June 3, 2025 • 8 mins
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Tom Canavan was a securities specialist working in the North Tower on 9/11 who survived the collapse of the Twin Towers. He recounts the moments leading up to the first impact, the confusion and shock that followed, and the calm yet determined evacuation down dozens of smoke-free stairwells.
Rewind back to Season 10 to hear the full story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Approach production, tell me if you can't remember fifteen minutes
before it all happened.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
So At, I was in my boss's office at the time.
So we had the forty seventh floor of one World Trade,
which is the North Tower, and our office was on
the west side of the building, so we faced the
Hudson River in New Jersey on the other side. So
in the southwest corner in my boss's office, you'd be
able to see the Statue of Liberty New York Carver.
(00:46):
You can see the bridge, the Barrizontal Bridge, plus all
the Jersey Liberty State Park everything and Ellis Island. So
her office, of course had the corner, and we were
in there because we were on a meeting call with
Our home office was in charlot At, North Carolina, so
that's where we were on a meeting with those At
(01:11):
about eight thirty quarter to nine was the meeting, so
we were all shoved in that off. There were about
eight of us in that and the first plane hit
at eight forty six, so it hit my building, but
it hit on the up hit them around the ninety
second floor, so I was about halfway up to where
it hit and it hit behind us when a lot
(01:33):
of the debris went straight through the building. So as
we were looking in south when the plane hit, we
jumped up because the building actually rocks where you're almost
thrown off your feet, and it sort of wobbled three
times and then it righted itself. But I could see
south stuff falling, panes of glass, concrete, things that don't
(01:55):
register at the time, but when you think about it later,
pieces of airplane like you'd see like seatbelt buckles or
a seat. You know, there wasn't that much left of it,
but yeah, So I went over by the window that
faced out. I looked down the Married Hotel, which was
twenty four floors, was attached to the south tower, and
(02:17):
I could see the roof of that was on fire.
They were causing the street on fire. And my first
thought was it was like a gas explosion of something,
because nobody envisions an airliner hitting your building. Yeah, you know,
in down in Manhattan. When it hit, we, like I said,
we jumped up. We wobble back and forth. I went
at it to the main office to see what was
(02:39):
going on with the people out there. There were starting
smoke starting to come in under some of the doorways
that we had two doorways in our office that led
two staircases out of the building. But another thing about
growing up in New York City is when you learn
with the fire department as a kid, when I when
(03:00):
we called the cops, sometimes they didn't show up. When
you call an ambulance, sometimes didn't show up. But when
someone ran that fire alarm, they were coming. So you
have the utmost confidence in the New York City Fire Department.
And I could see some of their rigs pulling up
outside the building. So as people were panicked, starting to
get a little nervous, I was telling them, right, fire
departments here were okay, it's above us, we can get
(03:22):
out below some of the smoke coming in. I took
my jacket from my desk and I shoved it under
the door so the smoke wouldn't come in. And I
took the back of my hand. I was tapping it
against the doorknob because heat conducts through the metal, and
if the doorknob is hot, you do not open that door.
That means it's fire on the other side of the door.
(03:43):
But the smoke was coming in, it was like, all right,
let's get our stuff together, let's get out again. We didn't.
We didn't know the magnitude of what was going on upstairs.
And because we worked in a bank, we had a
lot of securities out that you just can't run out
and leave. You know, they're worth a lot of money.
(04:04):
And we had we actually had a vault on the
floor with a little moat that you needed a bridge.
It was like forty seven tons suspended on our floor.
So a lot of our employees were taking their bonds
and stuff off their desk, putting it in their lock
boxes and bringing into the vault. At which time I said,
all right, you guys do that. I went out into
(04:25):
the hallway. We had the electronic eyes at the time
you swipe your card to get in and out of
the floor. I asked someone to hold the door open
for me so I could get back in. We had
a satellite office around the other side of the building,
and each building, each floor was one acre. It was
two hundred feet each side. So I ran to the
satellite office. I know we had three girls working in there.
(04:46):
I wanted to see if they were okay. When I
got there, there was nobody in there. It turns out
one was off that day. One was bringing her kid
to first day of school, which was September eleventh that year,
So that saved a lot of people from being in
the building because first school, what the parents do, they
bring their kids to school. So she wasn't in, and
(05:09):
the third girl that was in there, as soon as
the plane hit took off, the smartest one out of everyone,
she was out of there on her way out. So
I went back to my office. By then, people were
putting wet rags over their faces, and on the way there,
I passed one of the staircases. I opened the door,
it was just a massive people coming down the steps.
(05:30):
So by the time I got back to my office,
I told herybody, we're getting out of here. Let's go.
We went to that doorway, but by then it was
so crowded you couldn't get in the staircase. But since
I knew it that was stairwell C stairwell B, I
knew it was in the center of the building, so
I ran to stairwell B. There was like nobody in there.
