I'll always be amazed by Pasquale Buzzelli who was in a stairwell on the 22nd floor when the building started to collapse, he essentially rode it down crouched in the corner of the stairwell. Nothing short of a miracle.
I lost my friend John in the north tower. He worked at the 105th floor and saddly didnt make it. May he and all the people who died that day rest in peace
@@dariusbalaceanu As far as I’m aware, the highest floor in the North Tower that anyone made it out from was the 91st floor. I’m sorry your friend didn’t make it out. I can only imagine what the conditions were like up there before the collapse. The only clues I have are the last phone calls (the last and final one was 2 minutes before the North Tower collapsed), a few transcribed conversations like the one made by a woman named Christine who was the assistant general manager for Windows on the World, and the numerous photos of people doing God knows what to get air. Just know that your friend didn’t die a painful death and he’s in a better place with those who love him.
I was 30 when this happened. And started watching the coverage about 10 min after the first plane hit. No way I hell would I have gone back into that building. Period
Same kind of thing happened on the Titanic, where they told passengers to go back to their cabins after the ship hit the iceberg. Moral of that story. If there is danger and the authorities tell you to go back to were ever you came from, don't. Just get out and leave what ever way is possible.
@@lotstodo this Philly kid (who was exactly 40.5 years old that day) would have said, "Yeah. I'll follow YOU right back up! Now outta my way!!! Please." And calmly walked right around whomever had said that 😉👍
Can u tease us? What's sound like a 400meters building collapsed? Did you see decapitated bodies outside?? How long it took you to sleep well after this horrible events?
I visited the South Tower about a year before it happened. I'm from Florida and I was in New York for one of my cousins wedding. The wedding was at a hotel resort somewhere in upstate New York. After the wedding My dad and I decided to stay in New York for a day or two to take a tour of the city. We stopped at a few places, The statue of liberty and the Twin Towers. On a previous trip to New York probably about 5 yrs earlier we went to the Empire State Building and took a tour of Teddy Roosevelts house. One of the things I remember about the twin towers was there was a vendor who sold dippin dotz ice cream. It was kinda neat because they didn't have dippen dotz in Florida where i lived yet. I always wondered if the nice vendor that sold me and my dad ice cream was there on 9/11. The vendor had a stand at the observatory. I tried looking up to find out searching business list of tenants on 9/11. I didn't see anything that suggested dippendotz was there. My cousin worked at Building # 7. He worked as an insurance actuary in Building #7 and was late to work the day it happened. He arrived at the WTC shortly after everything started falling. He won't talk about what he saw that day. He saw all the people jumping. It deeply affected him. I visited New York probably about a yr after 911 for another wedding. That time we just drove through New York City. We drove by where the towers were. They had a big plywoodwall around the site. It was sad seeing that after just being there 2 yrs earlier.
@@patatebanine4278 I was on the 36th floor when the north tower got hit soon as the building got hit you could feel it sway for side to side the lights dimmed for a second and came right back on. I was with a colleague of mine we looked at each other and we knew something happened. We just didn’t know what we thought 💭
There was an elevator in the North Tower lobby in the Naudet brothers documentary that opened up randomly about 30 mins after the plane hit & the people exited unharmed. They had no idea what even happened. Imagine how many people in the elevators that had no idea what even occurred. Such a terrible tragedy.
One woman who survived said she went to work that day at her desk, on a very high floor, And left early in time because she felt something hit. There were firefighters on the ground floor yelling at everyone to leave... She said the elevator seemed to take forever. They were also told to go back upstairs and get back to work.
@@noorrougelewis6704 Hindsight is always 20/20, but I'm kind of always surprised people were made to go back to work. There were multiple people in both buildings that required their employees to have drills for that exact scenario. Especially with the 1992 attack.
When Orio Palmer got up to the 78th floor before the South Tower collapsed he did radio that he got a stuck elevator open that people had been trapped in. So some people who had been trapped for nearly an hour just had the excitement of being freed from an elevator only to die minutes later when the South Tower collapsed.
He also said there were multiple casualties there. I imagine some of them were burn victims because of the jet fuel going down the elevator shafts. I remember the story of the poor lady walking by the lobby down at ground level who was hit by one of those.
