Community Corner

63 Floors from Freedom

On Sept. 11, 2001, Dewey Loselle made it from the 63rd floor of the World Trade Center back to his home in Westport. He survived because of a series of coincidences.

At 8:46 a.m., Dewey Loselle felt the World Trade Center sway so far over that he thought it was going to collapse right then. There was a loud noise from above. Some ceiling panels crashed. A window broke. Within seconds, Tower 1 swung back into place like a pendulum.

Loselle thought a bomb had gone off. He was in a conference room on the 63rd floor with some co-workers and clients. When the building settled, they all ran to the stairs less than 30 feet away. They didn't bother grabbing their files or laptops. Loselle left a new suit, purchased at Mitchells, behind.

The stairwell was almost empty as the group descended. Loselle's wife, Susan, called him as soon as she heard that something had happened in the World Trade Center. She knew he was in the city seeing a client but didn't know where he was.

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"I'm in the World Trade Center right now," he told her. "I'm running down. Don't worry. Everything is OK. I'll call you when I get out."

Cell phone service went out minutes later.

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After about 15 floors, the stairs became packed with people. As the crowds thickened, the pace slowed down to a crawl. Smoke billowed out from below, and water fell from above. Some men covered their mouths with their ties in order to keep the smoke out.

One man had a Blackberry with a signal. Loselle found out that a plane had hit the building. They had assumed it must have been a small plane. Maybe the pilot had a heart attack and veered off course. How else could a plane hit such a big building on a clear day?

At 9:03 a.m., the building shook again. Tower 2 had just been hit by a plane. Everyone kept descending the stairs. People were crying and frightened, but Loselle saw it as a "controlled panic."

At about the 23rd floor, Loselle and his co-workers talked to some Rescue 1 firefighters that were going up to look for stragglers. The firefighters weren't excited by the danger. They weren't terrified, either.

"They had a look in their eye, like they knew this was bad," Loselle recalled. "They weren't cheery or optimistic or happy. They just knew."

On Sept. 11, 2001, those firefighters were killed when the tower came crashing down.

Fate

Thousands of people survived the terrorist attacks that day not because of anything special they did. These average people weren't survivalists or athletes. They had no special edge or strength over anyone else.

Some people who worked high in the towers called in sick that day, not knowing what was going to happen. Others were stuck in traffic jams. Some had their appointments canceled. In Loselle's case, the thing that kept him alive was his persistence regarding a corporate miscommunication.

On the night of Sept. 10, Loselle arrived in the city to prepare for a presentation that would be given to the Port Authority. He was a partner at Deloitte & Touches, one of the largest auditing companies in the world, and was presenting a new budgeting system. His team had a productive night as they hashed out the details and fine-tuned the presentation.

The next day, they made their way to the World Trade Center at about 8 a.m. They wanted to be there early in order to prepare.

"It was a gorgeous, beautiful day. Just this magnificent day," he said. "Everybody was in a really good mood."

The group passed through security, but was uncertain of exactly what floor to go to. There had been a confusing jumble of e-mails leading up to that day, so nobody was sure whether the meeting was on the 63rd floor or the 90th. One person checked his e-mail and determined that the conference room on the 63rd floor was the place to go.

When the team got off the elevator, they thought they had made a mistake. The entire floor had been gutted. Wires hung from the ceiling and bars were exposed. The place was under renovation and there wasn't a person in sight. Some wanted to go the 90th floor right then.

Loselle decided to look for the conference room anyways. Moments later, he found it completely intact despite the heavy renovations surrounding it. The group started setting up their gear as the Port Authority representatives arrived.

Later, the plane hit the area of the 80th floor. They all would have died if they didn't stay on the 63rd floor.

"There was a lot of fate that day," Loselle said.

The Descent

After approximately 45 minutes, the team made it down the stairs to the sub-level containing the shops.

"It was torturous. All you wanted to do was get out," Loselle said.

Port Authority employees were guiding people to safety as they exited the stairs. Many of those workers died later that day.

"Those guys who stayed to the bitter end helping people get out; they're not talked about too much," said Loselle. "They were heroes."

As people made their way out of building, emergency personnel told them not to look at the chaos surrounding them. Once the plane hit and the fire spread to higher levels, people had jumped from the building. Their bodies were scattered on the ground.

Glass and steel and bricks rained from the top of the building, crashing around the people exiting.

"I just ran like hell all the way to Broadway and kept on running," Loselle said.

He made it to Church Street, and the entire city seemed to be in daze. Everyone like a zombie, he recalled. About 15 minutes after he left the building, Tower 2 collapsed in a cloud of smoke and debris. "The sound was incredible I can't even tell you what is like."

He wandered north to the Bowery. A homeless shelter had opened up its doors so that people could use their phones. Loselle waited in line for an hour before he could call his wife. His family members from across the country had been calling the house. His two kids had been taken out of school. His wife saw the tower collapse.

And he was alive.

"It was the best phone call I ever made," he said.


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