Davis Family Newspaper
The Mark A. Davis Family in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania
Rick Bryan is a MetLife sales representative who worked in the MetLife Sales Office on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center North Tower who was able to escape the tragic terror attack of September 11th, 2001. Two MetLife Sales Reps, Abe and Gye-Hong, did not survive. Rick's story was emailed throughout MetLife and is a particularly personal account, unfiltered by media editors. This is his email, sent to a co-worker just a few days after the attack.
----- Original Message -----
From: <rickbryan@mail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 12:31 AM
Subject:
Glad to be alive
Well Ron I am certainly glad to hear from you and Chris and to know the girls are doing fine. How I was able to make it out of the building is just an impossible story. And with so many people missing and lives destroyed, my only injury was a blister on my hand from holding onto the handrail while walking down 89 floors.
I was at my desk facing the Hudson River at 1 World Trade when the plane slammed into the other side of the building. I felt immediately that it was a plane rather then a bomb. It didn't sound like an explosion, but an impact crash. There are so many small planes and helicopters buzzing the towers constantly I was sure some idiot pilot just lost control. Our workday starts at 8am sharp, so that at 8:45 our office is filled with people. But on this day for some reason most of the office was caught up in traffic, or had an appointment out in the field, or had to take the kids to school. When the impact came I was sure the building was going over. It leaned so far I thought I was going to fall through the window.
When the building stopped moving the eight of us on the West side of the office gathered around and discussed whether we should stay put and wait for instructions, or immediately leave the floor. I went around to the other side of the office and opened a door to a hallway that led to the Southwest portion of our offices to see who was on that side. The hallway was filled with thick black smoke and I couldn't see more then 10 feet down the hall, so I closed the door and went returned to the West side of the floor. At that time, the office began filling with smoke, so we decided it was time to leave. People were hurried, but no panic at all. Some people were packing their papers and computers and had their briefcases slung over their shoulders. We thought we'd just go out into the hallway and walk down stairs. No problem. Well we get out into the hallway and to my shock the door to the stairway would not open. I shoved my shoulder into the door and it would just not give way. The frame must have twisted or the door was blocked from the inside; I don't know. But Ron when I couldn't open that door and the hallway was filling with smoke, that's when I knew we were in big trouble. So I went down the hallway to where I knew the second stairway was located, but couldn't get through because of the smoke and heat, and that's when I saw that our floor was on fire.
We went back into some law offices across from the MetLife offices where the air was cleaner, and thought about what to do. Amazingly the phones were working, so I called my dad and told him something happened, and that the air was filling with smoke, and that we couldn't get off the floor. I don't know why I did that. And then people were calling the law office and I was at the receptionist's desk answering the telephone and letting people know what was happening. There wasn't anything else to do. It was quite bizarre. We went to the rear-most part of the law offices, but when that air too started filling with smoke, we knew we weren't going to make it. So I went back into the hallway to try the door again. I was going to die anyway; may as well try something. That's when I noticed the wall to the side of the elevators was blown open, and I could see into the elevator shaft. There was an intense fire burning and putting off smoke, so I thought if I could put the fire out at least we wouldn't die from the smoke. I shoved the hose from the fire extinguisher I had into the elevator shaft and leaned on the handle, but the propellant didn't have any effect on the flames whatsoever.
At about 60 we started encountering rescue people, who were really overloaded with heavy equipment and could hardly make it any further. As we continued down, the stairway became more and more crowded, with more and more firemen coming up, and the firemen were setting up command stations on the various floors to take care of their own guys who were having trouble, and the many workers who couldn't make it down on their own. But still everyone was helping everyone else out, and we stopped to grab cold drinks from vending machines the firemen had smashed open. As we got down to the lower floors it really was slow going, and I think everyone really thought we had been in the building too long, and we really had to get out. Some people pointed out the cracks in the walls, and these weren't ordinary fractures; you could see they were severe structural cracks in the infrastructure of the building. Then we heard one of the firemen say that all rescue personnel were ordered to leave the building, and most of them started to do so. And just as when you're on the highway and a firetruck comes up behind, and people pull to the sides of the road . . . well that's just how it was here. People pinned themselves to the sides of the stairway and the firemen made great haste right down the center, a lot of them wearing their air masks.
So finally we continued down past 30, 25, 20, 15, fairly rapidly. Then at about 10 everybody stops, and the stairways are filled with people. There's a lot of yelling going on, but not yelling of panic. People were just yelling for flashlights, or for assistance carrying someone. We were stopped in that spot for a very uncomfortable period of time, and it was more annoying then anything else, but then the stairway started filling with smoke, and everyone suddenly got very anxious once again. Finally we started moving and got out into the lobby.
I could not believe the scene inside the lobby. It seemed like the inside of an urn; there was grey ash covering everything, and twisted steel and glass, it was almost unrecognizable. So we exited out towards West Street, and at this time I had lost contact with anyone else from the Company, and was pretty much picking my way through by myself. A fireman directed us out North of where the exit doors were, and we had to exit the building through where a glass panel had been. Most of the glass was blown away and the ground was covered with a sea of one-inch thick plate glass, covered with ash, which made it very slippery. I was in great fear that a slab of glass was going to fall and cut me in two.
So now I'm staying at my parent's house on LI for a couple of days, taking time to see my family, and seeing that over 4,700 people are missing, including Abe and Gye-Hong, and wondering how it's possible that I got out from the 89th floor without so much of scratch, but thankful, not so much for myself, but for my family, that I was able to do so.
So that's my story. Again, it was good to hear from you, and I hope Chris is well too.
Rick Bryan