(05:50):
So by the time I got back, though we had
sixty people working with us, they were about thirty left.
The other thirty had squeezed into the staircase. I said
come on, come with me. There's an empty staircase. And
then we proceeded down in stairwell B. It started to
get crowded, though.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
You know by this time Tom is panic stations going
like dramatically or He's all still kind of like what's
going on.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
There's no panic. There was never a panic for when
the plane hit again. You know, ignorance is bliss. We
had no idea what was going on upstairs. It was
sort of like being out for a walk with a
lot of people. Everyone was very courteous coming down the steps.
It was everybody was helping each other. There was no
(06:36):
smoke in the stairwells because after the nineteen ninety three attack,
the stairwells were reconfigured and air was pumped into them.
The lighting was changed. There were fluorescent strips, so all
the lights were on. Everybody was just walking down, helping
each other. We got down into the twenties and then
they stopped us. There were some firefighters coming up, so
(06:59):
we had to go single file on the steps on
the right side. They were carrying some of them seventy
pounds of equipment. They estimated it took about a minute
to walk one floor, and they were going up ninety
two floors, so it was gonna take them about an
hour and a half to walk up there. And that
(07:19):
was even before the start to even put out the fire,
which at that time they believe they can do. Yeah,
we didn't know also on the way down that the
South Tower had been hit. We were in the staircase
with all the noise in the footsteps and people talking.
We really didn't, you know. Notice I didn't find out
(07:40):
till much later the day anyway, But they stopped us.
The fire department came up. We were passing up some
of their equipment. Some of us were breaking into the
vending machines, taking out some of the bottles of water
and juice and giving it to the firefighters. I remember
I took a bottle of water I poured over a
firefighter's head. He was sitting sweating, and to which he
(08:01):
yelled at me, you know, I'm kidding. You know you're
trying to drown me. I'm not. You know, what are
you doing? Go ahead, just get out, just get out,
they kept saying. And we got down to the teens
at that point, and then they stopped us again. But
they started bringing down people from upstairs that were burnt horrible, like, yeah,
they weren't even blinking. They just came down. There wasn't
(08:22):
a sound and it got very quiet. I could see
one lady she must have had a cross on her chest.
It was the indentation of it, the metal burnt into
her chest. Some of the people the skin was peel back,
and I think at that point we started to realize,
you know, something a little more important, bigger was going
on than we knew upstairs. And once they got them
(08:46):
passed us, it was like, all right, let's start, get
a move on a little faster.
Approach production, tell me if you can't remember fifteen minutes
before it all happened.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
So At, I was in my boss's office at the time.
So we had the forty seventh floor of one World Trade,
which is the North Tower, and our office was on
the west side of the building, so we faced the
Hudson River in New Jersey on the other side. So
in the southwest corner in my boss's office, you'd be
able to see the Statue of Liberty New York Carver.
(00:46):
You can see the bridge, the Barrizontal Bridge, plus all
the Jersey Liberty State Park everything and Ellis Island. So
her office, of course had the corner, and we were
in there because we were on a meeting call with
Our home office was in charlot At, North Carolina, so
that's where we were on a meeting with those At
(01:11):
about eight thirty quarter to nine was the meeting, so
we were all shoved in that off. There were about
eight of us in that and the first plane hit
at eight forty six, so it hit my building, but
it hit on the up hit them around the ninety
second floor, so I was about halfway up to where
it hit and it hit behind us when a lot
(01:33):
of the debris went straight through the building. So as
we were looking in south when the plane hit, we
jumped up because the building actually rocks where you're almost
thrown off your feet, and it sort of wobbled three
times and then it righted itself. But I could see
south stuff falling, panes of glass, concrete, things that don't
(01:55):
register at the time, but when you think about it later,
pieces of airplane like you'd see like seatbelt buckles or
a seat. You know, there wasn't that much left of it,
but yeah, So I went over by the window that
faced out. I looked down the Married Hotel, which was
twenty four floors, was attached to the south tower, and
(02:17):
I could see the roof of that was on fire.
They were causing the street on fire. And my first
thought was it was like a gas explosion of something,
because nobody envisions an airliner hitting your building. Yeah, you know,
in down in Manhattan. When it hit, we, like I said,
we jumped up. We wobble back and forth. I went
at it to the main office to see what was
(02:39):
going on with the people out there. There were starting
smoke starting to come in under some of the doorways
that we had two doorways in our office that led
two staircases out of the building. But another thing about
growing up in New York City is when you learn
with the fire department as a kid, when I when
(03:00):
we called the cops, sometimes they didn't show up. When
you call an ambulance, sometimes didn't show up. But when
someone ran that fire alarm, they were coming. So you
have the utmost confidence in the New York City Fire Department.
