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[0] On September 11th, 2001, 19 men who had been trained by the extremist group, Al -Qaeda, launched a terrorist attack against the United States of America.
[1] The attackers simultaneously hijacked four large passenger airplanes with the intention of crashing them into major U .S. landmarks trying to inflict as much death and destruction as possible.
[2] Two of the planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
[3] One of the planes was flown into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
[4] It's believed that fourth plane was on a collision course with the U .S. Capitol building, but some of the passengers on board realized they were being hijacked, and so they rushed the cockpit and tried to overpower the hijackers, and during this struggle, the hijackers intentionally flew the plane into the ground.
[5] All told, nearly 3 ,000 people were killed during this highly coordinated attack, over 400 of which were first responders, like New York firefighters and police and emergency medical technicians.
[6] This attack, which is now referred to as just 9 -11, was one of the most covered media events of all time.
[7] As such, today, when you Google 9 -11, you can see and hear the attack as it happened almost minute by minute.
[8] But the footage is so overwhelming and apocalyptic and surreal that unless you were literally there on 9 -11 or knew someone who was there, at the end of it, after you're done consuming, all of this footage, it feels like you just watched a really distressing movie, not you just watched an actual terrorist attack.
[9] And so today, I'm going to share a firsthand account that will actually take you inside the attacks.
[10] And this story will not feel like a movie.
[11] It will feel very raw and very real.
[12] Full disclosure, before we get into this first person narrative, I had to make some educated guesses about the physical layout of the inside of the North Tower.
[13] Now, it's based on floor plans I was looking at and videos and pictures and testimonials, but there are certain details that I'm just not 100 % on.
[14] However, these are very small details that will not detract from the story even if they're inaccurate.
[15] I have gone way out of my way to make sure that the story I tell you is as close to the actual story as it possibly can be.
[16] And so with that in mind, let's get into today's story.
[17] I'm Dan Tibertsky.
[18] In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high.
[19] high school in upstate New York, a mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.
[20] What's the answer?
[21] And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?
[22] Hysterical.
[23] A new podcast from Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios.
[24] Binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free on Wondery Plus.
[25] On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, 30 -year -old Michael Wright hopped into a crowded elevator and pressed the number 81.
[26] Michael was an account executive for a telecommunications company that operated out of New York's famous world.
[27] Trade Center.
[28] The World Trade Center was located in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan.
[29] It was made up of seven different buildings.
[30] Michael's building was one of the two identical, massive 110 -story -tall skyscrapers that were collectively called the Twin Towers, and then separately they were called the North Tower and the South Tower.
[31] Michael's company was in the North Tower.
[32] Once the elevator reached floor 81, the doors opened up, and Michael squeezed his way out of the car, and right ahead of him on the wall right in front of him, he would have seen three other elevator doors and then on the wall behind him there would have been another three elevator doors one of which he just exited to his right there was just a wall and then to his left was a set of glass doors that fed out into this big hallway that wrapped all the way around the building now this hallway there were offices on either side as you went around the 81st floor but while you were in this hallway you couldn't actually look out the windows and see this incredible view of New York.
[33] The views were only accessible once you were inside of these various office buildings.
[34] And so Michael, he gets out of the elevator, he turns left, he goes through those doors, and then he turns right, and he starts walking down this hallway, and then he stops in front of this wooden door on his left.
[35] And this was the door to his company, which was called Networks Plus.
[36] So he opens that up, and right in front of him is this huge open office space with all these cubicles.
[37] And even though it was quite early, dozens of his co -workers were already there where their headsets on and they're chatting and clicking away on their computers.
[38] But Michael was not in a rush.
[39] He had a morning routine and he was not about to break it now.
[40] And so he just strolled into the room.
[41] He said hi to a couple people and he walked as if he was going towards the very back of the office towards the windows.
[42] But just before he reached the windows, he found his cubicle on the right.
[43] And so he dropped his bag next to his chair, but he didn't sit down.
[44] Instead, he just kept on walking.
[45] He turned right.
[46] And he went down this corridor and then he turned right and he was facing this cafeteria.
[47] And the cafeteria for the company, it was really just this small room with a couple of tables and chairs.
