mervbai weronika contracted
Carlito Austin
I have been at Euro Brokers for over 29 years now. I started as a traineebroker in 1973, and for the last 14 or 15 years I've been in management. Mostrecently my title's been Executive Vice President. I've been one of severalpeople who manage the company. One minor responsibility I had that turned outto be significant that day, however, was I was one of about eight or 10 peoplethat had volunteered to be a fire marshal.
There was suddenly this glare, and my attention was immediately caught. I spunmy head around, and the entire airspace behind me was filled with flame. Ididn't know what it was at the time, but it was the fuel from the first jethitting the North Tower that had gone right through that tower and out over theairspace, south of Tower One, the North Tower. That same airspace was west ofthe South Tower, the tower I was in on the 84th floor.
My immediate thought was there had been an explosion one or two floors aboveour office. That's what I thought had happened in that first instant. Being oneof the fire marshals, I was equipped with a whistle and flashlight in myoffice. I jumped up, grabbed them, put the whistle around my neck, and more orless yelled, "Get out! Everybody get out!" This all took me five seconds. WhenI looked behind me out the window, the flames were all gone, and thousands ofpapers were just fluttering in the air, the edges of which were all on fire. Itwas like flaming confetti. Very strange.
I should have realized but didn't realize at the time that the area that allthis was happening in was so huge. But I still wasn't computing that in mymind; still it was two floors up in my mind. So I ran out of my office, just ayard or two into an area where some accountants sit, and other people inoffices, and I said, "Come on, let's go, there has been an explosion," and Istarted to get people off the floor.
Now, we are a trading operation. Our customers are not individuals, but largefinancial trading institutions around the world, like a Barclay's Bank or theRoyal Bank of Canada. So we have in our trading floor many television setstuned to financial news information. Well, all of these stations cut away totheir news departments, and there were these breaking news stories that anairplane had hit the World Trade Center. The story developed literally withinminutes, and we understood fairly soon, I would say within three or fourminutes, that an airliner had hit One World Trade Center. At least that's myrecollection of the timeframe.
Well, we knew now that the damage had been done to Tower One, not our Tower, sowe relaxed a little bit about evacuation. Nonetheless, many people in the firstminute had bolted for the stairs and were on their way down. Good news inretrospect, but at the time it was like, Oh boy, I guess we don't have toleave. The TV sets were telling us, and now there were photographs of One WorldTrade Center and the smoke coming out of the upper floors, I think the92nd floor and above. The fire marshals like myself were content tolet people go or stay. Really, in a way, it didn't matter.
I called my wife and told her, "You know, you won't believe this but Tower Onehas been hit. We are fine where we are. Relax, turn on the TV, there is adeveloping story there, find out what's happening."
At about five minutes to nine there was an announcement by the Port Authoritywithin our building. First the strobe lights flashed, as they did during theirnormal fire drills. The alarm system gave a little bit of a whoop whoop,you know, to alert you to an announcement about to be made. Then the veryfamiliar voice, the one we heard all the time, came over the system and said,"Building Two is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building Two. If you arein the midst of evacuation, you may return to your office by using the re-entrydoors on the re-entry floors and the elevators to return to your office.Repeat, Building Two is secure...."
And they went through the whole story again. So this was reinforcement thatthere was no need to evacuate. I am strictly guessing but I would think we wereperhaps down to about 25 people left on our floor at the time of theannouncement. (I had gone for a walk through our office.) Now, as I say, thepressure was off, and there wasn't a panic, although we were greatly concernedabout what was going on in Tower One.
If you went to the north wall windows, you could look up and see the flames andthe smoke and regrettably people now starting to jump, because of heat, smoke,or whatever it was. I'm only telling this secondhand because I personally couldnot take myself to the window to view that. I just didn't want that imageburned in my brain, and I'm forever grateful that I didn't go and take in thatsight.
There was a twist, if you like, to the building when it got hit, and thereforethe plane's hitting explained some things to me later, like why the ceilingfell apart. The ceiling tiles and some of the brackets and so on fell; some airconditioning ducts, speakers, cables, and things like that that were in theceiling fell. I seem to have a sense that some of the floor tiles even buckleda bit or were moved. Some of the walls, I recall vaguely, were actually torn ina jagged direction rather than up and down. Again perhaps explained by thetorque, some of the door frames popped out of the wall and partially fell orfully fell.
