911 Transcripts

I decided to make a blog about 9/11 because of all the false claims that are made by the so called truthers about what had happened on that fateful day. And the best way i thought was to go through all the transcripts that were made from the interviews with the fire-fighters, policemen and emergency personnel. You can use the search engine on the right to look for quotes. On the right i have also added links for reference material. For transcripts see link on the right.

Transcripts 500-510

FIREFIGHTER THOMAS TURILLI

We were waiting in I guess like a little almost like a cutout area of the lobby, an elevator bank. One elevator was only working out of like four elevators in that bank. The door closed, they went up, and it just seemed a couple seconds and all of a sudden you just heard like it almost actually that day sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight, and then just a huge wind gust just came and my officer just actually took all of us and just threw us down on the ground and kind of just jumped on top of us, laid on top of us. There were rocks falling and all that. The lights were still on at that point and all of a sudden the lights went out and you couldn't see anything. At this point, there's a guy from my firehouse on his way up in the elevator. They got up to the 22nd floor and 13 Truck got off the elevator. He said to the guy -- this is before the actual collapse happened. He said to him stay here with us, stay here with me, because if this elevator closes, I don't have any tools. As soon as he said that, the elevator closed and that's when the actual collapse of the building happened. He made his way out into a stairwell and he made his way down.

At that point we were kind of standing on the street and I looked to my left and actually I noticed the tower was down. I didn't even know what it was when we were in there. It just seemed like a huge explosion.

Then we started walking actually back towards Tower 1 and a cop and a Battalion Chief came up to us and said just start running the other way. The other tower is coming down.
Q. Who told you this; a cop?
A. A cop and a Battalion Chief. We were kind of like standing next to them. I stayed with him -- I was with the Battalion Chief at one point and I started running up the street and I kind of lost track of all the guys I was with. The two other guys who I actually brought to the ambulance, the ambulance guy said you've got to get out of the ambulance. They just started running towards the water. We started running, myself, the Battalion Chief, the cop, my Lieutenant was with me at that point, up West Street, and you just heard a rumbling, a huge amount of rumbling, and I just dove under a car, and I was with a guy from I think 138 Truck.

FIREFIGHTER EDWARD KENNEDY

Q. Ed, just tell us the incident as you recall it on that day.
A. We weren't dispatched until the second plane hit. We were watching. It was in the house watch we were watching as -- you know, we turned the TV on like everybody else, saw that there was a hole in the side of the building, weren't sure whether it was a little plane or was it an implosion or an explosion. But as we watched the TV, all of a sudden the second plane flew in there and hit, and with that we knew right away, we thought it was an act of terrorism.

We parked on West Street. I really don't know exactly where because there were so many rigs and stuff but back a ways. We had to walk down a few blocks to get down. The lobby command post at that time -- we took extra bottles with us, and the lobby command post was set up across West Street. I guess it had originally been in the towers, I heard, and the flames had come down into the lobby and they had moved across West Street up in front of I guess it's --
Q. The Financial Center?
A. -- the Financial Center.

So when I saw that and I saw our two guys were going over, I said to the Lieutenant, well, I'm just going to walk south down here a little bit, tell these guys that are pulling in, 113 Truck had just pulled up and they were on the west side of the street and there was another rig coming up, and as I said to the guy with me, Richie Boeri and I, I said to Richie, well, okay, we're going to walk down there and just tell these guys not to block, you know, keep the road open. We took two steps, there was a tremendous boom, explosion, we both turned around, and the top of the
building was coming down at us. With this I just turned to Richie and said run.

At that moment I'm thinking, well, maybe I should go in the water because there were boats in the water. I'm starting to get a little paranoid now and saying maybe I should take my stuff off, jump in the water, get in a boat, at least I'll be all right, because I didn't know -- at that point I didn't have any idea, you know, I didn't see the other building come down. We just heard it rumbling and crashing and people screaming that it was coming down and we ran and jumped in. I mean, I never knew the first building that came down, No. 2, I didn't know that the whole building came down because I really couldn't see. What I saw was the top of the building, the top quarter of the building come down, and I never knew until later on that the whole bottom, that the rest of it had pancaked down, because I couldn't see because of all the dusk and the smoke and even, I don't know, how many minutes later, however it was.

We were on Liberty Street and we came out into there and it just look like something that -- it looked like a bomb, of course, had gone off, almost like a nuclear bomb. That's all I could think of. I've never been at war. I equated it to being like when I saw something like when I was a kid and I saw Godzilla in the movies or something, when he crushes those buildings and stuff like that, that's what it looked like to me.

