My September 11th Experience
(AKA Howard Stern Saved My Life)

I woke up on the most beautiful Tuesday morning ever! Surprising since the night before was a very intense thunder storm that nearly kept me up all night. Which sucked because I had to be up a little earlier than usual to make up for the fact that I left work early the day before to go to an audition. My plan was to work from 8:30am to 6:30pm. Where was work? Marsh & McLennan. The 96th floor of the north tower at the World Trade Center.

6:30am. Alarm goes off. I curse. I hit snooze.
6:45am. Alarm goes off and snooze again.
7:00am. Alarm goes off and I curse and shut the alarm off and went about my daily morning routine: Shit, showered, shaved, brushed my teeth and clicked on the Howard Stern show while I was getting dressed.

7:15am and my mood starts to change and I am feeling a little extra happy. Life is beautiful. I am dating a beautiful girl. I have a great temp job which pays well enough and is flexible enough to allow me to audition for acting work whenever such an opportunity arose. For once, I am up early enough where I don’t have to rush. In fact, at the rate I was going I was probably going to get to my desk by a little after 8am.

7:30am and I am dressed and ready to leave my apartment. It takes exactly 45minutes from my apartment to my desk. All I have to do is turn off the radio, leave and I will get there by 8:15am. But instead I fucking get caught up in Howard’s Radio Show. Fuck me. O.k. I’ll just wait for him to cut to commercial. Which should be any second because he kept saying how he was going to take a break. But his sidekick Robin Quivers interrupted him and they don’t break.

7:45am and they haven’t broke for commercial. FUCK!. I have to leave now if I want to get there at exactly 8:30am. I don’t. I stick it out.

7:50am FINALLY they cut to commercial and now I am going to be late. Cursing myself, Howard Stern, and God for making me so irresponsible, (You’d figure I’d hold myself responsible for my irresponsibility but like many of us – I don’t)

I click off the radio and as I pass through my kitchen to my front door my roommate and childhood friend, Alex is just heading into the shower. He made a groggy, pasty mouthed early morning comment – about me leaving early. He was a bit surprised since he is almost always out the door before me. We exchanged grunts:

Alex: Uh.
Todd: Uh.

Translation:

Alex: See ya later.
Todd: Later.

I nearly ran all the way from my apartment on 70th and 1st Ave all the way to the 6 Train on 68th and Lex.

8:00am I arrive at the subway station I see the subway pulling away. Naturally I curse myself out again. At first I was going to be extra early, then on time and now I will actually be late. The next train pulls in a couple of minutes later and I am off. Afraid to look at my watch. I didn’t want to be reminded of how late I am running. Luckily at 42nd street the number 5 express train is there at the station waiting to take me (and thousands of others). I rode the subway to the Fulton/Dey Street stop. Right by the front of the Towers. As I start walking up the steps I hear the loudest explosion and screams from the street. The sound was dull – like car accident. I thought maybe a truck just drove over a loose iron grate but the moment I emerged onto the street, not really thinking, I started to make way toward Church Street and to the plaza in front of the towers. Quickly a MASSIVE crowd of tear filled, terrified pedestrians started to form. I hear a barrage of “Holy Shits!" Everyone looking up and pointing.

I look up and see the upper floors of Tower 1 on fire. Debris falling. What the FUCK just happened? 1st thought, as stupid as it sounds, but I thought it was a massive kitchen fire? Then I thought maybe suicide bomber.

I hear the crowd which started to amass quickly scream in unison, “NOOOooo!”

And that’s when I see the first body falling. The debris I saw moments before was not debris. They were people. The first that I saw was a heavy set man. I was fixated on his flailing body. Watching him - all the way down until he hit the plaza in the sickest loudest thud.

Actually, it didn’t sound like a thud at all. In the movies it sounds like a thud, in real life, the sound was that of a car crash. A loud, dull pop. After slamming into the concrete - what was once the form of a human being – is now a pinkish red blotch on the ground.

I was now jolted into a reality I never knew existed. My heart is pounding so hard. The fright of seeing a human being fall to their death is so inexplicable. So horrifying.

Like the rest of the crowd I am fixated on the upper floors - where I work. I see a body hanging out, of the upper floors, and again, the crowd screams “No! Nooo!” I want to shut my eyes but I can’t. My eyes do the opposite. They widen. I am paralyzed. In absolute awe. Horror. My breath is being sucked out of me. Another body, and another, then two together. All like falling debris crashing into the pavement. Pop after pop.

No real way to describe the sickening sight. The heat I can feel on the ground. The sound of the screaming and crying horrified people around me. A burning metallic scent fills the air.

