Surviving 9/11 Stairway from Hell
There is something off-kilter about the Migliorelli family's small farmers' market. In summer, you can buy corn on the cob, string beans, blue- berries and tomatoes here. Yet there is one blot on this rural idyll: behind the farmer's wife is a construction fence. It segregates the fresh produce on sale from Ground Zero, the world's largest construction site. Located at the site's northern edge, between the dumpster and Porta Potty, is an oddly-shaped concrete block with steps that rise pointlessly skyward - like the mobile steps seen on an airport apron.
It takes an official permit and a police escort to get to the foot of this bizarre ruin; 37 steps take you to the top. The bottom steps are preserved in concrete debris. Steps 16 and 17 have completely disappeared, but after that it's a straight shot upwards. The steps' old granite finish bears few scars. To the left are the remnants of chrome railings, to the right is a sloping area where an escalator used to run. And at the summit are a few square yards where grass sprouts between the cracks.
This was once the entrance to the plaza, the giant square that linked the Twin Towers to the outlying World Trade Center buildings. Today, it offers a vista of a construction crater extending more than 15 acres. The past and future stand in solidarity at Ground Zero: the ruins of the Deutsche Bank building beside the new Tower 7, which opened this spring.
On September 11, 2001, hundreds fled down these steps to the safety of Vesey Street. After the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., these stairs were the only escape route.
Today, this stairway from hell is the part of the World Trade Center that still remains above ground. It stands in its original position, half-preserved and half-destroyed. The stairway represents the ambivalence of the site: as a commercial hub; as the target of two terrorist attacks; and as a hotly disputed slice of prime real estate. Its symbolism has elevated it to a national monument, comparable to the sunken battleship USS Arizona, the memorial to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
"Survivors' Stairway," as it is known, has so far eluded the wrecking ball; it arches over a disused subway entrance. Long after the attacks, engineers and construction workers used the commuter tunnel to gain access to the subterranean passageways.
The staircase has now become a hindrance - or rather the memories of it have. There is no place for the hulk of concrete in any blueprints for the new World Trade Center. A new skyscraper is due to take its place.
Tom Canavan knows the staircase all too well. The steps leading down to Vesey Street saved his life on September 11. They also ruined his life for years afterward, before giving it new purpose this spring. That was when Canavan got wind of their existence. He had no idea they were still there, assuming that everything had long since been destroyed or removed. Once a year, in late summer, his company organizes a small memorial gathering in the ruins of the World Trade Center. A priest is present. "Amazing Grace" is played. A wreath is laid for the four colleagues who perished, trying to follow Canavan down inside the North Tower. He was the only one who made it out alive - thanks to these steps. Today it's almost impossible to find the stairway to survival amid the construction fences, excavators and mountains of rubble.
Even now, Canavan is still a hostage to Ground Zero. He first returned to the site two days after the attacks. He had to face the past - otherwise he would never have made it back, never have made it part of his future. Many people have left the city for good; many have switched jobs. But not Canavan, who was born here. "This is my city," he says. "I'm not getting chased out of my city."
During that first year, he devoured newspaper articles, TV reports and anything else on the 9/11 attacks. "I was addicted to that stuff," he says. But then the stories of victims and survivors - his stories - began to fade, and the reconstruction effort seized the limelight. Tragedy soon turned to farce as insurers began quibbling over compensation for victims' families, and officials and real estate sharks publicly sparred over new office buildings and their designs. For Canavan the outward trappings of normality were restored. His employer, the First Union Bank, was bought out by a rival, Wachovia. After some stopgap locations in Philadelphia and midtown Manhattan, the company returned to the financial district, renting space four blocks away from the old WTC. The new offices were on the more terrestrial fifth floor, rather than the 47th where First Union had operated from May 2001. Canavan, who still works in the bank's back office, walks past Ground Zero every day. He always sees the Twin Towers in his mind's eye: everything floods back, even the old street vendors.
Canavan moved out of the city in 2000 with his wife and family, which now includes two children. His morning commute takes 90 minutes by train, and it is the most peaceful part of his day - and the only time he can fall into a deep sleep. He hasn't the slightest notion why, but he never sleeps better. At home he manages three or four hours of shut-eye, at most. He is tormented by memories, haunted by doubt and rage.