And I could see some of their rigs pulling up
outside the building. So as people were panicked, starting to
get a little nervous, I was telling them, right, fire
departments here were okay, it's above us, we can get
(03:22):
out below some of the smoke coming in. I took
my jacket from my desk and I shoved it under
the door so the smoke wouldn't come in. And I
took the back of my hand. I was tapping it
against the doorknob because heat conducts through the metal, and
if the doorknob is hot, you do not open that door.
That means it's fire on the other side of the door.
(03:43):
But the smoke was coming in, it was like, all right,
let's get our stuff together, let's get out again. We didn't.
We didn't know the magnitude of what was going on upstairs.
And because we worked in a bank, we had a
lot of securities out that you just can't run out
and leave. You know, they're worth a lot of money.
(04:04):
And we had we actually had a vault on the
floor with a little moat that you needed a bridge.
It was like forty seven tons suspended on our floor.
So a lot of our employees were taking their bonds
and stuff off their desk, putting it in their lock
boxes and bringing into the vault. At which time I said,
all right, you guys do that. I went out into
(04:25):
the hallway. We had the electronic eyes at the time
you swipe your card to get in and out of
the floor. I asked someone to hold the door open
for me so I could get back in. We had
a satellite office around the other side of the building,
and each building, each floor was one acre. It was
two hundred feet each side. So I ran to the
satellite office. I know we had three girls working in there.
(04:46):
I wanted to see if they were okay. When I
got there, there was nobody in there. It turns out
one was off that day. One was bringing her kid
to first day of school, which was September eleventh that year,
So that saved a lot of people from being in
the building because first school, what the parents do, they
bring their kids to school. So she wasn't in, and
(05:09):
the third girl that was in there, as soon as
the plane hit took off, the smartest one out of everyone,
she was out of there on her way out. So
I went back to my office. By then, people were
putting wet rags over their faces, and on the way there,
I passed one of the staircases. I opened the door,
it was just a massive people coming down the steps.
(05:30):
So by the time I got back to my office,
I told herybody, we're getting out of here. Let's go.
We went to that doorway, but by then it was
so crowded you couldn't get in the staircase. But since
I knew it that was stairwell C stairwell B, I
knew it was in the center of the building, so
I ran to stairwell B. There was like nobody in there.
(05:50):
So by the time I got back, though we had
sixty people working with us, they were about thirty left.
The other thirty had squeezed into the staircase. I said
come on, come with me. There's an empty staircase. And
then we proceeded down in stairwell B. It started to
get crowded, though.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
You know by this time Tom is panic stations going
like dramatically or He's all still kind of like what's
going on.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
There's no panic. There was never a panic for when
the plane hit again. You know, ignorance is bliss. We
had no idea what was going on upstairs. It was
sort of like being out for a walk with a
lot of people. Everyone was very courteous coming down the steps.
It was everybody was helping each other. There was no
(06:36):
smoke in the stairwells because after the nineteen ninety three attack,
the stairwells were reconfigured and air was pumped into them.
The lighting was changed. There were fluorescent strips, so all
the lights were on. Everybody was just walking down, helping
each other. We got down into the twenties and then
they stopped us. There were some firefighters coming up, so
(06:59):
we had to go single file on the steps on
the right side. They were carrying some of them seventy
pounds of equipment. They estimated it took about a minute
to walk one floor, and they were going up ninety
two floors, so it was gonna take them about an
hour and a half to walk up there. And that
(07:19):
was even before the start to even put out the fire,
which at that time they believe they can do. Yeah,
we didn't know also on the way down that the
South Tower had been hit. We were in the staircase
with all the noise in the footsteps and people talking.
We really didn't, you know. Notice I didn't find out
(07:40):
till much later the day anyway, But they stopped us.
The fire department came up. We were passing up some
of their equipment. Some of us were breaking into the
vending machines, taking out some of the bottles of water
and juice and giving it to the firefighters. I remember
I took a bottle of water I poured over a
firefighter's head. He was sitting sweating, and to which he
(08:01):
yelled at me, you know, I'm kidding. You know you're
trying to drown me. I'm not. You know, what are
you doing? Go ahead, just get out, just get out,
they kept saying. And we got down to the teens
at that point, and then they stopped us again. But
they started bringing down people from upstairs that were burnt horrible, like, yeah,
they weren't even blinking. They just came down. There wasn't
(08:22):
a sound and it got very quiet. I could see
one lady she must have had a cross on her chest.
It was the indentation of it, the metal burnt into
her chest. Some of the people the skin was peel back,
and I think at that point we started to realize,
you know, something a little more important, bigger was going
on than we knew upstairs. And once they got them
(08:46):
passed us, it was like, all right, let's start, get
a move on a little faster.
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