It’s so tragic that people were told to stay in the towers or go back in. It should have been an immediate evacuation 😢we definitely live different lives now. I think every where I go I look for the nearest exit and make a plan just in case- movies, malls, hotels etc
@stacieo8001: What’s funny is that I never did that before, but when I had dinner at Windows on the World in the 70s during a trip to NY, that was my first question upon getting out of the elevator “What happens if there is a fire up here ? How do we get out of here ? Where is the escape route ? Where are the stairs” ? The Maitre ‘d was amused at my questions stating “Madame - that could never happen” as he was holding a laugh in. and I said “Well just in case - where are the stairs” ? Eventually, he showed me the stairs which we now know did not help anyone escape. I was so uncomfortable the entire time I was up there and no amount of alcohol made me feel better/less uncomfortable. When we finally finished dinner and were back down on planet earth outside of the building, I looked up to where we just were and felt like I had just dodged a bullet.
even more tragic that most of them didn't even know the cause of the fire or that the towers were attacked by terrorists. there were no social media at the time and very few people had cellphones then, and even if some had Nokia phones, people weren't glued to their phones then so they had little access to real-time news and information then
@@lilybond6485 Jan survived along with a few other port authority members. His story was featured and recreated in the documentary “Inside the World Trade Center”. Documentary is available on UA-cam for free.
I recall reading Jan's story, he and several other men were trapped in an elevator. He was a window washer and he and the others used the handle of his squegee(sp?) to dig through a wall. He and the others he was with all lived.
Honestly, it still breaks my heart knowing that there were people in these elevators that even died. The sky lobbies. the floors. everything...they didn't deserve to die like that...no one did on that day...
In this video, you show pictures of an elevator motor, I assume is on display at the 9/11 museum. There are rumors or maybe true that the museum is closing or closed. What is the latest on this, if you know?
@@anndinotoThe museum was called the Newseum and it closed December 31, 2019. I was there the last week it was open. In hindsight, the closing of a museum dedicated to the 1st amendment right before 2020 is all too fitting.
@SlickBlackCadillac I understand that it was closed due to lack of funds and lack of interest. I didn't know it, actually closed, I would have thought that someone from the city or government would have stopped it. Although it's an event that should be preserved for future generations to know it was real, with all the videos, books, and everything else out there about it, a museum might be overkill.
Also it’s been documented by Firefighters in the North Tower, that there were found remains(burned) in several downed elevators upon entering the North Tower lobby. There were people stuck while jet fuel made its way down the building.
@@Fleetwoodjohn I’ve read that there was evidence of fuel spilling down a through the elevator shafts. As far as it being ignited or not, your guess is good as mine.
@@Fleetwoodjohn Maybe most of the fuel, but not all of it. Remember that these Airliners also had a significant amount of fuel located in their wings. It was inevitable that a good portion of fuel was not ignited on impact due to the fierce collision.
@@Fleetwoodjohn Jet fuel requires oxygen to combust. Immediately after impact, the fireball would have immediately consumed most of the available oxygen. And the building, being a (mostly) enclosed space, would have slowed the rate of oxygen consumption significantly.
The express elevator shafts were huge (elevators could fit 55 people), way bigger than the local elevators. A few of these shafts extended up to the explosion region and were the main conduits for blast energy to reach all the way down to the lobby. Witnesses escaping from high floors of WTC1 reported that when they reached the sky lobby they could see a waterfall of fire (burning jet fuel) in one of the shafts that had doors blown out. Sadly many people trapped in stuck elevators below were cooked alive by the rain of burning fuel.
Yeah..I've always felt that if the twin towers didn't collapse that the horrors of that day would be felt even worse. The recovery of body parts and remains would have been the stuff of nightmares.
@@thaismatsumoto The whole trauma came from the collappsing of the towers, not by hitting it alone. You should remember that there was a bomb blasing in the parking garage of the WTC in 1992, and it didn't make an impact in history. As tragic as this would have been for everyone that would have died IF the towers didn't collapse, it wouldn't have changed the trajectory of the West so drastically.
The elevators were equipped with a safety system whereby if the buildings moved more than a set amount, due to wind loads on the buildings, the elevators would automatically shutdown and stop. This lead to people being regularly trapped in elevators until maintenance went and reset the elevators. Because of the force of the planes hitting they caused the buildings to sway, especially the south tower, which would have shut down basically all of the elevators, except maybe for some of the lower elevators where the movement of the building would have been less. Building staff did manage to get some of the elevators working again by resetting them. There's a video of the WTC elevators where an elevator maintenance guy explains this 'safety' system. Video is called "WTC elevator installation". There were 99 elevators in each building, so lots of people would have been trapped especially in the south tower.