I would try to go to sleep, but my mind wouldn't. It would just replay everything. During the day, you're working, doing things, talking to people. So your mind is geared to other things. But at night, once you go to sleep and shut down, it just wouldn't go away. The sounds. The smell. And then the questions: How come you survived? Why didn't you take a different staircase? Somebody was trying to kill me. I hadn't done anything to anyone. My wife was pregnant at the time with my daughter. I might not have ever seen my daughter. I almost missed watching my son grow up. All I did was get up and go to work - like every day.
Canavan's psychological pain overshadowed everything, even his wife's difficult pregnancy. Her husband was the focus - not the baby growing inside her. So much so that doctors induced labor when it weighed five pounds, several weeks before the due date.
The rage had Canavan in its grip. He would lose his temper, sometimes even fly off the handle at his kids. That's when doctors prescribed medication. The guy who had never taken more than the odd aspirin was now gulping down powerful tranquilizers. The downers made him feel like a zombie, so they gave him uppers - about a total of eight or nine pills a day, over several years.
Then there was the therapy. Each time he talked about his experiences, the psychiatrist broke down in tears. After their sessions, she almost needed a therapist of her own. He had to switch shrinks.
Last October, he'd finally had his fill. He took off alone for a few days and headed to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the legendary Civil War battlefield. For Canavan, a U.S. history buff, Gettysburg is a haven of peace and contemplation, the right place to toss away the medication yet still remain a rational human being. On this spot, where so many of the blue and gray were cut down by war, the man whose blood-smeared and lacerated features had flashed around the world's TV screens five years earlier finally found some peace. From that moment on, he no longer needed the tranquilizers.
The reconstruction planners have covered many different angles. They have designed the Freedom Tower to symbolize Americans' unbending desire for liberty; they have allocated space for a memorial museum and a monument with waterfalls. But they also have clashed over every detail with city officials, investors, the families of the 2,749 dead, and the comrades of the firefighters who lost their lives. Most recently, they clashed over the order of the names on the plaques.
Only the survivors, an estimated 16,000 people, have virtually no say at all. They've had to regain control of their health and lives, move into new offices with their companies, and come to terms with their trauma. One might expect 9/11 to slowly fade in their minds, allowing them to quietly return to normal. But that hasn't happened.
Two years ago, four of them got together and established the Survivors' Network. Gerry Bogacz is one of the founders. More than 700 have joined the network now, and their ranks are swelling. "In our network, we can talk about things nobody else can understand," says Bogacz. "And we can talk about stuff nobody else wants to hear anymore." Life moves on, and you should too. Consign it to the past: That, roughly, is society's response. Five years on, many of the survivors' own families no longer want to hear about 9/11. But for those who were there, it will never go away. It will always be a part of their lives.
The Survivors' Stairway means so much to them for another reason as well. Stairways are a key element in most survivors' stories from that day. The approaching aircraft and the burning towers are not etched on their memories, but the stairwells are: those crowded, clogged, flooded, smoky and dark passageways that guided them one step at a time away from certain death. Images like these were rarely captured on film - unlike the ubiquitous sight of the burning towers. The 37 steps at Vesey Street represent the personal, intimate strand of the tragedy - history playing out offstage, on site.
Bogacz is a circumspect man. During the day he handles transport issues at a New York government agency. At night, he sifts through his memories. He is trying to turn the utter impotence he felt that day into something positive. That's why network members contribute their experiences to studies, help train tourist guides at Ground Zero, and appear in religiously and ethnically mixed groups at schools and churches. "There are tensions in this country," Bogacz says, adding that the terrorists sought to drive a wedge through society. "This is one way to respond. Sometimes you have to go grassroots to work through it."
His main aim, though, is to save the stairway. Eighteen months ago, the network's members learned it was still standing. Since then, they have written letters, organized petitions and published posters showing the stairway symbolically leading toward heaven against a backdrop of the Twin Towers. Their slogan: "Save the Survivors' Stairway." None of them can understand why the stairway's future is up for debate in the first place. Ultimately, they fear that the interests of the developers will prevail.