That was the only Mayday that I remember, and to tell you the truth, the only guy that really stands out in my mind that I remember being on the radio was Chief Visconti. I remember him talking and giving directions and this and that. But this is as the day was going on and, of course, there were so many transmissions going over. I remember him screaming about 7, No. 7, that they wanted everybody away from 7 because 7 was definitely going to collapse, they don't know when, but it's definitely going to come down, just get the hell out of the way, everybody get away from it, make sure you're away from it, that's an order, you know, stuff like that.

FIREFIGHTER PAUL BESSLER

Okay. I'll start with Engine 1's arrival to the building. We responded to the north tower and we proceeded up to the 22nd floor. When we got to the 22nd floor, there was a staging area for I believe it was the Port Authority Police, and our proby was having chest pains, and my Lieutenant, Andy Desperito, gave an urgent for Firefighter Craig Dunn, probationary firefighter, which kind of slowed us down a little bit. We would have continued up, but we wanted to make sure he was getting assistance. His urgent was given and it was answered. I don't know by who. So we were going to proceed up. He was in good hands with the Port Authority cops. While we were in the hallway, we were taking a breather, the south tower fell. We all thought it was a secondary explosion or maybe a plane, but we never knew that the south tower fell. We just knew, whatever it was, that it was really bad. So the lights had gone out and the ceiling tiles fell and we all turned our flashlights on and went into the staircase to get shelter because the shafts were open. On the 22nd floor, some of the elevator shafts were actually open. I don't know who had said it but they said, you know, get into the staircase, and we all went in the staircase. The emergency lighting was on. Andy actually started going up the staircase, which, in my mind, I thought he's not going up the stairs. After what just happened, this is not good. There's something we don't know. He was on a mission to go up the stairs. The brothers were up. Just at that point, my radio came clear as day, "Imminent collapse. This was a terrorist attack. Evacuate."
That's exactly what I heard. I think that was Chief Picciotto that was giving the order. We relayed that again, hoping that the brothers would hear it above us, and I remember the look on Andy's face, like apprehension that we were going to leave this building.

Just as we got towards the walkway, I looked back because I heard what I thought was another jet, and it was the building on its way down already. My guys had just came out. They were on the apron and they were just going to cross the barricade and stuff was -- the debris was on its way down and we just ran.

FIREFIGHTER CRAIG CARLSEN

As we got down to the location, we got dropped off a couple of blocks away. I don't really recall what street we got dropped off on, but I think it was Barclay and West. The lieutenant and I traveled down to where Ladder 8's rig was to find out, see if we could hook up with Ladder, looking for the command post. I proceeded into One World Trade Center into the front lobby. Just making it into the door, I ran into 3 Truck, members of 3 Truck, which told us that there were numerous people trapped in elevator cars and that they needed forcible entry saws.

I guess about three minutes later you just heard explosions coming from building two, the south tower. It seemed like it took forever, but there were about ten explosions. At the time I didn't realize what it was. We realized later after talking and finding out that it was the floors collapsing to where the plane had hit. We then realized the building started to come down. At that point everybody at the command post took off into -- there were two garages across. I guess it was by Two World Financial Center next to the Winter Garden, just a little bit south of the north bridge. Everybody took off into an underground garage. I made it in about 20 feet inside the door, and I tripped over an EMT who I guess broke his leg and was disabled. I pretty much just stayed there and tried to comfort him. Before I had gone into the garage, I grabbed a mask. At that point, that's when the building started to come down. It was already coming down, and you could see the force of air coming towards you. I was just trying to drag the EMT down the ramp. That's when the blast came, and now you're just trying to don the mask.

Q. When the north tower was coming down, did you have any indication? Did you hear the explosions again? Did anybody warn you like they heard on the radio or anything like that?
A. I didn't have a radio, because we were coming from the medical office. So I never did get a radio. So I wouldn't have heard that, if somebody had said it. You did hear the explosions. Of course after the first one -- the first one was pretty much looking at it like in awe. You didn't realize that this was really happening because you kind of just stood there and you didn't really react as fast as you thought you were going to. The second one coming down, you knew the explosions. Now you're very familiar with it. Of course when I looked up, all I could see was the antenna coming down. You pretty much just pick up and take off.