[48] There was a fridge.
[49] There was a coffee machine.
[50] It was really just kind of a lounge area.
[51] So he went in there and he grabbed a paper cup.
[52] He filled it with coffee.
[53] And then he grabbed a brand muffin that was on a community tray.
[54] And then he left the cafeteria and went back to his desk.
[55] He sat down.
[56] And when he sat down, it was 7 .45 a .m. And so he didn't immediately turn on his computer and throw his headset on and just dive into work.
[57] Instead, he just kind of enjoyed his coffee, enjoyed his brand muffin and thought about what he was going to do that day typically on tuesdays Michael would go out and see clients and he would make some sales calls and so Michael was just kind of sitting there getting his head right for the day and then after he finished his breakfast he threw in his headset he powered up his computer he checked his email he started calling around to different clients to set up meetings for later that day and then around 840 a .m., Michael realized he had to go to the bathroom and so Michael took off his headset he stood up he turned around he left his cubicle and then And instead of walking deeper into the office towards the windows and the cafeteria, he turned left and started walking back towards the main door that fed into his office.
[58] So he gets to this door, he opens it up, he steps out into the main hallway, and then he turns left and starts walking away from where the elevators are.
[59] Those are down to his right.
[60] And so he walks maybe 10 or 15 feet down this main hallway before he reaches a door to the men's room, which is on his right.
[61] And so he notices on the door there's the sign that he hadn't seen before that said, Please keep the bathroom clean.
[62] So he reads the sign, doesn't think much of it, pushes the door open.
[63] And when he gets in there, there's a couple of his male colleagues that are kind of yucking it up in the corner.
[64] And they're actually laughing about the sign that was on the bathroom door.
[65] Bank of America had just recently moved into the 81st floor.
[66] So now Michael and his company were sharing this floor with Bank of America.
[67] And Bank of America had put that sign on the bathroom door.
[68] And so the guys were saying, oh, so you come into our space and the first day you're here, you're telling us we're dirty?
[69] And so Michael, he kind of laughed along with them, because once you put it in context, it did seem kind of passive -aggressive.
[70] At 8 .46am, Michael turned away from this group of laughing guys and began walking over to the urinals on the wall.
[71] But before he even got to the urinals, suddenly the building shulted hard to one side.
[72] Now, the Twin Towers were built to withstand very heavy winds, and so the way they were constructed to do that was they would flex several inches in any direction at any time.
[73] But this was not several inches.
[74] This was several feet.
[75] And it was so violent and so sudden that the marble on the walls actually cracked and fell off.
[76] And the guys in the bathroom, most of them lost their balance and fell to the ground.
[77] And the one guy who was inside of a stall, he comes running out, he burst the door open, he's buttoning his pants up.
[78] And he's screaming, what was that?
[79] Michael, after standing back up, began thinking to himself, you know, did I hear a sound?
[80] Was there an explosion?
[81] You know, what was that it must have been a gas main explosion what else could that have possibly been it was just nothing else he could think of that would account for that big of a shift but there was just no time to sit there and dwell on how this happened because the alarms in the building started going off and so michael and the other guys that were in there they just left the bathroom to go out to the hallway to see what was going on and when michael got out there he looked left down the main hallway past his office all the way down to the elevators and all the way down there he could see there was clearly fire spitting out of the elevator lobby area.
[82] And so before Michael could even process that there was this fire and what he was going to do about it, he heard screaming, a woman screaming, behind him.
[83] The women's bathroom was right next to the men's bathroom.
[84] And so Michael and a couple of the other guys who had been in the bathroom with him, they go running into the women's room.
[85] And there was this stall, this bathroom stall in the women's room that had been kind of bent over.
[86] And it would turn out during the shift in the building, the door jam on one of the stalls had folded over, kind of locking it in place, and there was a woman on the other side of the stall.
[87] There was a woman in the stall.
[88] And so that was the woman who was screaming.
[89] And so the men, they get in there, they start kicking and punching this door, trying to get it open.
[90] And finally they do, and they're able to pull this woman out.
[91] They go back out into the hallway, and right away Michael notices there is a cloud of white smoke that is filling the entire hallway.