"Leave it where it is," says Bogacz. "Don't touch it."
Keep reading about the stairway on page 2.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey owns Ground Zero. Until September 11, 2001, this giant agency resided on floors 61 to 74 of the North Tower. Eighty-four of its employees died that day.
Five years on, Kayla Bergeron sits in a corner office on the 18th floor of a building on Park Avenue, not far from Union Square. The view would stretch all the way to Brooklyn, but new high-rises now block her line of vision. Yellowed newspaper clippings and photos are posted by her desk. One picture shows a group of disheveled people rushing down the stairway. In the center, a woman is pressing her handbag to her body as a shield. That's her: Kayla Bergeron. The gray hair of her friend and colleague, Patty Clark, peeks out from just behind her shoulder. Clark is the more eloquent of the two; she speaks on both of their behalves during the interview.
On that morning, Bergeron and Clark met in the stairwell of the North Tower. They were most of the way down when they heard deafening thunderclaps that kept getting closer. The building shook. Then the lights went out. That was the moment the South Tower collapsed. "And then the lights came back on, which was sort of a miracle," says Clark.
Debris blocked their path, so they found another stairway, where water was gushing in, making their descent more treacherous. Then they reached a locker room, where water stood knee-deep and loose cables snaked down from the ceiling.
The two women felt their way along the lockers, moving toward a light. At the end was a door that led outside - onto the plaza.
"It was a weird situation, because it was light but you couldn't see anything," says Clark. "We had no idea where we were. We couldn't find our footing, it was almost like walking on sand. We didn't know what was happening."
A few minutes earlier, people had been escaping to safety - through the mall underneath the plaza. Now, both plaza and mall were buried under the rubble of the South Tower. The footbridge to the other side of the street was still standing, but it led toward a burning building. Clark looked for the round bronze sculpture, "The Sphere," in the middle of the square. Her boyfriend had proposed to her there years before. She couldn't see a thing. So she began to shout. Somebody yelled: "Come this way!" That's how they made it to the north of the plaza, to the final leg of their escape - the Survivors' Stairway.
Some 90 minutes had passed since the first plane hit the World Trade Center, yet the people in the photo in Bergeron's office look like shipwreck survivors, washed ashore after weeks at sea.
On the next corner, the two women ran into a colleague who pointed to the sky. Clark turned around.
We could see our tower; flames were shooting out of the top. To a degree it must sound horrible, but the colors were brilliant. The fire and the blue sky: there were these vibrant yellows, purples and blues! I had the image in my head and still hadn't processed that the other tower wasn't there. We knew it, but somehow we agreed to not talk about it. And then we heard that sound again.
Today, when Patty Clark talks about 9/11, she occasionally laughs and relates absurdist vignettes. Like the one about the man who, confronted with them on the street, grabbed his two children and fled. "We had no idea how we looked ... That's when we started to realize: maybe we look funny," she recounts. Or when they walked into a local dermatologist's office to use the phone. The doctor's assistant wanted to keep the line free for patients. Clark, who had just been to hell and back, screamed, "All they have is pimples!" Realizing what she had said, the assistant broke down in tears and ran off too.
Later in the interview, powerful emotions resurface, even tender and moving memories. Clark's face assumes an almost dreamy air, as she tells of her very personal connection to the World Trade Center. She had first met her husband on the 19th floor. She got engaged on the plaza, and she was on the 65th floor when her water broke. "I likened 9/11 to childbirth," Clark says. "When you are in labor, you have no choice but to go with it. It's not fun, it's painful, it's very scary. But at the same time, you have a job to do, you are very focused." Your husband can only stand and watch. Patty Clark sometimes suspects that 9/11 was tougher for relatives than it was for her and her coworkers. They had their hands full trying to escape; their families could only sit and watch as the events unfolded on TV.
In addition to the Freedom Tower, which is scheduled to be the world's tallest structure, another three skyscrapers will be built by 2012, each a little smaller than the preceding tower. Designed by Norman Foster, Tower 2 will top 1,000 feet and hold some 2,500,000 square feet of office and retail space.