FIREFIGHTER MICHAEL MACKO

We were making our way down West Street. We got just about south of the north overpass, about 50 feet past that, when the first collapse occurred. I looked up. I was awed by – I thought it exploded at the top. Everybody I guess at that point started running, and I luckily ran north where I came from to try to run out from under this – which happened to be a collapse, realized I couldn’t. I was going to stay under the overpass. I realized I couldn’t get out from under the collapse. I dove under an ESU truck that was facing north on the west side of West street. I dove under that and waited for the building to come down. When the building did come down, I actually thought I was trapped, and the truck was blown off me, pushed off me, I guess. It was not there. At that point I was just really shocked and didn’t know what was going on at that point.

MR. ANTHONY DeMAIO

So we're starting towards the scene. It had to be maybe -- we were practically underneath it. We were on the other side of the pedestrian bridge. Definitely we were on the other side of the bridge. All of a sudden -- yeah, we were, because the pedestrian bridge goes over to the high school. That's when we heard the rumble. We looked up, and the second tower was coming down. We turned around. We run out of here. I lose my boss. I couldn't find him for a while. I continued running north. Then after a while everything started to settle down, I started to work my way back.

When we came up on -- over here somewhere. It was actually -- I forget the name of the street. North End?
Q. Had the second building collapsed yet?
A. Yeah. No, what happened, like I said, we were walking towards the scene. That's when we heard the rumbling and the second building started coming down. That's when we ran.
Q. So you got there after the first building collapsed?
A. Yes, after the first building collapsed and just prior to the second building coming down.

MR. MICHAEL FELICE

We passed underneath a bridge, a foot bridge. We passed underneath a foot bridge. I remember that. I'm looking at this tower, and Tony DeMaio was with me. I can remember telling him, "Tony, I don't believe what I'm seeing. I can't believe this, you know, the smoke pouring out." All at once as I'm looking at it, I see chunks of the tower starting to come down and it was picking up speed. I can remember saying, "It's coming down." Right at that point firefighters were rushing past us. I almost got knocked over. I turned around and said, "Tony, run." I can remember turning around, and things were flying out of my pockets. I couldn't worry about that at that point, because I was running. I ran to the left, and Tony ran to the right. I'm looking back, and I said, "God, look at this!" I can remember saying that. I could see this cloud following.

FIREFIGHTER KIRK LONG

We made it up to the 22nd floor. We stood there for a couple minutes. I believe Andy Desperito talked to the battalion through the fire warden phones. We did locate somebody at the end of the hall, but everything was blown out. The ceiling had fallen. The drop ceiling had blown to the floor. Some of the walls were blown out. So Andy and I had crawled down the hallway to get to the Port Authority command post. After that we went back to the members, and when the building started to shake. I don't remember anybody telling us to get out, but there was a Port Authority person with us and I believe he had orders to leave. Again, I think that's maybe why we were going. Let me see what else.
Q. Do you know what stairway it was?
A. I believe it was B. Again, I was watching every person coming down, looked at their face, just to make them happy that they were getting out and we were going in and everything was okay. We were also with 16 Engine on the 22^nd floor. When the building shook, I was right next to an elevator shaft with Andy, crawling down the hallway. I was waiting for a flame to come up from the basement because I believed something in the basement blew up. Nothing like that happened, so I was waiting for a flame to come down from a plane. Nothing like that happened. Still at that time I never knew that the south tower had gone down.

I get outside, still helping people out, still not knowing the south tower had gone down. We get outside, help some old man out. We helped him halfway down the block, I guess. We heard a noise like the plane was still coming in -- like another plane was coming in. We turned around to look, and that's when our building was going down. I was covered up with debris. I couldn't see anything, couldn't talk, choking from all the dust. I had my cylinder, but of course I was out of air from walking down all the steps and helping out the PB officer.

FIREFIGHTER PATRICK MARTIN

That's where we saw Timmy Stackpole standing there. We looked and he was just on the west side of West Street, basically, just north of the south pedestrian bridge. I don't know how long it was after that that the towers came down. We were looking up. You saw the smoke coming out. We really didn't have an assignment yet. Our lieutenant came back. I can't remember if he actually gave us an assignment of what we were going to do or what, but it was right then that we heard the noise. My lieutenant said he looked down at the first floor, and he auto see the first floor of the south tower like exploding out. I looked up. I looked up, and the sky was filled with that debris cloud. You could see the debris coming down, pretty much toward us. We were standing underneath it. At that point there we made 180 degree turn, and we started running south on West Street. I'm pretty sure we made it under the south pedestrian bridge. I don't know whether we got all the way to Albany Street or not, but we were able to make a turn and we were alongside the building. We didn't know that the whole tower had come down until later on. We heard it and we knew -- the whole sky was filled with the debris. You could see it coming down. Whatever it was was coming right at us.