[92] It's towards the top, so they can kind of duck down to avoid the hallway.
[93] smoke.
[94] And so Michael's hunched down and he looks left down the hallway towards where he knows this fire is and he sees the fire has gotten much larger and the flames have jumped into the hallway.
[95] It's still pretty far away, but clearly this fire is spreading.
[96] And so Michael, he's crouched down and he's watching as people are streaming out of his office down the hall and everyone's kind of avoiding this fire.
[97] They're running up to where Michael and the others have congregated.
[98] Michael, who's crouched down, he's still kind of just looking generally towards the fire almost stunned when he notices something about the ground.
[99] There was this huge crack in the ground that ran from where he was all the way down the hall, all the way to the fire, and then Michael turned around and saw that crack actually continued all the way in the other direction.
[100] It looked like the floor had literally broken in half, and it was like the floor was going to fall off the building.
[101] And so as Michael is crouched down just staring at this crack, not really sure what to think about it, He started to listen to what people were saying in the hall.
[102] Everyone's beginning to speculate about what caused this fire, what caused the building to shift like that.
[103] And a lot of people tended to believe it was a gas main explosion, which is what Michael thought.
[104] Other people suggested, you know, maybe it was an earthquake, and some outliers said it could have been a bomb.
[105] But little did anybody know what had happened to their building was far worse than anything they could have imagined.
[106] She struck him with her motor vehicle.
[107] She had been under the influence and she left him.
[108] there.
[109] In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe.
[110] It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location.
[111] What happens next?
[112] Depends on who you ask.
[113] Was it a crime of passion?
[114] If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling.
[115] This was clearly an intentional act.
[116] In his cause, of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.
[117] Or a corrupt police cover -up.
[118] If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover -up to prevent one of their own from going down.
[119] Everyone had an opinion.
[120] And after the 10 -week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.
[121] To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.
[122] Law and crime presents the most in -depth analysis to date of the sensation.
[123] case in Karen.
[124] You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondry Plus.
[125] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
[126] I'm Dan Tibersky.
[127] In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.
[128] I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad.
[129] I'm like, stop fucking around.
[130] She's like, I can't.
[131] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast.
[132] It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls.
[133] With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the download.
[134] Everybody thought I was holding something back.
[135] Well, you were holding something back.
[136] Intentionally.
[137] Yeah, well, yeah.
[138] No, it's hysteria.
[139] It's all in your head.
[140] It's not physical.
[141] Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating.
[142] Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?
[143] Or is it something else entirely?
[144] Something's wrong here.
[145] Something's not right.
[146] Leroy was the new date line and everyone was trying to solve the murder.
[147] A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, hysterical.
[148] Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
[149] You can binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
[150] A few minutes earlier at 8 .46 a .m. as Michael stood in the bathroom kind of yucking it up with the other guys that were in there, American Airlines Flight 11, which was this massive 767 passenger airplane carrying 91 passengers, five of which were the hijackers.
[151] They slammed into Michael's, Michael's tower, 12 floors above Michael's head.
[152] The plane was traveling at about 466 miles per hour when it struck the building.
[153] The impact and subsequent explosion immediately killed not only everyone on board the plane, but hundreds of people that were inside of the impact zone, which was between floors 93 and 99.
[154] The plane also went right through the building, severing all of the stairwells and the elevator shafts, meaning anyone who was still alive, from floors 93 all the way to the top, floor 110, all those people, they didn't have an escape route anymore.
[155] So they were trapped, they just didn't know it yet.
[156] And to make an already horrible situation even worse, after this plane detonates inside of the North Tower, it sends 9 ,000 gallons of burning jet fuel down these destroyed elevator shafts, and as this fuel tumbled, it would splash onto many of the floors below, like Floor 81, the fuel would kind of splash through the openings to the elevator doors, and once a little bit had landed on that floor, the whole floor would catch on fire.
[157] But Michael and the rest of the people on Floor 81 were completely oblivious to this.
[158] All they knew was, there's a fire over there, and so we need to get away from it.
