NEW YORK (AP) -- When an underground steam pipe exploded in midtown Manhattan, Guy F. Tozzoli heard the mighty roar and figured the wise thing to do was to get out of the building - the same thing he had done on Sept. 11, when a hijacked jetliner hit the World Trade Center.

Tozzoli, 83, had a personal stake in that earlier event nearly six years ago.
An engineer, he worked for 25 years as the overall manager of the 110-story twin towers, until he retired in 1987 and founded a group called the World Trade Centers Association.

On Sept. 11, 2001, he was in his office on the 77th floor of the north tower when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building about 20 floors higher. He said he made his way to safety down stairways, passing firefighters on the way up.
"All that I could think of was the poor people up higher who couldn't get out," Tozzoli recalled, a day after a 24-inch steam pipe erupted in Old Faithful-like geysers of scalding steam, mud and rocks, again driving him from his office, along with thousands of others.

The first thought of many New Yorkers was another act of possible terrorism, and the scene was an eerie reprise of Sept. 11 as people ran through the streets while emergency crews, lights flashing and sirens wailing, converged on the scene.
In his fifth floor office at the Art Deco Graybar Building on Lexington Avenue, Tozzoli may have been the coolest man in midtown.

"It was hectic. I knew something was awry. I head a loud noise and saw smoke," he said in an interview Thursday on 45th Street, just outside the several-block area that police dubbed the "frozen zone."

"That means if you're inside a building you can't go out, and if you're outside you can't go in," a police sergeant explained to those who asked.

As for any flashback to Sept. 11, "It wasn't like that," Tozzoli said. "If you live in New York for a long time, you kind of get used to pipes blowing up and things like that."
The blast, which gouged a yawning crater at 41st Street and Lexington Avenue, injured 41 people. One woman died of a heart attack.

Authorities initially warned of possible airborne asbestos contamination, and although the city's Office of Emergency Management reported overnight that none was detected, some police officers at the scene wore respirators.

A few private citizens also wore masks as thousands of commuters flowed from Grand Central Terminal, bound for offices they weren't sure they could reach.

"I wasn't sure where the `frozen zone' was," said accountant Julian Jacoby, who also has an office in the Graybar building. "I tried to enter through Grand Central. I guess I'll go home."

Tozzoli did not let the latest disruption keep him at home in Westwood, N.J. He drove across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan to keep a date with some visitors from Britain. The meeting was set for a hotel.