This time I came up. I came up because we were by the water. We came up Albany. I went north on whatever street, End Street, to about Liberty Street and went back to the debris field. There was a lot of debris here. Then I heard the noise again. I don't even remember seeing anything of the north tower coming down. I don't know if I saw it or not. Climbed out of the debris field, and I was alongside Liberty Street. I know I made the turn here. In the building there was like a cutout where I could get like underneath the building. There must have been a door there; I can't remember if there was. This time I remembered I was all by myself thinking, oh, now I'm going to die by myself. I could hear the building shaking as the building was coming down. You could hear the whole building shake.

Transcripts 481-500

EMT NAOMI NACIONAL

All of a sudden I heard this noise that was just horrible. I would say it sounded like a gate rattling or something like that. I look over at the people, and I go to look up. But I was sitting inside the ambulance, so not realizing that there's no way I could see. I saw nothing, but I heard it. Then I looked back, and I saw that almost everyone was gone. It was just like in a second I looked and no one was there. So I got out and I started running. That was when the second tower collapsed. It was right at the beginning of the second towers collapse.

PARAMEDIC KAREN LAMANNA

About halfway down, all of a sudden we heard screaming over the radio, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, there's another explosion, there's another plane.” My partner and I looked at each other and went, “Oh, my God we’re in trouble now.”

I no sooner throw the vehicle into park, I'm just throwing it into park, and the noise started of the first tower coming down. It was the most horrendous noise I ever heard of my life, and it's even hard for me to explain now what it sounds like. I know I’ve heard people describe it as thunderous. I'm sure it was thunderous. It was just many different things.

While we were doing that I remember hearing a plane flying overhead. I'm thinking, oh, my God, not again, not again. I looked up, we all looked up, and there were F-16’s. I was like oh, my God. We were in trouble then. Okay, that’s a first, F-16’s flying over New York.

PARAMEDIC JOEL PIERCE

That’s when we heard that sound, again, and I swear it sounded like another plane coming in, just that rumbling noise, that steadily – that continuous rumbling that was getting louder and louder, and I think the last words I had were, oh, God not another one. So we all ran. We got ourselves in this little corner right over here, right by the hexagon here, and we all just kind of cowered underneath this little overhang right up against the lobby windows. There was no place to run.
Q. The lobby windows of World Financial?
A. Financial, yes. The hexagon part.
Q. Okay.
A. There's a little corner right over here, and that’s where we basically just crowded together and kept our heads down and the rumbling noise just got immense at that point and I kind of looked up and all I saw was this huge dust cloud going right between the two buildings here, between 1 and 2, right where the – going literally between on Liberty Street, and it was just this huge wall, like this perfect wall of dust.

EMT JASON CHARLES

I grabbed her and the Lieutenant picked her up by the legs and we start walking over slowly to the curb, and then I heard an explosion from up, from up above, and I froze and I was like, oh, shit, I'm dead because I thought debris was going to hit me in the head and that was it. Then everybody stops and looks at the building and then they take off. The Lieutenant dropped her legs and ran. The triage center, everybody who was sitting there hurt and, oh, you know, help me, they got up and everybody together got up and ran. I looked at them like why are they running? I look over my shoulder and I says, oh, shit, and then I turned around and looked up and that’s when I saw the tower coming down. I saw the – it looked like the top, maybe 70, 60 floors coming off the building, and I had stood there thinking maybe the towers were not going to hit me. Then I looked closer and two pieces of the debris fly over my head about 40, 50 stories up, flying over my head, and I was like, shit, I'm out of here.

At one point – at some point, I'm not sure, but the building – that horrible twisting metal sound of a freight train or whatever – it's the worst sound in the world – stopped. But then it started again.

I was like, listen, guys, you guys got to get out of here because Tower 1 is going to fall because for some reason I had just known that the tower was going to come down at that point because when Tower 2 came down, the ground was actually shaking.

We start walking back there and then I heard a ground level explosion and I'm like holy shit, and then you heard that twisting metal wreckage again.

So I wound up in the gym. Those guys had a TV set and that’s when I found out we were under attack, because prior to that I thought Tower 2 blew up because the engine from the plane hit Tower 2 and exploded inside. It was like stupid, but that’s what I thought.

