00:06So we had this group of 54 people in this internal conference room, so it was four walls and a
00:12door, no windows, and at about 8.30, 8.46, 8.47, the lights in that room flickered.
00:27We didn't see anything. We didn't hear anything. We didn't feel anything. It was just this flicker of lights.
00:35Almost immediately, a gentleman from Aon Corporation kind of came into the room and he said,
00:41Hey, there's been an explosion in the North Tower, and we've got to evacuate.
00:46These huge black holes through the sides of the building of the North Tower, plain, redder than any red I'd
00:53ever seen before in my life,
00:54looking up the side of the building, gray and black billows of smoke just pouring out of those big holes.
01:02And if you remember, it was a crystal clear day here in September.
01:07And I remember being able to see through the smoke and the fire into those huge black holes into the
01:12North Tower.
01:14And I could see the fuselage, pieces of the fuselage of a large plane.
01:19And my first thought, immediate thought, was, my God, how did that pilot not see the building?
01:27How did he miss?
01:31He didn't miss.
01:33I wanted to go home.
01:35I didn't want to be there.
01:36I wanted to go home.
01:42There were people on that floor, looking out those windows, and they seemed like they were mesmerized, frozen.
01:50Whether they were frozen in fear, just mesmerized by what they saw.
01:54I'm looking at this and I'm saying, this isn't an Xbox game.
01:59This isn't a made-for-TV movie.
02:01This is reality.
02:03And I want to go.
02:06There was a gentleman that was in the meeting with me.
02:09And he was behind me.
02:13I almost knocked him over.
02:14But this guy was a huge human being.
02:16But I was in such a hurry, I turned around, kind of almost knocked him over.
02:20And he put his big, giant hands on my shoulders.
02:23And he said, what are you going to do?
02:24I said, I'm getting the heck out of here.
02:27I've got to leave.
02:28And I said, what are you going to do, man?
02:30And he looked at me.
02:32And he said, you know what?
02:33Leaving is a good idea.
02:34But before I go, I'm going to go.
02:38And he pointed to the men's room.
02:41And that simple delay.
02:44Two and a half minutes or so delay in his day, Boston, a block.
02:50Because I was somewhere between 74 and 72 in that stairwell when the plane, the second plane, went through our
02:58building.
02:58And it went through our building between floors 77 and 82.
03:03So we were just a few floors below the strike zone.
03:09I never felt anything like that in my life.
03:11And that building, that building, that fire still, well, that we're inside, this concrete bunker, starts to shake so violently
03:20back and forth.
03:22And that's the chance we had for the first time to encounter the police, and the firefighters, and the paramedics
03:28from New York City and the court-apart.
03:33Just the looks in their eyes, no words, just the looks in their eyes, hold the hope on the shore.
03:47They knew that they were going up those steps to try to fight a fire that they couldn't beat.
03:55They knew that they were going up those steps to try to save lives that they probably couldn't save.
04:04And they knew that they were going up, and they knew that they were never coming back.
04:10You could be that brave.
04:13You could be that strong.
04:15I mean, I mean...
04:21When you got down to the lobby level, this level, and you looked out with arching glass windows into the
04:31streets and between the two buildings,
04:33all you saw was twisted steel, crumbled concrete, and red markings, red clutches on the ground.
04:44And you knew what those red blocks were.
04:46And you knew what those red blocks were.
04:47And you knew what those red blocks were.
04:48But it was the next couple of sounds that we heard that are the sounds that any of us that
04:54were here that day hear every day.
04:57First thing in the morning, last thing at night, first we hear the sound of the twisting steel and the
05:04crumbling concrete that once was the South Tower, the building that we had been in just eight, nine minutes earlier.
05:15I don't have survivors here.
05:17I don't have survivors here.
05:18I wonder how I survived, but I knew relatively quickly that what I had to do with this survival is
05:27to continue to tell the truth.
05:29I'm going to follow up.
05:29Thank you.
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