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© St. Petersburg Times, published September 30, 2001
NEW YORK -- The six firefighters would have moved faster if they hadn't stopped to help a weary woman trying to flee. They would have moved slower if they hadn't been able to coax her along, telling her that if she wanted to see her children and grandchildren again, she had to keep moving down the stairs.
It was that precise intersection of rescuers and rescued, that destined bit of timing, not a few seconds less or more, that let them all survive inside a twisted stairwell of the World Trade Center when the north tower crashed down on them. The woman and the firefighters, in the actions they took, saved one another.
Almost all of the stories about firefighters summoned to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 have been about brave men who went into the towers and never returned. The story of six men of Ladder Company 6 is a rare happy story.
It is the tale of a group of men and one woman trapped for three hours inside a sliver of stairs, lucky enough to be between the second and fourth floors, for there were no longer any floors above them, and beneath them was impassable debris. But they kept their wits until the sun shone through and they climbed out.
"There's no reason we should be alive," firefighter Matt Komorowski said.
Ladder Company 6 is on Canal Street in Chinatown. It usually fights fires in nearby tenement buildings, only occasionally having to enter the city's skyscrapers.
On the morning of the 11th, six men were on duty -- Mike Meldrum, Komorowski, Bill Butler, Tom Falco, Sal D'Agostino and the captain, John Jonas.
Five of them were sitting inside the firehouse when they heard a loud noise. Jonas thought it was a truck plunging off the Manhattan Bridge.
Komorowski was out front, getting ready to go home. He and the house watchman saw a plane slipping between the buildings. The watchman said into the intercom, "A plane just hit the World Trade Center."
Within minutes, the members of Ladder 6 parked their fire truck in front of the towers. Debris rained down as they hurried into the lobby of 1 World Trade Center. A woman whose hair and clothes had melted off passed them. Someone was assisting her. Two bodies lay on the floor.
Awaiting their assignment, they saw a shadow on the ground and heard an eruption -- the second plane striking the other tower.
Jonas said, "Oh my God, they're trying to kill us."
They had to begin rescuing people. The men, each carrying about 100 pounds of gear, entered Stairway B and climbed. People descending cheered them on.
Jonas figured the fire had probably spread as low as the 80th floor. He had to pace his men or they would be too spent to help. Every 8 or 10 floors they rested.
When they reached the 27th floor, the entire building shook. The other tower had collapsed.
"Okay, if that building can go," the captain announced, "this building can go. It's time to head down."
Descending, Butler noticed a man who he thought looked Middle Eastern, clutching a stuffed animal, possibly a lion. Police officers grabbed him, handcuffed him, and hustled him down the stairs. The stuffed lion fell on the ground.
Somewhere around the 14th or 15th floor, they encountered a middle-aged woman. Her name was Josephine Harris. She worked for the Port Authority and had been walking down from the 73rd floor. She was exhausted. Butler folded her arm around his neck and began moving.
"I could hear the clock ticking in the back of my head," Jonas said. "I'm thinking, "C'mon, c'mon. We've got to keep moving."'
They wouldn't think of abandoning Harris. But they recognized that she was slowing them down. Others were passing them and moving out of sight.
Harris collapsed nearing the fourth floor. Butler asked her about her family. She told him she had grown children and grandchildren. Butler said, "Your grandchildren and your kids want to see you at home. You've got to pick up the pace here." Falco lifted her from the other side.
Jonas scoured the fourth floor for a chair to carry her in. Neither the nearby swiveling receptionist's chair nor some couches would work. He returned to the stairwell.
Komorowski was last in line. He felt an incredible rush of wind.
He urged everyone to move faster.
And then the tower collapsed.
"Everything starts heaving," Jonas said. "Unbelievable noise. Everything flying around. Tremendous dust clouds. I'm thinking, "I can't believe this is how it ends for me.' "
Komorowski was hurled two flights and found himself in front of the others.
The men were spread out in the stairwell between the second and fourth floors. Four other rescue workers were trapped as well: two firefighters, a Port Authority police officer and a Fire Department chief, Rich Picciotta. They had cuts and bruises. They were caked with dust.
Butler opened his eyes and saw something "rise out of the dust like the blob coming out of the water in a horror movie." It was Harris.
All 11 of them were alive.
They assumed that just a part of the tower had collapsed. Butler thought it was a bomb that had exploded inside the stuffed lion.
Two of them pried open the second-floor door. All they could see was debris. They realized that if they had been going a little faster, they would have been below the second floor. If they had been slower, they would have been above the fifth floor, where the stairwell was severed. At the time of the collapse, as far as anyone knows, people higher and lower did not live.
The men put a harness on Harris and slid her down to the third-floor landing, where they congregated. Jonas ordered radios and flashlights turned off. He and the chief kept theirs on. They had to save the batteries for the next day, or the day after.
They sent out Maydays on the radios. No response. Wasn't anyone else alive?
Finally, after about 30 minutes, they got a response from a fire team. Where were they?
Jonas told them they were in the north tower's Stairway B.
"I got some strange responses," he said. "Like, "Where's the north tower?' I'm thinking, "We're in trouble, they don't know where the north tower is.' "
The men radioed that the crew should enter the front door of the north tower. They did not realize that there no longer was a front door. Or a north tower.
They contemplated escape routes. They saw an elevator shaft. They could lower themselves down it by rope, but if it was blocked at the bottom, there was no getting back up. "It was an option," Jonas said. "But it was an option for a day or two later."
Behind a door on the third floor was a fire sprinkler room. They would have water.
After several hours, the smoke and dust began to clear. Then something eerie occurred. A shaft of sunlight shone down on them. It dawned on them that 106 floors had been above them and now there was just sky.
They waited. Through holes in the side of the stairwell, they saw a firefighter about 70 yards away. A rope was tied around Picciotta, fitted with a hitch that would lock if he fell, and he inched his way to the firefighter. The others followed. Jonas stayed with Harris until rescuers from Ladder Company 43 got in.
After Jonas left, they took Harris out in a rescue basket.
Only after the firefighters emerged did they realize the ghastly enormity of what had happened. Somewhere in the ruins was their flattened fire truck.
They had cornea abrasions and cuts; one man had a separated shoulder, another a sprained foot. Today, though, two men have returned to work. Jonas is still on medical leave; when he resumes duty, he will be a battalion chief.
On Wednesday evening, Josephine Harris visited the Canal Street firehouse. The men gave her one of the ladder company's jackets, one inscribed on the front: "Josephine, Our Guardian Angel."
"We all thought she was going too slow," Komorowski said. "But she had the perfect pace."
They still can't be sure why what happened happened, only that it did. "It was a freak of timing," Jonas said. "We know the people below us didn't fare well. Above, to my knowledge, none got out. God gave us the courage and strength to save her, and unknowingly, we were saving ourselves."