I was looking at Bobby Coll square in the eyes, and we knew in an instant thatit was terrorism. I mean, there wasn't for sure terrorism on people's mindswhen the first building had been hit. Was it pilot error? Was it instrumenterror? Or just a one-off suicide? Horrible as it was, you didn't know forcertain that it was terrorism. But when the second building got hit youinstantly calculated the two of them: terrorism.
So we knew we were in a difficult situation at that point in time. I fortunatelyhad a flashlight with me, and I'm glad I did. I switched it on, and we startedout of the room. Our room was not black with smoke but sort of white withchalky construction dust. It was incredibly dusty and dirty as we made our wayout of the room and over some debris that had fallen from the ceiling and so onpast the ladies room where I had taken Susan maybe 10 minutes earlier, and wewent to this center core, this crossroads in the middle of the building.
At that point, had we gone three or four yards straight ahead to the east, wewould have come to Stairway B. I have no idea what condition it was in becausewe didn't know what had happened, we didn't know where this plane had hit, wedidn't know if it was a plane, we didn't know anything other than suddenly wewere in chaos and our building had been hit. I could have turned right threeyards to Stairway C, closer to the impact point. I had no idea what conditionthat stairway was in. Miraculously, at random I turned left to Stairway A,which on the floor plate is the farthest from where the impact really was.
So we started down that stairway. We only went three floors. There was a groupof seven of us, myself and six others. I remember some of the names. Now, Iknow everybody at Euro Brokers, but in my mind somehow I blanked out who thoseother grey shapes were; they were farther up the stairs a bit, not in the lightof the flashlight. I do remember Bobby Coll, Kevin York, David Vera, and RonDiFrancesco.
We met two people that had come up from the 80th floor, a heavy-setwoman and by comparison a rather frail male companion of hers, a workmate. Shewas saying from the landing below, "Stop, stop you've got to go up," and shelabored up to join us, moving very slowly; she was such a big woman. She said,"You've got to go up. You can't go down. There is too much smoke and flamesbelow." I had my flashlight, and I was shining it in each face as people madecomments, and an argument ensued as to what we should do.
At the same moment as this argument was going on I heard bang, bang, bang,thump, thump, thump, "Help! Help! I'm buried. I can't breathe. Is anybodythere? Can you help me?," a strange voice coming from within the81st floor. I heard this voice, and it caused me to loseconcentration in this argument that was going on about whether to head up ordown. I grabbed Ron by the sleeve, and I said "Come on, Ron. Let's get thisfellow."
The fire escape door had blown away from the wall a bit, but we were able topush the dry wall back and step between the door frame and the dry wall,squeeze onto the 81st floor, which was in darkness, but again I hadmy flashlight. I scanned the room, and I said, "Who's there? Where are you?" Hesaid, "Oh, I can see your light."
What my light beam was showing me was similar to being on a very foggy road atnight, because it was white dust everywhere. He said, "No, to the right ... tothe left ..." In about a minute, Ron and I located his voice. He said, "Can yousee my hand?" His hand was sticking out of the wall, or not the wall but thisarea where he was covered and blocked by some debris. He was waving his handfrantically, and my light picked up his hand. I said, "Okay, see younow."
And at that moment my associate Ron who came down with me was overcome withsmoke. He had a gym bag or a briefcase with him, and he was sort of putting itin front of his face in an attempt to filter the air. It clearly wasn'tworking, and Ron, with eyes shut, backed off the floor. He was almostcompletely overcome by the smoke.
We got to the point I couldn't do any more work from my side, and I said,"You've got to jump. You've got to get over this last barrier." Well, he jumpedonce and fell back down. I said, "Come on, you've got to do this. It's the onlyway out." I reached in again, and Stanley jumped, and I got him by the collaror the shoulder or somewhere there. He said later that I just pulled him uplike Superman. I don't remember having this extraordinary strength, but he saysit really did happen that way. I pulled him out and onto me, and we fell in aheap and embraced. It was an exciting moment, it really was.
Now, Ron had gone. He had gone back to the stairway and was not there when wegot back to the stairs. The other people had gone up as I left with Ron to goin on the 81st floor. I had this vision of Bobby Coll and Kevin Yorkeach with a hand under each elbow of this heavy-set woman starting to ascendthe stairs, saying things like, "Come on. We are in this together. We will helpyou. Relax, we'll be with you." And up they went. And Dave Vera, who had awalkie-talkie, started back up the stairs as well. That's the last I saw ofthose people.
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