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Unit 1 “We’ve Been Hit!”
With the building in flames, one man
needed help. Another man refused to leave him.
Adam Mayblum used to enjoy watching as
storms lashed the windows of his office:
You think that’s power? Mayblum would
scoff. I’m on the 87th fl
oor of the
World Trade
Center.
That’s
power.
The
drawstrings
on
his
window
shades
would
appear
to
sway
slightly, but it was an
illusion. Although they were 1,040 feet in the
sky, The WTC was
quite steady.
When Mayblum felt a devastating rumble
on that September morning, he glanced at
the drawstrings. They were careening
wildly, three feet in either direction.
Mayblum
would
be
one
of
thousands
cast
into
an
extraordinary
purgatory
that
morning1. While as many
as 25,000 would find their way to safety, 5,000
would not.
For some, it was a matter
of geography2
—
not just
which tower they worked in or on
which
floor, but in which corner of the building.
For
some,
the
choices
were
as
basic
as
which
staircase
to
use.
Others
faced
the
ultimate moral dilemma: Save yourself,
or save another.
The confusion
inside Adam Mayblum’s office at May Davis, a
financial services firm,
lasted just
seconds. He knew he needed to get out.
He
ripped
his
T-shirt
into
pieces,
soaked
the
pieces
in
water
and
gave
them
to
colleagues
to
cover
their
faces.
Among
them:
Harry
Ramos,
head
trader
at
May
Davis.
Mayblum had worked
with Ramos off and on for 14 years.3
Sparks bit at Mayblum’s ankles as he
raced for the stairs. He bolted down two flights
before realizing that his trading
partner, Hong Zhu, had been left behind. He went
back
upstairs, the whole area now
filled with smoke and burning jet fuel.
There was no sign of Hong. Mayblum
hurried down again and made it to the 78th
floor, a transfer lobby where one set
of elevators and stairs ended and another began.
He
saw
a
reassuring
sight;
Ramos
had
waded
into
the
pandemonium
to
help
panicked
workers into a stairwell.
Mayblum continued his descent, the
muscles in his calves contracting in spasms. On
the 53rd floo
r, he came
across a heavyset man whose legs just wouldn’t
move anymore.4
“Do you want to
come, or do you want us to send help?” Mayblum
shouted.
The man asked
him to send help. Adam said he would.
In
the noise, smoke and sparks, Mayblum didn’t
realize that his friend Hong Zhu was
behind him in the stairwell the whole
time. When Hong got to the 53rd floor, he came
across
Harry
Ramos.
Ramos
had
stooped
to
help
the
heavyset man Mayblum
had
seen
earlier. “I’ll give you
a hand,” Hong said.
Together, Ramos and Hong helped the man
down one more flight to an elevator.
“Don’t take it,” a Port Authority
official screamed.
Hong and Ramos tried to send a magazine
down in the elevator to test its safety. But
when they pressed the “down” button,
the doors wouldn’t close. So Hong decided that he
would be the guinea pig instead.5
He stepped inside, and the doors shut
behind him.
Hong
took
the
elevator
down
to
the
44th
floor,
the
next
transfer
lobby.
So
far,
so
good. He pressed “52,” went back
up and collected Ramos and the heavyset
man.
On 44 Hong and Ramos helped
the man toward the last bank of elevators that
would
take them all the way down.
Hong pressed the “down” button again.
Nothing. They would have to take the
stairs.
Ramos
a
nd Hong tried to support the man. “One
step at a time,” Hong said.
They had been trying to get out for an
hour and five minutes. They were on 36 when
they felt the South Tower collapse.
“We really have to move,” Hong
said.
The rumbles of
the collapsing tower next door seemed to sap the
heavyset man of his
last gasps of
energy. “I can’t do it anymore,” he said, sitting
down.
Hong and Ramos
tried to persuade him to continue. “You don’t have
to move your
legs!” Hong shouted. “Just
move your butt. Let’s go!” But the man couldn’t go
on.
A fireman ran up to them.
Hong expected that he would join in to get the
heavy man
to move. Instead, the fireman
turned to Hong.
“Who are you,
screaming at him to get out?” the fireman shouted.
“You get out!”
Hong looked at
Ramos, who was still standing with the heavyset
man.
“I’m coming down with you,”
Ramos told the man. “I’m not going to
leave.”
“I left,” Hong
says sorrowfully. “Alone.”
The
next day, Adam Mayblum sent an e-mail describing
his experience to friends and
relatives,
who
sent
it
to
still
others.
The
e-mail
was
read
by
someone
in
San
Francisco
who
knew a woman in New York named Rebecca. Her
husband, Victor, a heavyset man,
was
missing.
On Saturday, September 15,
May Davis’s
chairman had a gathering at
his New Jersey
home.
Adam
Mayblum
was
there.
So
was
Hong
Zhu.
Rebecca
was
also
there,
learning
how her husband,
Victor, had been comforted in his last moments,
how Harry Ramos had
refused to leave
him behind.
Ramos’s wife,
M
icky, was there too. She kept asking
Mayblum and Hong where her
husband
was,
convinced
that
somehow,
Harry
—
the
only
May
Davis
employee
still