One Story among Thousands


  1. The Views and the Memories

  2. The Last Day

    The Last View

    Leaving 68

    The Stairwell

    The Sky Lobby

    Back to the Stairwell

    Out of the Stairwell

    Out of the Trade Center

    To Midtown

    Going Home

  3. Some Questions and Answers
Leaving 68

The work area of the 68th floor occupies the outer part of the floor on all four sides of the building. It is separated from the inner part, which has two intersecting corridors – a long one running from north to south and a shorter one from east to west. The corridors have exits to three stairwells and an exit to the local elevator bank, and there are four entrances to the work area – one entrance at each end of each corridor. For fire drills, we refer to the four “quadrants” of the work area which are delimited by the four entrances from the corridors. My assignment, during drills, is to check for people in the northeast quadrant.

The cubicle walls are too high for me to see people who are sitting at their desks, so I would ordinarily look into each cubicle entrance while walking up one row and down the next, up another and down the next and so on; but that takes too long. Today, I just walk by the eastern windows from north to south, passing the ends of the cubicle rows. At the end of a row I yell for people to evacuate the building, as loudly as I can. Grace comes out to the aisle and she looks surprised; I’m usually not so loud. Joe is standing by his desk and gathering some of his papers. I see other co-workers leaving their cubicles. I continue yelling as I pass the end of each row until I reach the center wall, then I walk quickly up the aisle along the wall. There is a separate computer room behind the wall; the door to that room is locked. I don’t see anyone through the glass window in the door but I pound on it anyway, as hard as I can. Some people are approaching quickly from the southeast quadrant; they turn and head toward the east exit to the corridor. As I move back north, there are a few small rooms to my left which are also locked so, again, I pound on the doors and yell. At the north end of the floor, I check two offices, a few more cubicles and a meeting room, but no one is there. I glance down the aisle toward the northwest quadrant; I don’t see or hear anyone so I head toward the north exit. Now, looking through the glass window in the exit door, I can see Fred in the corridor by the women’s restroom. He is holding the restroom door open and calling in to check for people, but he is looking in the opposite direction; he probably doesn’t realize that there is a second interior door. After Fred leaves, I go into the women’s restroom and through the second door, just to be sure, but no one is there. I return to the corridor and then exit into the north stairwell.


Continue: The Stairwell