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PA Unsung Heroes |
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CBS
News 48 Hours: PA Unsung Heroes Seventy-four Port Authority employees were killed in the Sept. 11 attack on the towers. Many refused to evacuate, choosing instead to help the 25,000 people who escaped from the burning buildings. Today, nearly six weeks after the disaster, the Port Authority employees are among the unsung heroes. 48 Hours reports on their story. "They knew what danger they were in," says George Tabeek, who was the Trade Center's security manager. "But their job was to protect and save those people. Somebody was destroying our home and hurting the people within it. They stayed." Until a recent sale, the Port Authority owned and operated the Trade Center and was still responsible for its security. Sept. 11 wasn't the first time the World Trade Center had been attacked. In 1993, a terrorist truck bomb killed six people and forced the evacuation of the twin towers. "My vow to myself was that it was never going to happen again like in '93," says Tabeek. More than $100 million dollars was spent on security and fire safety. Stairway lights had backup power; handrails were painted with glow-in-the-dark paint, and every wheelchair bound person was given a special evacuation chair. "We were prepared better than 99 percent of the buildings in the United States. We were already looking into bio-chem," says Tabeek. "We were talking about weapons of mass destruction. Just two weeks before, we talked about ever getting hit by a plane but it was never in our wildest dreams, a commercial airliner." "We used to say to one another, no one is ever gonna touch these people again, like they did before." When the attack occurred, Tabeek was walking on the plaza between the towers: "I heard the plane, like the engines of a plane flying low. But I didn’t think anything of it at that instant. And all of a sudden, we heard this massive hit. All I saw was this big ball of fire coming from building No. 1." Alan Reiss oversaw building operations for both towers. He should have been in his office on the 88th floor of Tower 1, barely below where that first plane hit. But instead he was having coffee in the underground mall: "I was in this restaurant. Everyone's running on the concourse in every different direction. First thought, someone has a gun 'cause no one's running in the same direction. I sprinted out, went up an escalator, directly to our police desk." Ironically, one of the first Port Authority actions that saved lives happened miles away from the towers – across the river in Jersey City. By 8:50 a.m., trainmaster Rich Moran knew the danger facing thousands of people on underground commuter trains that were streaming into the World Trade Center. He gave instructions to four trains in about 30 seconds and we went back to confirm that each person knew what the instructions were. The instructions: “Not to let anyone out at World Trade. Two trains had to be offloaded on the Jersey side. On one train, the doors opened but people were warned not to get off the train. Within minutes of the first plane hitting Tower 1, Port Authority workers had kept 5,000 people from the destruction. But their work was just beginning. "I went with a detective right away out to the plaza and we opened the door to the plaza and looked up and the tower was on fire," says Reiss. "And there was a nose wheel laying on the plaza in front of us. And that's when we realized it was a plane. The detective and I dragged this nose gear back into the police desk and said, 'We were hit by a plane.' Didn’t know it was a 767 at that time." "I'm in our offices on the 65th floor of the north tower, and there's this incredible thunder hitting the building," says Ken Greene, the Port Authority's assistant director of aviation. “And the building didn’t move a little bit. It moved. You got the sensation that it was going to go. Unlike 1993, this time the stairwell lights remained on, making it much easier to get down. "We get into the emergency stairwell," says Greene. "There's a lot of noise, concern and confusion but it's reasonably orderly. The stairwells are lighted, and as we got to the lower floors, as we got to the 20th floor, actually the smoke starts to clear up a little bit and you don’t have to have your hand over your mouth." People began to relax; some even joked about the possibility of missing work. "I got the sense that everybody started feeling a little bit comfortable because the air was clearer and you could breathe. We get down to the plaza level and that’s when everything changes dramatically. On the street level but still inside Tower 1, the crowds were just steps from getting out of the building but they froze when they saw what was outside. Says Greene: "I heard screaming, I heard some people say, 'Where am I?' 'What's going on here?' And at some point, I turned around and I could see out onto the plaza and the windows are bloodied. There’s carnage out there. There’s wreckage out there. There are limbs on the plaza." Out on the plaza, at street level, Tabeek could not believe his eyes. “I looked up at the building to assess the damage. And I saw the building twisting. At the same time, I saw a rainbow effect of the glass shattering on different floors. I saw people just coming out of the windows. I saw three people like that.” He isn't sure if they were jumping, or falling. "I don't know. I don't know if they were leaning too close to the windows." The building was flexing, he says: "It was literally twisting, OK? I saw the first two people come down and hit the ground. Third person was down, and I was getting sick. I had to get back on the radio, and I said, 'Tell people to stay away from the glass. Stay away from the glass. People are coming out the windows.'" "There's chaos everywhere," says Greene. "I just knew there were a lot of people trying to get out." As the scene unfolded, Greene spotted his boss, Ernesto Butcher, the chief operating officer of the Port Authority. "I saw people coming