[159] But as Michael stood up from this crack and began kind of looking around to see what they were going to do next, he noticed that most of the people, while they were staying calm, were not really running to evacuate.
[160] They were just kind of standing around, and the different business managers from different departments were just kind of telling their staff members to stay calm and hold on, let's get our thoughts together.
[161] And Michael, who was not panicked, at least not yet, he's looking around thinking, you know what, let's just get off this floor.
[162] We need to get off this floor.
[163] And so he remembered that a lot of his friends, they would sneak out of the office and they would smoke cigarettes in this one particular emergency stairwell that was close to them.
[164] And so Michael just started yelling to the group, hey, we got to go now, now, we need to leave.
[165] There's stairs over there.
[166] follow me. And so Michael kind of cut through the crowd and the crowd was very quick to respond.
[167] They kind of followed him and he opened the door, he goes into the stairwell and he lets some people go in.
[168] And before long, there's a very orderly double file line making their way down this stairwell.
[169] Michael remembers after he joined this double file line and began going down the steps, this immediate sense of relief, especially after they got down a couple of flights away from the 81st floor.
[170] Because in his mind and in a lot of other people's minds that were in the stairwell with him, the problem was up there.
[171] It was the 81st floor.
[172] There was this one fire.
[173] It was localized.
[174] It would be dealt with.
[175] And they are already all the way down here.
[176] They'll be out of the building soon.
[177] So they got nothing to worry about.
[178] And so Michael and the rest of his co -workers just kept making their way down the stairs.
[179] It was very slow progress.
[180] And sometimes it would come to a complete standstill because other people on lower floors were entering the stairwell and joining in in this evacuation.
[181] But Michael remembers nobody was freaking out.
[182] No one was panicking.
[183] There were some people.
[184] that, you know, were more worked up about it, but there really was this sense of safety, that they were in these stairs and that everything was going fine.
[185] And so as they're kind of making their way down, most people were concerned with trying to place a call to their family to just tell them, hey, you know, I'm okay, this crazy thing happened to work today, but, you know, I'm going to be fine.
[186] Michael had left his cell phone on his desk, so he didn't have a way to call his family.
[187] He got a co -worker to give him his phone, and Michael tried dozens of times to reach his wife, Jenny, but when he called her, she didn't pick up, and so eventually he just gave the phone back to his co -worker and just continued down the steps.
[188] At about 9 a .m., so that would have been about 10 or 12 minutes into this evacuation down the stairs, Michael, who again is in relatively good spirits, he knows there's danger upstairs, but, you know, they're safe down here.
[189] He makes this kind of off -colored joke to lighten the mood in the stairwell.
[190] Michael turns to one of his male colleagues and pretends to confess his love to him and tells him, the only reason I'm confessing it to you now is because we're going to die here anyways.
[191] Now, the joke here in Michael's mind was, of course we're not going to die here.
[192] He was intentionally dramatizing the entire situation because they were safe.
[193] They were in the stairwell.
[194] They were evacuating.
[195] The fire was up there.
[196] They're down here.
[197] Everything is fine.
[198] And some people thought the joke was kind of funny and they laughed at it.
[199] But the guy right ahead of Michael didn't think it was funny.
[200] And he turned around and looked at Michael and said, hey man, you've got to keep your humor down in here.
[201] So Michael, he did immediately regret telling his joke, but not because he was suddenly scared that this situation was far more dangerous than he was realizing, but because he just felt bad for offending some people.
[202] Michael would later reflect on this moment, and he would say he was so naive that even though he had seen the fire and seen the physical damage that crack on the ground and the marble falling off the wall, that despite all that, it was like he just couldn't fathom that they were actually in any real danger inside of this stairwell.
[203] thought they were going to be just fine.
[204] But of course, as history would show us, Michael was wrong.
[205] Around the time that Michael was scolded for his off -color joke, about 200 feet to the south of the tower they were in, another passenger airplane, United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the south side of the south tower.
[206] All 65 passengers on board, which included the five hijackers, were killed instantly.
[207] The plane was traveling at about 590 miles an hour, when it struck the South Tower, and it hit between floors 77 and 85, killing hundreds of people in the impact site and trapping hundreds more above it.
