Catching bus, missing breakfast: Life or death turned on moments

09/13/2001

By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News

Sixty seconds. That's the difference, Matt Beckman figures, between life and death.

He had just gotten to his office on the 77th floor of the World Trade Center's Tower One. Put down his briefcase. Pressed the button to boot up his computer. That's when the plane hit somewhere overhead.

"The building shook just as if it was an earthquake," he said. "The first thought that went through my head was that it was a bomb of some sort. There was a pause for 20 seconds, and you didn't know if it was going to go down right then and there."

Debris was hailing past his window.

"The building stopped moving, and I knew it was time to get the hell out of there," he said, safe at home in suburban New Jersey on Wednesday after a sleepless night.

A minute earlier and Mr. Beckman, 31, would have been on an elevator. No one on the elevators when the plane hit could have made it, he said. No way. No time. He thanks God he didn't stop for breakfast. That he caught the bus he caught. That he made it out after an hour trek down a smoke-filled staircase littered with high-heeled shoes - just a minute before the other building collapsed, trapping those still scurrying down.

"I feel it this morning. Both my calves, from going down, and running in the street. It was certainly more of a workout than I'd planned," he said.

And in his gut.

"It was something that was unfathomable, inconceivable," he said.

From investment bankers like Mr. Beckman to expectant mothers and the throngs that witnessed receptionists and executives leaping to their deaths, survivors shared their versions Wednesday of the worst attack on U.S. soil. Like survivors before them at Pearl Harbor or Oklahoma City, they know the horror has changed them forever.

Betty Ann Nelson, 34 and eight months pregnant with her second child, was just outside the Trade Center when the first airliner banked into the building. She ran to her office at the American Stock Exchange, where friends thrust her into a wheelchair, fearing she might go into labor.

"And then there was another blast, and hundreds of people came rushing into our building because glass, paper and steel were falling to the ground," said Ms. Nelson, who lives in Jersey City. "Everyone came together and comforted each other. We were like family immediately."

Then the buildings collapsed. "They said evacuate. Then it was crazy. The building shook like an earthquake, and the windows broke in," she said.

Strangers rolled Ms. Nelson up the street. The air turned acrid and black.

"I thought: 'My baby, my baby! I'm not going to die here. I'm not going to let my baby die.' I was going to get trampled. There were hundreds of people running and screaming behind me. So I grabbed my stomach and ran for my life."

Pulling herself out of the chair, she ran 10 blocks, stopping at a bar to rest.

"Other people weren't as lucky," she said. "I knew I was jumping over bodies, but I didn't want to look."

She made her way to the ferry to Liberty State Park, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. After feeling contractions, she got a checkup at the Jersey City Medical Center. A day later, she was fine. Except for the memories.

'I screamed'

Mr. Beckman's girlfriend, Bonnie, was at home in Sayreville, N.J., dressing for work when her sister called from Virginia to tell her the towers had been hit.

"I thought she was joking," she said. "I screamed. Matt works near the top."

On the 77th floor, Mr. Beckman was grabbing his wallet, his cell phone, his Palm Pilot. He left his briefcase and suit jacket and didn't bother locking the office door. His three partners hadn't arrived yet.

"The ceilings were coming down. There was fire, smoke. You already heard people screaming," he said. "A girl from the office to my left was screaming at the girl from the office to my right, 'Come on, come on.' "

At first, the stairs were nearly empty.

"About five floors after we started, it started to fill up. The smoke was not that bad. You could see. People were taking their shirts or ties off and wrapping them around their faces," he said.

By the 60th floor, refugees were spreading the word that a plane had hit. Twenty floors down, everyone knew the other tower had been hit, too. Sprinklers were going off.

"You're getting wet, it smells, you're going as fast as you can. It was tough. You had people in the stairwell who were injured, who couldn't go as fast," he said. "You were stepping over people who had to take rests."

He passed a friend from a bond firm on the 87th floor. Harry was helping an overweight man, a stranger to both of them, Mr. Beckman thinks. Harry refused to abandon the man. No one's heard from Harry.

"We had no idea how bad it really was," Mr. Beckman said. "At no point whatsoever did it cross your mind that the building could collapse at some point. ... The evacuation didn't take place like it was a race for your life. The building had stopped shaking."

"That's what saved people's life. If you knew what was going on outside, the stairwell could have been mayhem."

Stay or leave?

On the 47th floor, George Meng was hunkering down after the first explosion. With the hallways outside his office filling with smoke, he thought it safer to seal the door with wet paper towels and Scotch tape and call 911. The operator told him his building had been hit by an airplane.

His wife called. Relatives of co-workers called. He assured them that their loved ones hadn't arrived yet for work. Mr. Meng, 48, the managing director of the U.S. office of Pacific American Corp., a Chinese import-export company, wasn't sure he would see his wife, Yanan, and 15-month-old daughter again.

After a third explosion - the top of the other tower falling - he grabbed a flashlight, a wet towel for his mouth, his laptop, lunch and an inch-thick stack of faxes he deemed too important to leave behind. No one else was in the stairwell. At the exit, police were shouting for people to run. Moments later, the tower that he had just escaped collapsed. Heckman and about 10 others went back up four floors, where they could cross to the other stairwell. The hallway was littered with rafters and beams, the drainage up to their calves.

The last 10 flights were rough, he said. Water was rushing so fast that even the stronger evacuees had to grab both railings.

Outside in the courtyard he found debris and dozens of piles - "I guess jumpers, people from the aircraft. ... Those five piles, those three piles, those are human beings over there.

"Police were telling you, keep walking, don't look up, don't look up. And when you looked up, you saw One and Two World Trade Center and they were just on fire ... . If you'd have had that sight in your mind when you were in the building, you might not have gotten out."

He was a block away, outside the Staples office supply store, when Tower Two crumbled. "You're just running as fast as you can. You look over your shoulder, there's like a mushroom cloud chasing you down the street," he said.

He can think of 15 ways he might not have made it. Not changing stairwells. Catching the next bus. Stopping at the deli for breakfast. Sixty seconds.

"Everything that needed to happen for me to get out of that building happened," he said.

On Thursday, Mr. Beckman and his partners will fan out to Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken, looking for new office space. Their wives and girlfriends won't let them go back to Manhattan - and most don't want to.

"I'm not sure I'll be able to fly again. I'm gonna have a hard time getting in a plane, a hard time going into New York," he said.

"I knew a lot of people in there."