Editorial

AT THE DEATH’s DOOR

Recollections by an eye-witness

Dear Editor-in-Chief,

Following is a transcript by my friend, Donald Golden, concerning his experience in being rescued from the debris and the wreckage of what once was the World Trade Center in New York. On September 11, Don was participating in a seminar when the terrorists attacked these two monumental buildings.

Don is a 44 year old financial trader of Morgan Stanley investment banking firm. Don has been to Azerbaijan twice and is genuinely fond of the people of this country.

Best Wishes, John Vafai

By Donald Golden

Morgan Stanley financial trader

It was a beautiful day in New York. I was in town for training and was intending to spend three weeks there. I was booked at a small hotel on East 76th Street, half a block from Central Park, diagonally across from the Carlyle Hotel. I work at Morgan Stanley, a giant international investment banking firm with headquarters in New York. It operates around the world and is a leader in many areas of finance. It has the reputation as one of the most prestigious and successful firms in the world, and is a pillar of the New York and global business community.

I had been assigned to share a room with a young trainee from Rochester. It was our second day of training and my roommate had set his alarm for 5am. That gave me plenty of time to eat breakfast and get dressed. I was running late on Sunday and I had forgotten to pack dark socks and had only white running socks with me.

I felt like the rube from Baltimore with my Navy Blue suit, black shoes and white socks! Rather than riding the chartered bus, I knew I had enough time to walk down Madison Avenue and take the Lexington Ave. Express subway to Morgan Stanley's training facility at the World Trade Center. Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant in the Trade Center and had nearly four thousand employees there.

It was 6:30am and a cool, breezy dawn. I had an hour to get downtown. Madison Avenue was elegant and quiet with all the luxury boutiques polished and prepared for the new, fall day. Several frisky, pampered pets and their owners were out for a morning walk and it made me think of my Dalmatian, Ajax. It was a great day in New York. I made it to 60th St. a little before 7am and took the express train down to the Trade Center and was there by 7:15.

A Farmer's Market had been set up on the South Side of the Trade Center and the produce looked incredibly good. I wondered how he got from rural Pennsylvania to the heart of the city, knowing that most Amish will not drive cars and still rely on horse and wagon for transportation. I also wondered how he felt about conducting his business at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, rather than from a roadside in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania or northern Maryland where the Amish have a large community and usually sell their goods and produce. This is the epicenter of the most sophisticated and high level finance and trade in the world and this man is at its' front door selling fruits and vegetables! It was so incongruous. My mind drifted and I also thought about how early these people must arrive to be set up by 7am. I passed by and really thought about buying some peaches, but maybe at lunch I would come down.

I left the small market and entered into the lobby of Tower Two. My temporary identification card failed to open the turnstiles into the elevator lobby and I went to the security desk. Apparently, on Monday my bank card and a delivery notification from the Post Office had fallen out of my wallet and someone had picked them up and returned them to Security. My pass card had been flagged and I was successfully stopped on the way up.

I got to the lobby of the training area on the 61st Floor early and called my kids. I thought I could talk to them before they went to school. I met some instructors in the lobby and told them that I had seen Security and picked up my cards. Then I went into the classroom.

It was a huge classroom and covered one third of an entire floor of the Trade Center. The room was on the southeast corner of the Tower facing the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. After the session we had a break and we all went to the antechamber/lobby area for coffee and to stretch. Near the end of our break, we noticed papers flying around outside the building. My classmates were crowded three to four deep near the south facing windows, with the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor in the background. I saw some reddish brown smoke or dust blowing around. It was odd to see smoke this high up and I thought the paper must be for a parade, or that some maintenance man had tipped over a dumpster on the roof and was going to catch hell for letting that paper fly all over Manhattan.

The instructors told us to stay away from the windows and go back into the classroom. The alarms started sounding and we thought it was a fire drill. "Kind of wimpy alarms", I thought, "for a building this size!" I also thought that it was a nice way to extend the break and I could run over to Century 21, a discount variety store, and buy some dark socks. I looked back at my suit coat and briefcase, and thought they were safe and I would be right back. Also the instructors wanted us off the floor NOW. Immediately, the instructors shouted at us to evacuate the floor and guided us to the nearest stairways. Most of my classmates trundled as a polite mass to the stairwells, while a handful of us followed another instructor to a back stairwell. Their efficiency and sincerity was impressive and indelible, no one was going to be left behind. These guys were heroes and among the ones I credit for saving my life.