[208] And then just like the North Tower, after this plane detonated inside of the South Tower, it sent thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel down these destroyed elevator shafts, igniting fires on many floors below.
[209] Despite being so physically close to this second plane crash, Michael didn't hear it, and apparently no one else in the stairwell it either, or they just didn't recognize it for what it was.
[210] And so Michael and the others just continued walking down the stairwell thinking everything was fine.
[211] Around 9 .30 a .m., so that's about 40 minutes into their evacuation, Michael and the rest of his co -workers reached floor 40, and this was the first time they saw firefighters, New York firefighters, running up the stairs to go fight this fire.
[212] And so naturally, Michael and the others asked the firemen if they knew what had caused this fire, what was going on, but the firefighters just said, look, we don't know.
[213] We don't know.
[214] know exactly what caused this, but go down, it's safe down there.
[215] Michael would remember about seeing these firefighters that they all had a similar look on their face.
[216] They had this kind of stoic, just kind of neutral look on their face, very calm, very mission -oriented as they charged up the stairs and all this heavy gear.
[217] But years later, as Michael reflected on that situation, he thinks about their faces, and now he believes the look they had on their face was actually fear.
[218] And unfortunately, most of the firefighters that ran past Michael and the others and went up to fight that fire in the North Tower, they would all perish.
[219] A few minutes later, Michael and the others made it down to floor 30, and right around the time they got there, they heard people behind them, above them from higher floors, yelling for people to get out of the way.
[220] And so Michael turned around and looked up, and he saw there was some people carrying other people down the stairs, and they were trying to clear a path to get these injured people down.
[221] And so Michael, like everybody else, kind of sucked up against the side of the wall to let these people pass.
[222] And when they did, he saw there were two injured people.
[223] There was one guy who his whole shirt had been burned off of his back, exposing his bare back, and he had burns on the top of his shoulder.
[224] And then the other injured person was this woman with severe burns on her face.
[225] After they passed, Michael and the people around him kind of got back in line and just kept moving down the stairs, but now they were on edge.
[226] Everyone was kind of thinking to themselves, you know, how bad is this fire?
[227] Who else got hurt?
[228] What actually happened to up there.
[229] A few minutes later, Michael and his coworkers got down to floor 20, and that's when they saw there was this firefighter yelling to everyone asking, hey, does anybody know CPR?
[230] I need volunteers who knows CPR.
[231] And so Michael, he had been trained in CPR 10 years earlier in college, and while he hadn't done it in a while, he felt confident that push came to shove, he could do it.
[232] And so he, and another guy that was near him, volunteered to be these CPR guys.
[233] And so they went over to this firefighter who explained to them, you know, stay right here and be ready to do CPR on anyone that is brought down to you.
[234] And if anybody else needs help, I need you to try to help them too.
[235] So just basically be here as a resource.
[236] And so Michael and the other volunteer say, no problem and they stay right there.
[237] And the firefighter grabs all of his heavy equipment and he charges up the stairs.
[238] Over the next 10 minutes, Michael and this other guy did not need to perform CPR.
[239] However, they did assist one very heavy man that was having a very hard time breathing.
[240] They helped walk him down all the way to the bottom.
[241] And then Michael and the other volunteer, they turned around and ran back up to the 20th floor.
[242] And as they're running up, they're asking everyone around them, hey, do you need help?
[243] Do you need help?
[244] But nobody needed any help.
[245] And so when they got back up to the 20th floor, they were there for a couple more minutes.
[246] And then by about 9 .50 a .m., there were no more people coming down the stairs.
[247] It was just Michael and this other volunteer.
[248] And so that's when they decided that it's time to go.
[249] And so they bounded down the stairs and they got all the way to the ground floor at about 9 .55 a .m. And Michael, he opened the door that led out to the ground floor, which was the plaza level, and what he saw was the worst thing he had ever seen in his life.
[250] The people that were located in the North and South Tower above the impact sites would have eventually realized they did not have an escape route.
[251] Stairwells were blocked, the elevators didn't work, and so naturally the only way to go was up.
[252] And so I'm sure initially there was some speculation amongst these people that a helicopter could come up and get them or some other way they were going to be rescued.
