At first I thought a transformer had exploded on a floor above us — I was on the 67th floor of the North Tower doing some electrical work. I checked the police scanner and heard complete chaos.
I got on our radio — I’m an electrician with Angel Electric, Local 3, and my regular assignment was to maintain the Port Authority offices on that floor — and told all my guys in the building to get out, and I did the same.
I was already down to the 18th floor when a PA officer who knew me from the building asked me to go back up to the 28th floor.
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There was a paraplegic man there who was also very heavy, and he couldn’t get down. His best friend was there, too, but we couldn’t lift him.
We were trying to figure out how to rig a rope and hoist him, anything we could do, when a group of firefighters showed up.
They tried everything possible to get this guy out, and meanwhile people are trying to come down, and it’s getting hot and smoky, and there’s a lot of fuel smell everywhere.
Firefighters are screaming back and forth on the radio that we’ve been hit again and everyone’s evacuating from both towers.
The firefighters kept telling the guy to leave his friend in the wheelchair and get out. “We’ll take him out the freight elevator,” they were telling him.
“I’m not leaving my best friend,” the guy kept saying. He wouldn’t go.
A firefighter smashed into the vending machine and told me to start handing out water bottles to the people coming down. Everyone was really wiped out from the smoke and exhausted from the stairs. One of the firefighters said to me, “We have masks, but you don’t have anything. You need to get outta here.”
Water was pouring down the stairs; pipes were broken somewhere.
“Nah, it’s OK, I’m helping,” I said.
The firefighter told me again to go. “We got this,” he said.
I ran to another staircase and got down to the plaza level fast. What I saw was devastating. When those planes hit, some of the passengers flew out. I saw two of them on the ground still with their seatbelts on in seats — a big guy, and there was also a child.
I got outside; cops were telling people to run. Chunks of steel and glass were falling down, I think from the South Tower at that point. We took off running — I was headed for the Manhattan Bridge when the South Tower started to come down. It was mayhem — people were running like mad, knocking each other over trying to get in stores to get out of the dust.
The Friday after 9/11, my wife and I were at a restaurant on Staten Island and I saw a firefighter who looked familiar.
I walked up to him, and he took a good look at me and said, “Waterboy!” We hugged there, and he told me that’s what the guys in his firehouse had nicknamed me, since they didn’t know who I was. I was so happy to hear they’d gotten out.
A few days later I read in the newspaper that the heavy man in the wheelchair died when the tower collapsed, and so did his best friend, who refused to abandon him.