The alarms stopped, but we were told to go down the emergency exits anyway. ( I later heard that one of the instructors on the north side of the building saw the first plane hit Tower One. He knew the severity of the problem and without the alarms going off, got all the other instructors to get us down the stairs.) Everyone was extremely quiet and calm as we wound our way down the endless flights of stairs. We were the only ones on the staircase, no other floors were joining us and we kept up a good pace with no conversation. No one panicked and no one talked.

Over the PA system we kept hearing that "Building Two ees…secure. You may return to your office or stay where you are. Building Two ees …. secure." The weakness of the announcement did not instill confidence and we continued down. A woman behind me whined about having to walk down 61 floors and wanted to take the elevator. I suspect that she did not know that the elevators were probably disabled and a bad place to be in a fire.

At this time, no one knew what had happened over at Tower One. As usual, I had my cell phone and around the fiftieth floor I received a call from a co-worker, Frank Scicchitano, at Morgan Stanley in Baltimore. Frank is a former New Yorker, he told me that a hijacked plane had been crashed into Tower One, but Building Two was fine. At the time, that was true. I announced to everyone that could hear me in the stairwell that the other Tower had been hit by a plane and that we were fine. There was a genuine feeling of relief at that moment and everyone started talking.

I met a classmate on the landing of the 31st floor and I stopped to chat as we let the rest of the people behind us go down. We talked for a few minutes in the doorway when suddenly the building swayed about five feet and we heard an explosion. The lights went out and I noticed big cracks in the concrete walls. Dirt, dust and debris started falling from the ceiling. There was an unusual smell that was neither paper or plastic burning and later I found out it was jet fuel. We looked at each other and without speaking, started down the steps at the end of the class. As we went a few floors lower the stairwell started to fill up with dust and smoke. I knew this was not supposed to happen in these buildings and thought the worst.

Since I was lucky enough to have my cell phone, I immediately called Alexandra and Max at school. I had no idea that a second plane had also hit our building. Miraculously, I reached Park School and told the secretary that I wanted to speak to my kids, that this was an emergency. My call was transferred to the Middle School where Max is a sixth grader. I know the Middle School principal, Bonnie Rosenblatt, very well, she was Alexandra's second grade teacher before she became principal. Bonnie got Max on the phone immediately and I told him what was going on and where I was. I told him that I was at the Trade Center, but that I was in Tower Two and Frank had told me that there was a fire in Tower One. I told him I loved him very much and to have a great life and I said good bye.

I don't think he realized what I was telling him or what had happened. I told him not to hang up as I was anxious about losing my connection, then Alexandra got on the phone. I talked with her a while and more fully explained the situation. We still didn't realize at that moment exactly what had happened while I was on the 31st floor landing. I did not know that I was in the core of the inferno. As we walked lower, some interior construction workers coming down from the upper floors caught up with us and they were more aware of the situation. I still didn't want to hang up with my daughter, but I felt stupid having this conversation in the emergency stairwell while other people were scared and rushing to get down. I said good bye to Alexandra, assured her that we were going to get out, and kept walking down the stairs. (However, faster!) The construction workers were Hispanic and kept counting how many more flights down we had to go, viente y dos, viente uno…. They finally caught up to us at about the tenth floor. What I did not realize about the emergency stairs was that they do not appear to open onto every floor. You could go from the 10th floor to the 7th floor and not have an exit onto the intervening floors.

When we got down to the fourth floor the firemen were hustling up the stairs. They seemed like giants with their yellow jackets, all their equipment and hoses. They also looked so young and serious. They knew that the second airliner had crashed into the building and a giant fireball was exploding above our heads. And they ran up the stairs into suicide.

We finally got down to the bottom and policewomen grabbed us and pulled us from the stairwell out into the darkened Concourse. "Keep your head down and walk fast" and we did. The magnitude of the disaster started to became apparent as I looked around. The lights were out, debris was everywhere, the ceiling had fallen down and huge slabs of marble had fallen off the wall and were broken on the floor. The Security Desk, where I was earlier, was abandoned and several firemen and police hustled us around the corner and up a stopped escalator.

(To be continued)