Little more is known about the project - except that, according to the latest plans, the Survivors' Stairway would be located in the middle of the new skyscraper's lobby. More accurately, part of it would be buried in the basement.
Larry Silverstein is one of the key players in the future of Ground Zero. Shortly before the attacks, Silverstein took out a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center. Now he is building the accompanying trio of high-rises. In May he set up a "war room" overlooking the massive construction site for the three firms of architects involved in the project. Working under severe time constraints, they are tasked with developing the basic plans here.
In mid-July, overlooking Ground Zero from the 52nd floor of the now completed WTC 7, Silverstein presented his plans. He raved about the proposed Freedom Tower, christening it "the safest building in the world." And reminded his audience of the $15 billion to be invested through 2012, not to mention the daily $300,000 in rent he has been paying for Ground Zero for years - without earning a cent.
But what about the Survivors' Stairway? "Ask the authorities," he replies. His spokesman promptly elaborates: "It certainly can't stay where it is at the moment."
Nonetheless, Gerry Bogacz and his Survivors' Network are working on Silverstein, trying to persuade him to change his plans. For now, they can only hope that Norman Foster is the right architect for the job; he has frequently merged traditional structures with new ones: the Reichstag in Berlin, or New York's Hearst Building dating back to 1928, which he topped off with a new skyscraper this year.
Anybody exploring Ground Zero and the Survivors' Stairway with Ken Lustbader might think they are at an ancient excavation site - with an expert guide at their side to detail the erstwhile appearance and function of his favorite edifice.
"What you are looking at now was originally faced with finished stone," says Lustbader, who holds a degree in Historic Preservation. He speaks of concrete, steel and granite residues in the stairway as though he were talking about the finest marble and most exquisite frescoes. In places where the layman sees absolutely nothing, Lustbader can visualize the plaza and, at its perimeter, the day-care center. He sees people walking up and down the stairs, people pushing and shoving in front of the subway entrance.
"This is an archeological ruin," he says of the ugly, less than antique staircase with an edge of defiance in his tone. "And this country doesn't have that many of them."
Lustbader represents five organizations working to preserve historical sites in Lower Manhattan. It was he who made sure that the huge supporting pillars from the Twin Towers' foundations were integrated into the Memorial Museum, after originally being earmarked for destruction - like so much else of Ground Zero. For the champions of preservation, Manhattan's southern tip has always been a story of demolition and reconstruction. Only recently, their efforts to save one of New York's earliest skyscrapers paid off. "If we were in Rome and encountered an ancient ruin, we'd say: of course we have to save it!" says Lustbader.
On the other hand, he understands the technical problems that the stairway's location presents. The entire northern part of Ground Zero has yet to be excavated. The construction pit for the new building is scheduled to be four or five stories deep, creating space for parking lots and shopping malls. Were the nearly 160-ton stairway to be preserved, it would jut out like a huge, grotesque tower during construction.
"How do we, Americans as a society, value our history - if the largest single attack on the continental U.S. is minimalized because somebody wants to build an office tower here?" asks Lustbader. An outrage, in his view. "If the stairway is preserved, I'll have done my job, my work will be done. I'll be a happy man," he says.
At the last meeting of the Survivors' Network, some 20 members gathered at Gerry Bogacz's office on the 22nd floor of a building on the East River, overlooking Manhattan's southern tip. "I love the view," said Tom Canavan. If they were to rebuild the Twin Towers, he would be more than happy to work there.
The group discussed evacuation studies that evening, followed by their progress on the stairway campaign: committees and hearings are reviewing the options for preserving the steps. The prestigious National Trust for Historic Preservation has even included the stairs among its 11 most endangered sites in the United States. "We need the Survivors' Stairway as a reminder of the day America lost her innocence," the Trust declared, "and as a symbol of America's strength, resilience and determination to survive."
Such listings and official endorsements mark important milestones in the network's mission. But when Bogacz and his comrades want to communicate the stairway's importance, they ask Tom Canavan to tell his story. Silence descends upon the room, and although everyone present has their own personal tragedy, Canavan's account brings tears to several people's eyes. He omits the gory details. He only airs those if you sit down with him for several hours. Alone.
