefferson, asked her to call his wife. Jeremy Glick called his wife, Lyzbeth, to tell her that a group of them planned to take over the plane. She agreed that this was the right course of action.

Transcript from the Flight 93 voice recorder reveals a struggle in the cockpit of the plane, which crashed in Somerset County, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. People in the area saw the plane and heard the immense noise it made while flying full throttle into the ground. Family members of the deceased on Flight 93 passengers desperately hoped to hear back from their loved ones but eventually learned the flight’s fate.

Those responding at the Pentagon worried that another plane might be inbound; this hindered the rescuers, who were pulled away from the scene. Emergency workers and civilians from the Pentagon sheltered under highway overpasses until they learned of the Flight 93 crash, and then the Arlington County Fire Department returned to the Pentagon. Captain Robert Grey quickly realized that survivors were unlikely in the Flight 93 crash.

Father Mychal Judge, an FDNY chaplain, rushed to the WTC as soon as he heard about the first plane. He prayed in the North Tower lobby and then performed last rites for fireman Danny Suhr, who was killed when a jumper fell on him. Debris from the collapsing South Tower breached the North Tower lobby and hit Father Mychal Judge. Colleagues carried him out on a chair but could not resuscitate him. His body was taken to St. Peter’s Church. He was the first official casualty of the WTC attacks.

Those still in the North Tower, who heard, saw, or were radioed that the South Tower had collapsed, felt the urgency of their situation increase dramatically. John Abruzzo and his team of helpers were still rushing down; they were on the 20th floor of the North Tower when the South Tower collapsed. They made it successfully to the bottom and had to carry the chair across the wreckage and ruin of the South Tower.

FDNY Captain Jay Jonas, on the 27th floor of the North Tower with a team of firefighters (who had been going up to the fire), instructed his team to turn around and leave, as did the PAPD’s Sharon Miller and the firefighters around her. Pasquale Buzzelli, still on the 64th floor, realized that he needed to get out immediately and started down the stairs with 15 others, including Genelle Guzman.