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Ron Woodward (name changed)
was on the 75th floor of the World Trade Center’s south block building when
the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 was rammed into it between the 77th
and 85th floors at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001. being below the actual
impact site Woodward survived but didn’t know he had only 56 minutes before
the structure collapsed. Taking no chances he started clambering desperately
down the stairs to get out. Falling, floundering and lurching over people
and debris in the darkness he finally made it to one of the lowest floors
with only a few minutes to spare when he passed a rescue fireman on his way
up the same stairs. Their eyes met for a moment.
The fireman almost certainly died while Woodward
managed to scramble away to safety and lived. Years later he spoke of the
man on a television programme with amazing candour and humility, “He knew
where he was going,” he said, “and he didn’t miss step. I knew where I was
going and I was tripping.”
That’s the difference. At the
time neither person could have known or even imagined that the enormity of
the collision would compromise the integrity of the entire tower, causing it
to implode on itself and crush everyone along with it. Both men also had
their jobs cut out for them: one had to save himself, the other had to save
others. We could, of course, always say that the survivor was only doing
what comes instinctively to all of us in such a situation, whereas the
fireman who dies was merely performing his duty in his professional line of
work. But that would not explain why Woodward’s eyes brimmed over with tears
when he made his statement on TV.
The question is should
Woodward have stayed back, or turned around instead and tried to help other
people? Not being trained to do so could have meant he might have only have
gotten in the way perhaps. Besides, his adrenaline was pumping, making
decisions difficult; his thoughts too must have been on his waiting family
and near and dear ones. In any case the whole exercise would have been
totally futile since the collapsing tower would have killed him a short
while later and no one would have ever known what he did. Just like no one
would have ever known about that particular fireman if Woodward had not run
into him. But this much is definite: Woodward would not have wept. |