Then he'll recount how he and a few other employees worked their way down from the 47th floor of the North Tower. They encountered a woman whose scalded skin, dark pink and red, was peeling off. "It just rolled up like a newspaper," Canavan says. Then there was the blind man with his seeing-eye dog; they helped him down. They saw a worker whose face was so badly burned that his nose bone was exposed. Everyone kept walking down calmly, even when news of the second aircraft came over the firefighters' walkie-talkies. Except for Kathy Robertson, who also worked in their office. She had a panic attack and began to hyperventilate. "You gotta keep going," Canavan told her. She shook her head, "No, I can't do this." They left her in the care of the firefighters; everyone assumed she was in good hands.
While the first tower was still standing, the mall beneath the plaza was the safest route out; the roof offered the best protection from falling debris. The lights were off, and the sprinklers on: Canavan was the last in a group of five from his company. He had paused a second to help an elderly man and woman with their bags when he felt a huge gust of wind. "The sound was like a freight train, but it was a lot louder than that," he says. Then he heard a loud bang. At that moment, TV audiences around the world saw the first tower collapse.
The next thing I know I was smashed down against the ground. Like a bug taken out with a fly swatter. It got really quiet at first. My hands were in front of my face. I couldn't see a thing. I was literally on the ground, buried. My first thought was: I'm dead. Because I didn't feel anything. It didn't hurt, it wasn't that bad. And then I said: This can't be happening. This is New York in 2001, this stuff doesn't happen here, let alone to me.
At that point he tasted the dirt in his mouth and smelled smoke close by; the cuffs of his pants were on fire. He tried to throw dirt in that direction to put out the flames. Canavan began to dig his way out - together with another man, a security guard, who was right behind him. But the further they got, the higher the pile of debris in front of them became. Amputated limbs were scattered between the rubble. They could not even get to their knees because everything had been squashed flat above them; they had to slide along like snakes. Above, they could hear sounds as though watermelons were falling onto the floor and bursting. Later he learned it was the sound of people jumping to their deaths from his tower.
After 20 minutes, he spotted an opening with sunlight shafting through it. Canavan stuck his head out. "It was like in the middle of a tornado," he says. The hole was small but the guard - who was thinner - clambered out and - rather than helping him - simply took off. Canavan yelled, threw a chunk of concrete at him but missed. The guard disappeared across the red-hot piles of debris. He wasn't wearing shoes.
Canavan finally managed to squeeze through the hole too. He stood on top of a pile of rubble where the "Sphere" sculpture had once been, in the middle of the plaza. Something slammed down on his shoulder, a shoe, perhaps with a foot inside; he can't remember exactly. The soles of his gym shoes had melted; his fingernails were gone.
To his left, he saw sunlight and headed toward it. Two police officers waved him over to the stairway. The weather was perfect: not too hot, not too cold. The sun was shining brightly, and everything was white. It looked as if a blizzard had swept through, blanketing the cars. It was beautiful, it was sunny, he says. He had found his way out. There was no burning paper wafting through the air here. Nothing was crashing down on him. A solitary figure, the bloodsplattered Canavan walked down the stairway. At last he had made it to Vesey Street.
At the next intersection, he was stopped by a camera crew who filmed and interviewed him. His parents saw him on television. "That poor guy," his mother had said to his father. "You know what?" her husband replied. "That's your son!"
Then the FBI arrived and ordered Canavan and the TV crew to vacate the scene. At that very moment, Canavan had felt another gust of wind, another thunderous freight train passing by. He turned around. Just before the second tower collapsed, he saw three people jump out of the building, holding hands. Looking like dolls, he says. Then they vanished in a huge cloud of dust.
The next morning Canavan's boss called him at home. Four of their staff team were missing - including the panic-stricken Kathy Robertson. Later they found part of her jaw. The other three - Antoinette, Carlos and Antonio - had left the North Tower under his stewardship. When he had paused to help the older couple, they had proceeded further into the passage. That he alone survived was down to pure chance, Canavan says. A few feet had made all the difference.