As the crowd and I watch on in horror the upper floors of Tower I from across the street, a rolling/rumbling sound is heard over in tower II. A second or two later, just as a sea of heads turn in unison towards tower II - the upper floors blow out – an actual explosion. A huge fireball. Glass and steel raining down. The sound again was dull, no echo, no reverb, not like the movies. It sounded like two 18 wheelers hitting head on. A loud, dull, metallic, crash. My first thought is a suicide bomber. We are under attack.

I still had no idea that two commercial jets had slammed into the towers. In a matter of seconds what runs through my mind is that I am going to get crushed. Either by the top part of Tower II which looked like it was about to topple over on me, or I would get trampled to death by the sea of screaming, terrified people running toward me.

Again, I was paralyzed (good to know my fucking fight or flight senses are in check – must be from all the pot I smoked in college.)

I then feel a tug on my arm and I turn to run with the crowd. I duck around the corner and into City Hall Park. I sit on a bench. Shocked. Totally bewildered. Frightened. Alone. “What is going on?!?” I do not cry yet. I couldn’t. Still can’t process what is going on. Too much confusion. Then I run into a fellow employee. She had a blackberry. She is hysterical. She says she is getting pages from our fellow employees that were trapped up there.

Most I assume were killed on impact. But some survived the initial impact of the jet. They are in untouched pockets of the building. The texts were so sad, so scary and so desperate,

“Send help!”
“Where are they”
“Walls are collapsing”
“Ceilings are falling”
“We’re trapped”
“Gotta go, fire’s…”
“Tell family I love them.”

Then I hear the loudest, roaring, rolling sound. Like 20 subway trains speeding by a station. Thunderous. Utterly deafening screams. I look up and I see the top part of tower II fall out of site from behind the building now obstructing my view.

We all ran and I get separated from my fellow employee. I don’t know where to go. I tried frantically to contact friends, family. All phones are down. No cell signal. I walk to my friend Ariana’s apartment on Elizabeth Street. I buzz. No answer. I sit on her stoop wondering what to do next. Still no tears. Just shock. Complete and utter shock.

After about 5 minutes or so I start my trek back to the Upper East Side. No way to get up there but to walk.
Seeing my fellow New Yorkers. All so fucking brave. Holding one another. Crying. Walking aimlessly. I stop at various parked cars where people are huddled to listen to the news reports on the car radios. That’s when I first learn about the attacks.

MOTHER FUCKERS!!!

I keep walking. Uptown. While I continue to try contacting my family and friends. Making my way through the rolodex on my cell phone. Finally, about 5 blocks shy from my street I reach my friend Ariana. She is at work.

“Oh my God. Todd! Where are you! I was so worried. Are you there?!” Silence. I just can’t get the words out. “I’m, - umm…I—People,” Then I hear her start to cry. “Todd, are you o.k.? Where are you?”

“People jumping. Bodies. Exploding. Planes…Family…”

I finally loose it. My eyes well up and tears finally release. All my efforts to control them go in vein. I am now balling my eyes out. Just then I feel a gentle squeezing and rubbing of my shoulders as I tell Ariana to call my family because I can’t get in touch with them. I give her the number of my parents, hang up the phone, and collapse to the curb after learning Tower I also fell.

Some girl, I guess the person who was rubbing my shoulders moments before sat with me. Held me. Rubbed my shoulders. She asks if I am going to be o.k. I can’t answer. “Would you like me to make you tea or something?” I wave her off. I am empty. Drained. And needed to be alone. I feel her presence get up to leave me.

I look at my watch. 11:20am. I look back at the cute girl as she walks away from me. I watch her for a few moments. In the nation’s most catastrophic day in recent history, in the city’s greatest moment of despair, and tragedy that I personally witnessed and experienced - the first thought that crosses my mind as this sweet comforting woman walks down the street away from me was, “Damn. She’s got a great ass.”

The Wrap Up

And then it dawns on me. Had I not been listening to Howard Stern that morning I would have been at my desk before 8:45am. I would have perished. That could have been me up there. And the nightmares that have subsided quite a bit over the years still haunt me from time to time. What would I have done had I survived the impact? Would I have jumped? If I did, what would have been my thoughts, if any, on the way down? Would there be any sensation at the moment of impact or would it just simply be lights out? If I chose not to jump, would I have burned? Would I have suffocated? Who would I have made my last call to? What would I have said? What would I have felt? Would I have been terrified or would I have had an eerie calm? Would I see God? Would I just cease to exist? All these questions were answered in nightmares playing out almost every possible scenerio of what might have happened had I got to my desk on time that morning. Thank you Howard Stern for being so entertaining. Your show saved my life. Literally.

Marsh & McLennan lost close to 300 employees, including 12 of who I knew personally and one, Dan Crisman, who I just started to make friends with outside the work place. He was 25.

If you want you can click on the link below and scroll down to download my conversation with Howard Stern on his radio show on the 1 year anniversary of September 11.

http://www.toddwall.tv/multimedia.asp