Atlanta, GA
September 11, 2026
As with Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, or the Challenger explosion, anyone old enough to remember knows where he was twenty-five years ago.
I was in a hotel room in São Paulo. I’d arrived that morning off a red-eye flight, and planned to return that evening. Like it was yesterday, I still recall what I wrote that night. I’d be stuck in Brazil several more days.
This week, many of us are sharing such recollections. We’ll always remember where we were when those planes hit the towers. But we must never forget where a particular group of other people was.
A couple nights ago at an Atlanta Braves game we met two of them, whose experience was much more harrowing than being stuck in Brazil.
Getting Out
Kayla Bergeron was an executive at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. From her desk 68 stories above the street, she saw the Statue of Liberty on that clear day. Kayla often admired the remarkable view.
But on this morning she was shaken from it when the building lurched ten feet before returning toward its original position. Outside the window shards of glass and sheets of paper fell like a descending veil over the Statue of Liberty.
Kayla wasn’t sure what happened. She heard someone say a plane had hit the building, but assumed it was a small one that’d gone astray. She sent staff to the adjacent Marriott with what they needed to ensure business continuity. A few minutes later, a security guard told her to evacuate. She grabbed her purse and cleared the floor.
In the stairwell, almost no one knew what was going on. But Kayla did. In a time before smartphones, she was among the few evacuees with a Blackberry pager. With it she could send texts and receive news.
The evacuation was orderly. After the 1993 Trade Center bombing, glow-in-the-dark tape had been installed on the stairs. As firemen went up or police came down, oblivious evacuees simply stepped aside and let them pass.
As the crowd continued its descent, Kayla received a news report of what had happened. She showed a friend, but told her not to react. They needed to stay calm to not instill panic and “keep the line moving”.
At about the sixth floor, everything shook… as if a bomb detonated outside the building. In a way, it had.
The south tower of the World Trade Center had collapsed. The impact caused the north tower to twist, which blocked the stairs the group was trying to descend.
Within the darkness came a flash of light. From that direction a voice beckoned the trapped group to “come up”. To say the least, that seemed counterintuitive. But they had no choice.
They followed the Port Authority police officer, who led them up a floor and to another stairwell. Within the well, burst pipes had unleashed a flow of water down the darkened stairs.
To maintain stability, each person grabbed the belt of the person in front as they crawled and climbed over live wires, broken glass, and twisted metal. Another light made them think they’d reached the outside.
But they were in the lobby, which was coated in thick powder from the south tower collapse. It was like being in a noxious blizzard. Nothing was clear. There seemed to be no way out. Lost in the cloud, Kayla sought footprints in the dust, but none were there. At this point, everyone started screaming.
Amid the rising panic flickered occasional light. Through a bullhorn, a voice implored anyone who could see light to follow it. They did. Within a few minutes, it led them out of the building onto the plaza level above the street.
Carnage was everywhere. But through toxic dust they stumbled and crawled, over chunks of concrete, twisted metal, shattered glass… and occasional corpses of people who’d jumped. But the evacuees had to keep moving to reach the street and get away from the building.
They arrived at what’s now known as the Survivors’ Staircase, which would be the last above ground remnant of the World Trade Center site. Kayla called it the “path to freedom”, as it was for hundreds of survivors. Her advocacy helped preserve it when demolition was threatened during redevelopment.
After descending to Church Street, amid the dust and debris Kayla asked a policeman what they should do. He offered one word.
“Run!”
As she wondered why he wanted them to flee after they’d already escaped the building, Kayla looked up to see the north tower coming down.
She ran sixteen blocks to the Holland Tunnel, and ducked under a car to dodge the dust. After washing herself with some water from a nearby store, she tried texting her staff, then crossed the Hudson.
In Jersey City, she sought the head of the Port Authority police and his next in line. Neither was there. Both were in the tower Kayla had escaped. They and 35 other officers perished trying to rescue people from upper floors.
Kayla then texted the staff she’d sent to the Marriott, only to learn they’d been killed when the collapsed towers crushed the hotel. One of the men who hadn’t gone to the Marriott was her chief operating officer. He came in covered in soot, and asked Kayla’s help tracking down employees to see who survived. She’d discover that 84 of them didn’t.
Guiding Light
One who did was David Lim, a Port Authority police department lieutenant who was in the south tower basement when the first plane hit. He put his yellow lab K-9 partner, Sirius, in the basement kennel, and rushed to help evacuate the north tower.
He’d ascended to the 44th floor when the south tower was attacked. When that building collapsed, his was the voice that guided Kayla up the stairs so she could escape the north tower before it fell.
Lim was still inside when it did. His slow pace probably saved his life. He and a group from FDNY Ladder Company 6 were escorting Josephine Harris, a bookkeeper who could barely walk.
Harris occasionally had to pause as other firefighters passed them on the steps. She told her rescuers not to wait for her.
Because they refused to leave her, they were in a fortunate place when the north tower collapsed. Their section of central Stairwell B somehow survived, and so did they. The firemen who’d previously passed them on the steps weren’t so lucky.
David Lim is among only 16 people who survived the collapse from inside the towers, where he was trapped for about five hours amid the rubble. When he finally emerged, he insisted on seeking Sirius.
That wasn’t possible. The south tower basement was buried. Sirius’s remains were recovered a few months later, and he’s honored with a monument at the 9/11 Memorial.
Wednesday night, Kayla was asked about David. She said they’d stayed in touch, and became sentimental as she began recalling the man who saved her life. When he surprised her by appearing, they choked back tears. They weren’t the only ones.
They embraced for almost a minute, bound forever by the nightmare they’d endured, the courage and composure they exhibited to survive it, and the memories and funerals of those who didn’t.
JD