[253] We just need to get higher and higher and higher.
[254] But eventually they got to the roof and they got to the upper levels and there was no rescue.
[255] And the fire that was raging below them from the jet fuel.
[256] It was growing and creeping higher and higher and all this black smoke was leaking into the vents of these upper floors.
[257] And so the heat and the smoke and the flames, it was driving these people to the absolute top of this building And eventually these people who were trapped, they would have realized there isn't a rescue that's going to get us in time or doomed.
[258] And so these poor people in their final moments, they picked up their phones and they called their loved ones one more time.
[259] And so there are all these totally heartbreaking messages of these trapped people calling their family to say how much they love them and how much they're going to miss them.
[260] And there are an equal number of messages of these people calling their family to say how scared they are, that they're not ready to die.
[261] Eventually, the fire, the heat, the smoke would become so intense that these trapped people would actually go outside the building and would hang on to the windows dangling hundreds and hundreds of feet off the ground because there was nowhere else to go.
[262] And then eventually, when all hope was lost, these mothers and fathers, these wives, these husbands, these sisters, these brothers, these daughters, these sons, these friends, they began jumping off of the tower to their death.
[263] Almost all of them jumped alone, but at least one eyewitness saw a couple holding hands.
[264] One woman who was falling in a final act of modesty held her skirt down.
[265] Other people tried to make parachutes out of tablecloths and curtains, but as soon as they jumped, these things were ripped from their hands.
[266] The fall from the upper floors of both towers took about 10 seconds, and when their bodies hit the ground, they weren't just broken.
[267] They were obliterated.
[268] And so Michael, when he opens this door, he steps out into this lobby that's at the plaza level, and he turns and he looks at this huge set of windows that look out into this 200 foot long stretch of open pavement that separates the north tower that he is in with the south tower, and scattered all across this stretch of pavement are about 50 different bodies.
[269] The majority of these people had jumped.
[270] The rest were either people that had fallen out of the tower from the impact of the plane, or they were passengers on board one of the two planes that actually hit the towers.
[271] Michael had no way of processing what he was looking at because as far as he understood, there was just this fire at the top of the tower he was in.
[272] How could all these people be out here?
[273] What happened to them?
[274] And so as he's scanning the absolute horrors outside, he also sees there is blood all over the windows.
[275] And that was from the people that had fallen close to the building.
[276] And so as he's seeing all this blood and this carnage, he just puts his hand up over his eyes.
[277] He doesn't want to look at what's going on outside.
[278] You just can't possibly process it.
[279] And so instead, he and this other guy, they say, okay, let's not go outside.
[280] Because if we go outside, something could land on us, a person could land on us.
[281] We don't know what's going on out there.
[282] Let's go down one more level.
[283] Because there was another set of stairs right ahead of them in the lobby that went down to the shopping mall.
[284] And this shopping mall extended outside away from the tower.
[285] And there was street access, maybe a half a block away.
[286] And so Michael and this other guy, he was with, they run over to the stairs, they go down into the shopping mall, and down there it's dark and the sprinklers are going off, and they just start running through this mall, trying to get to these stairs that'll bring them back up to the street level.
[287] And as they're going, they run into another group of people that are doing the same thing.
[288] And one of the people that was with this group was the same woman who had been trapped up in the bathroom on Michael's floor.
[289] And so Michael put his arm around her and was just kind of being comforting and they start walking together.
[290] And Michael realized she was very shaken up by the bodies she had seen outside.
[291] And even though Michael was very shaken up by it too, he comforted her and said, you know, we got to keep going, we got to keep going.
[292] And so the two of them just kept on going until they see up ahead, there's an emergency worker with a glow stick kind of waving people to go, go, go towards the stairs, get up onto the street, get out of here, evacuate as quickly as possible.
[293] And so Michael and this woman, they run right past the emergency worker.
[294] They're not even asking any questions at this point.
[295] They just want to get away from whatever it is that's going on.
