John Labriola

The first hijacked plane crashed into Tower One of the World Trade Center between the ninety-fourth and ninetyeighth floors at about 8:46 A.M. John Labriola, a computer consultant who had been working for about two weeks for the Port Authority, was in a meeting on the seventy-first floor of the north tower (WTC 1) at the time of the crash. In the following essay, he describes how the building shuddered with the impact. He and his coworkers realized immediately that the tower had been hit by a plane and they started walking down the stairs to evacuate. Despite the confusion, heat, and stress, the evacuation was orderly and calm. About midway down the stairs they started meeting firefighters who were on their way up to fight the fires. As the evacuees got closer to ground level, they encountered water flowing down the...