out and I realized that they were beginning to panic as they came out of the stairwell and then I knew that we had to do the job of keeping them moving without panicking," says Butcher. "We're in the business of moving people." That's what they did. Butcher stationed Greene at the top of the escalators where a bottleneck had formed. "I'm screaming at everybody, ‘Focus on the stairs, I don't want you to fall!'" he says. "And really what I’m thinking is, 'Focus on the stairs, I really don't want you to look at the window.'" In another part of the tower, Tabeek ran into the lobby to help. "As I ran through the lobby of building one, I was hearing things popping, like rubber bands. So I assumed the elevator cables were snapping." He got a call that three Port Authority workers were trapped in a command center on the 22nd floor. He informed a fire battalion chief that he was going up to rescue them. The chief assigned a group of firefighters, led by Lt. Andy Desperito. The men walked up to the 22nd floor. Tabeek didn’t know that a second jet had just struck Tower 2. When they reached the 22d floor of Tower 1, Desperito and his men tunneled through the debris and opened up a path for those trapped inside. Meanwhile, Reiss was at another Port Authority command center talking to those unable to get down from the upper floors. "We told them to sit tight, we'd get to them," says Reiss, who told them to put wet towels under the doors to keep out smoke. All of a sudden lights went out and there was an unbelievable noise. Standing near a window, Tabeek witnessed the same thing: "We literally saw the top 20 stories of the building virtually blow off. It was horrible. You saw the underbelly of the floor and then it appeared as if the whole building came over on its side." Tower 2 was beginning its collapse. Each floor weighed 4.8 million tons. Tabeek suggested that they leave: "I said to the lieutenant, we probably should go and he says, 'Without an order from command, we do not evacuate. And if we don't get an order from command, if necessary, we stay here and die with our brothers.' That put a chill up my spine. That was Andy." At that very moment, a call came over the radio to evacuate the command center and they all scrambled down the stairs, taking anyone and everyone they encountered to safety. "My job was to make sure I took care of those people," says Tabeek. "By getting the firemen up there and getting the people down in an orderly fashion was the way we were gonna save people’s lives." The quick actions of the Port Authority workers had saved thousands of lives. But suddenly these men were in danger themselves. When the south tower began to collapse, Alan Reiss, who oversaw building operations for both towers, was in a nearby command center, talking to people trapped in elevators and on upper floors in the north tower. "All of a sudden, the lights went out and we heard this unbelievable noise," he says. That was 2 World Trade Center falling." Suddenly, he was trapped himself. Part of the raining debris fell on top of the building where Reiss was. "The ceiling came down and some of the walls and we realized we were trapped," says Reiss, who thought he might die. "But I wasn't gonna give up that easy. There was two or three feet of debris in front of this heavy, bulletproof door." Reiss and others used an ax to push the door open, and then ran through the clouds of dust. Says Greene: "It just completely engulfed the north tower where I was and I started crawling." When Reiss made it outside, the chaos continued: "I got caught up in this dust cloud. It was just like this evil black cloud that was racing at you, but this police captain and myself we dove behind a fence and we just hugged each other for three or four minutes. It was pitch black. We'd just touch each other and say, 'OK, I'm alive, you're alive.' And then it started to lighten up a bit." Ken Greene, the Port Authority's assistant director of aviation, had been directing crowds out of Tower 1. Suddenly he couldn't see a thing: "I started feeling along the window. There was no point in opening my eyes and just as I started to feel along the window, I hear a voice: 'If you can hear this voice, follow the voice.'" The voice belonged to a firefighter who led Greene to safety. Blocks from the devastation, Greene met his boss, Ernesto Butcher, who had also escaped by following a firefighter out of the darkness. Security Manager George Tabeek and Firefighter Andy Desperito were continuing to rescue others. They raced into an overpass above West Street, just as the second tower began to collapse. "All of a sudden, all hell broke loose," says Tabeek. "We got hit with debris, couldn't see. I couldn't get air. I was choking. He was there one second. Next second, he was gone from my side or from behind me." Tabeek held onto a column while debris rained down on him: "It kept building up on me when it was coming down, almost up to my shoulder blades. And I kept pushing it off. All of a sudden, everything just stopped. Dead silence. I got hit with a blast of heat and I got burnt on my face and my hand." Shaking free of the rubble, he looked everywhere for the firefighter who'd been at his side for the past hour. Desperito was nowhere to be found. "I started calling, 'Andy, Andy. Where are you? Tell me where you are. Let me help you. Where are you?'" says Tabeek. Andy Desperito, 44, died on that overpass. He was married with three children. "He was a well-liked man, a good firefighter, didn't worry when you were working with him, he was going to take care of you, make sure to do the right thing," said one firefighter of his colleague. Many good men and women died on Sept. 11, among them 74 Port Authority employees, who never left the buildings that day, as they guided thousands to safety. "They knew what danger they were in, every last one of them knew what danger they were in," says Tabeek. "But their job was to protect and save those people. Somebody was destroying our home and hurting the people in it."
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