[296] and so they get to the base of the stairs when michael hears this really loud cracking sound coming from somewhere outside and so michael and this woman they run up the stairs they get out to the street and outside it's totally chaos there's people running around everywhere there are papers all over the ground and other office furnishings there are things on fire and michael just instinctively looks to his right he looks down the road because that's generally where he thought he heard that really loud cracking sound coming from and so he found himself looking at the Millennium Hotel, which is this beautiful hotel on the other side of the road from where he was standing a little ways down to the right.
[297] And the windows of the front of the Millennium Hotel are like mirrors.
[298] They're very reflective.
[299] And he found himself just looking at the reflection on the Millennium Hotel, and he noticed it was reflecting the South Tower.
[300] And the South Tower was basically across the street from the Millennium Hotel, basically a half block to the right of where Michael and this woman were.
[301] And as he's staring at this reflection, of the South Tower, he suddenly realizes what that loud cracking sound was.
[302] It was the sound of the South Tower, which was still full of hundreds and hundreds of people collapsing.
[303] And so Michael is watching this South Tower collapse through this reflection on the front of the Millennium Hotel.
[304] He snaps out of it and turns and he and the woman just run back down into the mall as fast as they can.
[305] They can hear this unbelievably loud sound of thousands and thousands of tons of just metal crashing down almost directly on top of them, and Michael makes it to the bottom of the stairs in the mall and just leaps onto his stomach and covers his head, and he's yelling his wife and his son's name because that's all he can think about, and then suddenly everything goes black.
[306] And at the same time, suddenly his mouth, his ears, his nose, everything is just packed with what felt like sand, when in reality it was this white dust that was made from the collapse of the South Tower, and it was made up of pulverized concrete and asbestos and other very toxic chemicals.
[307] So as all these building materials are falling down into the mall, also there was this rush of this white dust.
[308] And so Michael is just laying there, he can barely breathe, and he's hearing all these big pieces of metal come smashing down all around him, and he's getting ready mentally to just die at any moment.
[309] But after a few agonizing seconds, the sounds of the falling materials from the South Tower began to cease after the collapse was basically done, and suddenly Michael began to hear the sound of other people crying and moaning.
[310] And so Michael suddenly was acutely aware that he had survived the collapse of the South Tower, but now was almost certainly going to die a slow and horrible death trapped underneath all of this debris.
[311] And so in total darkness, Michael just began trying to pull his arms and legs out from whatever it was that was on top of him.
[312] And amazingly, he got all of his limbs out.
[313] And right away, he began trying to pull this soot and this dust out of his nose and his mouth and his ears.
[314] And as soon as his mouth was clear, he began vomiting, and then he was trying to catch his breath.
[315] But every breath he took in, there was all the smoke in the air, so it was very hard to breathe.
[316] And so Michael managed to rip off his shirt, which was already soaked from the sprinklers when they first came in, and he wrapped it around his head, so it was a little bit easier to breathe.
[317] And so breathing through his shirt, Michael finally composes himself, and then Michael, he's thinking to himself, I don't know what I'm supposed to do right now, but I know I need to move.
[318] And so he just started crawling.
[319] He has no idea where he's going.
[320] It is truly pitch black.
[321] But he's just kind of low crawling up and down and over things.
[322] He doesn't know where he's going.
[323] And then there's this miracle.
[324] He sees a little ways away from him a light comes on.
[325] He didn't know what this light was, but he's in survival mode and at this point light represents hope.
[326] And so he just started crawling towards this light and he managed to go up and over all this debris.
[327] And finally he gets to this clearing where this light is.
[328] And it turns out the light was a flashlight held by a fireman who had also survived the collapse of the South Tower.
[329] And so Michael crawls over right near the sky and realizes he can stand up.
[330] There's enough clearance.
[331] He stands up and he looks at this fireman who's this big guy with a mustache and Michael says to him, what are we going to do now?
[332] And so this fireman apparently was remarkably composed and he doesn't really say much to Michael.
[333] Instead, he just pulls his axe off his shoulder and kind of gestures for Michael to follow him.
[334] And so Michael naturally follows this fireman.
[335] And so he leads them over to this wall and the fireman reaches out and he rubs the wall with his glove and he rubs away a lot of soot and dirt to reveal a glass window.
[336] And so he tells Michael to stand back and the fireman winds up and he smashes this window.
