by Dwyer, Jim
Just minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north tower, Christopher Hanley (left) of Radianz and Bill Kelly of Bloomberg L.P. chat at a breakfast conference at Windows on the World on the 106th floor. Another Bloomberg salesman, Peter Alderman, stands near the window. The photographer left the building before the plane struck. (BLOOMBERG L.P.)
On the 89th floor of the north tower, Akane Ito, Raffaele Cava, Tirsa Moya, Walter Pilipiak, Dianne DeFontes, Harold Martin, and approximately twenty others were trapped when Flight 11 struck. (ANDREA MOHIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Christine Olender (left), one of the managers at Windows on the World, spoke to her mother in the morning before Flight 11 hit the north tower. After the plane’s impact, she and her fellow manager Doris Eng (right) had several conversations with the Port Authority command desks, trying to find out what had happened and what she and the others in the restaurant should do. (COURTESY OF THE OLENDER AND ENG FAMILIES)
Stephen Miller, a computer systems administrator for Mizuho Capital on the 80th floor of the south tower, followed his firm’s evacuation procedures and headed down the stairs immediately after the plane hit the north tower. (RICHARD PERRY/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Ed Beyea; his aide, Irma Fuller; and his friend, Abe Zelmanowitz; pose in the office of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield on the 27th floor of the north tower, where they worked together each day. (BETH TIPPERMAN)
Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer, who was the first fire commander to respond after Flight 11 struck the north tower, helps direct rescue efforts from the lobby of that building. (AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/GOLDFISH PICTURES)
Frank De Martini, the Port Authority construction manager, worked on the 88th floor of the north tower. He loved the World Trade Center and all its gadgetry ever since he started work as a consultant following the 1993 bombing. After a 1994 project to overhaul the window-washing and maintance rigs, he took an inspection ride along the side of the building, boarding at the roof, 1,350 feet above the street. On September 11, De Martini helped rescue people on his floor and then led a group that pried open doors on twelve floors along the boundary of the crash zone, rescuing dozens of others. (COURTESY OF ENRICO TITTARELLI)
Pablo Ortiz was one of the men in Frank De Martini’s group who helped push back the boundary between surviving and perishing in the upper floors of the north tower. (COURTESY OF EDNA KANG ORTIZ)
Stanley Praimnath, an assistant vice president for Fuji Bank, made his way down to the lobby of the south tower less than ten minutes after the first plane’s impact, but he was told to return to his office. He watched from a window on the 81st floor as United Airlines Flight 175 streaked across the harbor toward his building. (TYRONE JAIMANGAL)
A view of the Euro Brokers trading floor on the east side of the 84th floor of the south tower, showing the type of open floors used by many financial firms in the towers. The four people in the foreground were not on the 84th floor when Flight 175 hit. However, the fifth person at the left, Thomas Sparacio, in the white shirt and turned away from the camera, was among a group of about fifty still in or near the trading area at the moment of impact. (JANICE BROOK/EURO BROKERS INC.)
After Flight 175 hit the south tower, only eighteen people were able to get past the impact zone via the single stairway that remained open. Among them were Donovan Cowan, Brian Clark, Richard Fern, and Ling Young, seated. (FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Dave Vera (left), a telecommunications technician for Euro Brokers, cleared people from the 84th floor in the south tower, but would later send word by walkie-talkie that he needed help himself. His call was heard by his friend and colleague, Jose Marrero (right), who had urged dozens of people to leave the 84th floor and had led them downstairs. He then headed back up to help Vera. (JANICE BROOKS/EURO BROKERS INC.; JERROLD BANKS/EURO BROKERS INC.)
Roko Camaj, a window washer, had keys to the roof of the south tower, but he told colleagues that he could not get there from the 105th floor, perhaps because the electric doors did not work correctly after the plane’s impact. (ANGEL FRANCO/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Jan Demczur, another window washer, was trapped with five other men in an elevator that was stuck on the 50th floor of the north tower. They used his squeegee, the only tool available, to begin clawing out of the elevator. (JUSTIN LANE/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Greg Trapp, who had moved to New York to act and make films, worked as a security guard and was stationed on the 78th floor of the north tower. He led a group from the 84th floor to the stairway, then waited for instructions.
(MARTIN MEYERS PHOTOGRAPHY/COURTESY OF GREG TRAPP)
Many of the people who escaped from the north tower fled through the mezzanine, past windows that looked out onto smoldering debris that filled the plaza. (JOHN LABRIOLA)
NYPD Officer John Perry (above left) was turning in his retirement papers when the first plane struck. He asked for his badge back and ran to help. He joined up with his friend Capt. Tim Pearson (right), directing people in the north tower mezzanine toward the escalators that would lead them to the concourse and safety. (NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT)
Sgt. John McLoughlin (right) and Officer Will Jimeno were among a group of Port Authority police officers charged with transporting a cart filled with emergency equipment through the shopping concourse beneath the twin towers, to make sure their fellow officers had the proper gear. (PORT AUTHORITY OF NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY)
From left, Sgt. Andrew Wender, Sgt. Al Moscola, and Capt. Joseph Baccellieri in the locker room at the Court Officers Academy several blocks from the World Trade Center. The court officers were in the locker room on the morning of September 11 and ran to the towers to help out. In the final minutes of the crisis, they would see firefighters sitting on the 19th floor of the north tower, apparently unaware that the other building had fallen. (ANDREA MOHIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Battalion Chief Orio J. Palmer (facing camera) confers with Deputy Chief Peter Hayden in the north tower lobby before heading over to the south tower, where he would lead a company of firefighters up the stairs to the impact zone.
(AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/ GOLDFISH PICTURES)
Palmer’s experience as a long distance runner (he is shown here finishing the Newsday Long Island Marathon in 1994) served him well as he climbed dozens of floors with over fifty pounds of equipment on his back and became the first firefighter to reach the impact zone in either building.
(ISLAND PHOTOGRAPHY/COURTESY OF DEBORAH PALMER)
Firefighter Tom Kelly of Ladder Company 15 ran an elevator in the south tower that carried the injured to safety. As a young man thirty years earlier, Kelly had been a steamfitter working on the World Trade Center. On his first date with his future wife, he sneaked her into the construction site, and they looked over Manhattan from forty floors up. (FIRE DEPARTMENT OF NEW YORK)
Officer Moira Smith of the NYPD escorts Ed Nicholls, one of the eighteen people to escape from the impact zone in the south tower, toward medical help on Church Street. (COREY SIPKIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
Copyright © 2005 by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn Afterword copyright © 2006 by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn Postscript copyright © 2011 by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn All rights reserved.
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First published in hardcover in 2005 by Times Books
Designed by Paula Szafranski
eISBN 9781429996891
First eBook Edition : July 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dwyer, Jim, date.
102 minutes : the unforgettable story of the fight to survive inside the Twin Towers / Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. p. cm.
Includes index.
1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001. 2. Victims of terrorism—New York
(State)—New York. 3. Building—Evacuation—New York (State)—New York. 4. Rescue work—New York (State)—New York. 5. Self-preservation—New York (State)—New York. 6. World Trade Center (New York, N.Y.) I. Title: One hundred two minutes. II. Flynn, Kevin, date. III. Title.
HV6432.7.D89 2004
974.7’ 1044—dc22
2004055321
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First Paperback Edition 2006
Second Paperback Edition 2011