So at that point now, we were just waiting for patients and nobody was coming in. It was like, you know. Then we ran into another Lieutenant, Lieutenant Davis. I think he’s from Battalion 4, if I'm not mistaken.
(Tape side two)
-- towers and I heard six loud explosions, and those six loud explosions changed my mind real quick and I went back to the triage center and it was like you know what? Let me wait here.

CAPTAIN PAUL CONLON

He pointed to the lobby command post. Again, you could see the entrance. You can point to the lobby command post. He pointed to the entrance of Two World Trade Center. From where he was standing, you could see it. It was probably 200 yards or something. I look at it. There's burning debris everywhere. There was an engine company north of us, north of that pedestrian bridge, putting something out, putting out a car fire or a large thing of rubbish or something. There was burning debris on the ground.

We got about halfway there, and Dan Suhr gets hit with a jumper. He was right to my right and behind me. It was as if he exploded. It wasn’t like you heard something falling and you could jump out of the way. He gets hit.

FIREFIGHTER TIMOTHY BURKE

Then the building popped, lower than the fire, which I learned was I guess, the aviation fuel fell into the pit, and whatever floor it fell on heated up really bad and that’s why it popped at that floor. That’s the rumor I heard. But it seemed like I was going oh, my god, there is a secondary advice because that way the building popped I thought it was an explosion.

FIREFIGHTER ANGEL RIVERA

We reported over there. We were there about ten minutes before the chief told us go to the Marriott Hotel, go from the 14th floor up, search and evacuate all the floors. So we walk all the way up, no problem. Then we hear the explosion and debris falling. We were looking out of the windows and see body parts all over the place. It was scary. It was very sad. We searched 14, 15, went in one lobby, we came out the other way, we went in one stairway, came up -- when we hit the 19th floor, something horrendous happened. It was like a bomb went off. We thought we were dead. The whole building shook. The brick coming out of -- the door to the hallway into the hotel blew off like somebody had thrown it all over the place. It shook all over the place. We were thrown on the floor. We looked inside the lobby after everything calmed down, and everything was collapsed. The building was still shaking and we're still hearing explosions going on everywhere, so we decided let's get out of here. After we decided to get out of there, we dropped everything.

We met on that floor, and we were all safe. We were all like -- we could have been over here. What happened, we looked out of the window of the hotel, the wall, practically, because the window was all blown up. There was no way out.

Mike Mullan walked one flight up, and then the most horrendous thing happened. That's when hell came down. It was like a huge, enormous explosion. I still can hear it. Everything shook. Everything went black. The wind rushed, very slowly [sound], all the dust, all the -- and everything went dark.

When the second tower came down, we had no idea what was going on. We thought another plane, another bomb, another as a second device. We thought, this is it, we are dead. When that happened, as I told you before, everything was black. It was like being inside a storm or volcano or something, something horrendous. We said we're going to die, we're going to die, God help us.

FIREFIGHTER CRAIG DUNNE

We proceeded to go into the lobby of tower one. We got in there. The glass was down in the front. There was a gentleman -- you saw people that were jumping from the building. You had to look up and make sure you didn't get hit by any jumpers or anything. We saw a couple of people that were burnt on the outside of the building. There was a gentleman that was burnt inside when we went in.

So we stopped at 22. Lieutenant Desperito and I believe one other member of Engine 1 tried to make their way down the hallway on the 22nd floor off the B stairwell to the command post. We were there three or four minutes. The elevator shafts were blown out, so they had to make their way around -- the fire came down the elevator shafts. We were waiting, taking a breather. People were still coming down. All of a sudden we lost power in the building, and it felt like somebody was shaking the building. We didn't know what was going on, whether our building was coming down or something was shifting.

Lieutenant Desperito was with Mike Yarembinsky, and Mike was kind of waiting. He said, "Go ahead." He told us to meet outside, make sure everybody was together to meet outside and wait on the corner of Vesey and West. I believe we were there maybe two minutes, two and a half minutes. We heard the rumble, looked up, and the antenna started leaning and the whole building started pancaking towards us, coming down.

LT. THOMAS PIAMBINO

The civilian evacuation, in my opinion, was kind of orderly. They stayed to one side, and we stayed to the other side and worked our way up. I wasn't positive of what floors the fire was on. I didn't have any information. The handie-talkie information was pretty sketchy at best, and I don't know what point I heard this on the radio, but someone had said on the handie-talkie that there was a third aircraft inbound, and that is when I heard that, I specifically heard that, and at one point I guess – I don't know what -- where we were. In retrospect, I know what it was. The south tower had fallen, but at that time I didn't know what it was. All I heard was a tremendous explosion. The tower I was in shook really bad. It really shook bad, and my opinion, I thought it was another aircraft that hit the building.