[337] And on the other side of this window is this border's bookstore.
[338] And in the middle of this borders bookstore is a staircase that goes up to the main floor and out onto the street.
[339] And so Michael thanked this fireman and then climbed through this opening into this bookstore.
[340] And as he was climbing through, he looked back towards the rubble and he saw there were lots of other people that were crawling out of the rubble and were getting in line to also climb into the bookstore.
[341] And so Michael, once he was through, he waited for a few people and then they together ran to the staircase.
[342] They went up to the first floor and they went out to the street.
[343] And when they got out there, it was like the apocalypse.
[344] There was that white dust over everything, over people, cars, buildings, everything.
[345] They could barely see in front of them.
[346] And so Michael just reflexively began running away from the towers.
[347] And as he's running, he sees there's this woman just standing in the road and she's weeping and Michael goes up to her and he says are you okay can I help you and she is totally non -responsive and so eventually Michael just leaves her and keeps on running and after a couple of seconds he sees there's this overturned food cart on the side of the road so there's no one nearby he runs over he gets two iced teas out of the cooler he opens one and pours it over his face to kind of clear his face off and then he pour some into his mouth to wash his mouth out and then he just keeps on running and again everything around him is just covered in this dust and so as he's running he eventually sees there's this cameraman that's got his camera trained in the direction of the towers, but the cameraman is not using his camera.
[348] Instead, he's hunched over his camera and he's just weeping.
[349] Like he can't even report the news.
[350] And so Michael just kept on running and running, and at some point he heard another very loud cracking sound behind him, but he didn't even turn around.
[351] He just kept on running.
[352] It would turn out it was the sound of his tower, the north tower collapsing as well.
[353] And just like the south tower, there were hundreds of people inside it when And it fell.
[354] And so Michael would eventually just continue running until he reached New York University, NYU.
[355] That was where his brother was working and he hoped he would be there so he could tell him that he survived, that he was okay.
[356] But when he got to NYU, his brother wasn't there.
[357] However, there were staff people there that saw how horrible Michael looked.
[358] He was covered head to toe in the dust.
[359] He looked crazed.
[360] He had blood all over him.
[361] And so they took him in.
[362] They cleaned him up and they gave him a phone and he was able to get in touch with his wife and he told her that he was okay.
[363] And his wife and his entire family, they were convinced he was dead.
[364] They had been watching on TV.
[365] They had seen the tower collapse.
[366] They knew he was up on the 81st floor.
[367] And so they really believed he was dead.
[368] But unbelievably, he survived.
[369] Michael would ultimately make a full physical recovery, although he would have to have several surgeries to remove the 147 pieces of fiberglass that had embedded in his eyes.
[370] Because when the tower collapsed and all that dust and soot got pushed into his mouth and his ears and his nose and his eyes.
[371] There were little pieces of fiberglass that basically turned into splinters on his eyes.
[372] Like most other 9 -11 survivors, Michael thinks to himself, you know, why me?
[373] Why did I survive when so many other people didn't?
[374] But Michael tries not to dwell on that.
[375] Instead, he focuses on trying to honor the memories of the people they lost, and he focuses on trying to be the best father to his sons he can possibly be.
[376] So that's going to do it, guys.
[377] Before you leave, please go into the description and check out the links to the charities I've provided, these are extremely highly rated charities that are still providing support to 9 -11 victims, their families, and first responders.
[378] The ripple effects of this attack are still felt today by lots of people.
[379] And so these charities I've identified are a way to support people that really need it.
[380] And so I have already donated to all of the charities listed.
[381] So I'm telling you, these are incredible organizations.
[382] They are worth giving your money to.
[383] And so that's going to do it, guys.
[384] Until next time, see.
[385] Hey, Prime Members.
[386] You can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad free on Amazon Music.
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[389] If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good.
[390] You are a fan of the Strange Dark and Mysterious.
[391] And if that's the case, then I've got some good news.
[392] We just launched a brand new Strange Dark and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, and as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome.
[393] In this free, weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard -of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between.
[394] Each story is totally true and totally terrifying.
[395] Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a prime member, you can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.