We proceeded down the stairway, and we had some civilians with us, and we managed to get them down to the lobby. When I got down to the lobby – the lobby was in bad shape when I went up. It was worse when I came back down. All the elevator shaftway doors were blown out, and there was stuff coming down the -- just falling down the shafts, and the civilians had bogged down at the bottom of the stairs, because they were afraid to pass the elevator shafts, and there were piles of rubble all over the place.

We started to go north on West Street as fast as we could. We weren't running, but we were moving, walking pretty fast, and then the north tower started to fall, and my perception was that when I looked back at the tower as it was starting to come down -- I was booking -- was that there was -- I thought it exploded, and I didn't realize it had collapsed. It looked to me like an explosion, and you could feel the -- you could feel it coming, and they were still running away from it. I mean, you weren't going to out run it.

EMT EDWARD MARTINEZ

Once we were dispatched to Vesey and West Street, Vesey and West Street, upon entering the area, what we saw was like a total devastation from, I guess from the first plane that struck the tower. There were burnt cars. We saw – it was like a grayish – it was night. It was sunlight. There was a lot of light. It was a sunny clear day, but in that area it was a grayish area. The sun wasn’t shining. It was like a fog, like a big fog. We saw like I said, burned vehicles, some of them were on fire.

I was talking to him when I heard a loud, like a roaring noise, like a loud loud roaring noise. At the time I didn’t know what it was. I just looked up. All I could see because of the fog was there, you couldn’t see above. Your distance was limited. Once I heard that, I heard like a big explosion, a tremendous explosion, let me put it that way and a rumbling sound.

I got slapped down on the ground. Everything was hitting me, whatever was falling. At the time I didn’t know what it was. I thought maybe that the building that was on fire exploded. I didn’t know. I found out later on that the second plane had hit another building, the second tower.

There was a lot going on. There was a lot of noise. I remember hearing still a lot of noise. I don’t know if things were still falling, but all of a sudden we heard another rumbling sound and again with the smoke, you saw the smoke coming down and everybody just ran towards safety.

EMT BENJAMIN BADILLO

About 5 minutes after just sitting there, I hear this really bad thundering sound. I didn’t know what it was. It just sounded like thunder, but it was like different. When I look up into the sky, out of curiosity, I don’t know what made me look. I could see the top of the building coming down. I paused for a second or two. When I took my eyes off the building and back to the ground, I could see officers and a lot of people just running into the building, so I did the same thing, like any reasonable person would do, trying to save their own life. I ran inside – I don’t know if it was the Marriott Hotel or – I don’t know if the Marriott is shown here,
Q. I believe it's in here. It used to be the Vista.
A. Yes, I don’t remember if it was the Marriott or the building right next to it, because there were two buildings right near to each other. But as soon as I ran into the building, I took a right. I was just trying to get as deep into the building as I could in the lobby. A few officers ran in there and civilians ran in there with us. As soon as I made the right, I tried to hide under a security desk and you could just hear everything come down. As soon as everything came down, the lobby and the lights – the lobby filled up with smoke and debris. The lights went off. You couldn’t see anything. It was completely dark. It was a really loud noise. I can't even describe it. But it was a really horrific nasty noise.

They told me to get inside the vehicle and about two minutes later, we made a U turn heading south, because he was coming up north and then he made a U turn going south again, down towards Battery Park, and I could hear the second rumble and I already knew what it was. I knew it was the second building collapsing.

FIREFIGHTER MICHAEL BYRNE

We went down and parked on Church and Vesey off from the north tower under that pedestrian walkway. We went into the tower, we were in the lobby a couple minutes. There was only one chief there. We really had no direction what to do. Captain Burke decided we would either go up on our own or wait for someone. We went up, started our way up. We went to the bank of elevators. We pulled a lady out of the bank, one of the banks. We used a rabbit tool. Most of the banks were blown off. The doors were charred and dismembered, some of them.

We walked up three more flights to the 27th floor. I don't know the time we were up there for, but however long we were up there, that's when the other building came down. We didn't know it at the time. The whole building shook. We hit the floor. Guys were saying, "Pop the door. Pop the door. Pop the door." It stopped. No smoke, no nothing. We thought something was coming down the hallway, maybe. Again, I don't know the time frame from that time that elapsed. We got a report maybe 69th floor, 64th floor, partial collapse. After that -- there was one chief, I believe, up there. I'm not sure. He told us to start our way down, make your way down, everybody out.

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