@@patricknedzHe lost the blade actually & used the medal holder of the blade for the squeegee which is even more impressive. He gave it to the 9/11 memorial museum where it is on display.
@kw6713a I was watching a video on survivors who got out. They talked about trying to rescue people from an elevator, but couldn't open it enough. They slid them in some tools so that maybe they could open it from the inside. They said they don't know what happened to them. I kept waiting for an update, but we never got one. That's an example of no one really talks about the people in the elevators unless they got out, I guess
USA Today has a much more detailed and well-sourced article on this titled "Disaster within disaster: World Trade Center elevators created more tragedy."
Orio Palmer's team helped a group of people trapped in an elevator to get out. 3 minutes before the collapse of the south tower. So close to life but so far away, what an unfair way to die all the people on that fateful day
One of the things I had drilled into my head during building evacuation drills was to never set foot inside the elevator. Find the nearest intact stairs and take them.
As the Airport in Duesseldorf went ablaze in 1996, people died because they used the elevator out of the parking garage, moving into a burning hall, and the elevator never closing because the smoke blocked the light sensors. That's one of the reasons why you should never use an elevator when a building is on fire.
there is a play written by Patrick James Carson called 'Elevator' where five are trapped in an elevator during 9/11, one of the people being a janitor. This was later made into a low budget movie called '9/11' and starred Whoopie Goldberg, Charlie Sheen and Louis Guzman. Its not a long film, and most of it was filmed inside an elevator. The last few seconds are heartbreaking and always leaves me with goosebumps
It was a window cleaner that used the squeegie tool to clean windows to dig through the wall in the elevator and all the people in the elevator ended up in a bathroom after digging and kicking through the wall.
@helenf.7221 I guess it was claustrophobia maybe that got to them, I have it really bad and I was once stuck in a lift. All the 9/11 thoughts went through my mind at a million per minute
There was a terrifying hour-long television documentary called The Elevators of 9/11. It used to be on UA-cam, but it's been scrubbed from the site and it's basically memory-holed now. Still has an IMDb page though.
I used to have that Elevators of 9/11 special recorded on VHS when it came out. There were several stories on there, but other than the six people (including the window washer) stuck near the 50th floor of the North Tower, I remember the South Tower Sky Lobby elevator story with insurance executive Alan Mann, who worked on floor 105 of Tower 2, took and elevator down the the 78th floor Sky Lobby after the North Tower was hit, then squeezed into the last elevator to go down a few seconds before the second plane hit. His elevator then free fell until the brakes kicked in near the lobby, and he escaped underneath the damaged elevator floor and through shaft doors to enter the lobby. I'm not sure if anyone else inside escaped though.
Depending on the location of the elevators in relation to the impacts, those inside may have been protected but subsequently the heat and even widespread smoke may have been channeled into the shafts, transforming the place into a chimney. In any case, only those who were below the impacts had the chance to descend.
In irgendeinem Turm von beiden sollen wenige Leute durch ein fast intaktes Treppenhaus aus den oberhalb der einschlagspunkte. Es gab aber nur das eine Treppenhaus und dies soll nur wenigen gelungen sein. In den Stockwerken wo die Flugzeuge rasten, gingen lt. Diesen Leuten nicht mal die Türen auf bzw. Sie waren so heisst, daß man den Lack runterfliessen sah. Ich bin der Meinung es wären welche aus dem Restaurant gewesen, sie hätten sich gleich nach dem Einschlag auf den Weg gemacht, obwohl ihnen Leute entgegenkommen, die meinten sie sollten wieder an die Arbeit gehen, es bestünde keine Gefahr. Sie gingen weiter runter und waren kurz vorm Einsturz raus.
I was in my 20's, I was in the middle of moving into a new home. Listening to CD'S oblivious to what was happening. By the time I found out it was 5 pm. I was in shock and worse yet, no cable, no Internet. I couldn't watch anything until 2 weeks later. By then everything had moved to investigation. I am just now bringing myself to watch actual real time footage and its worse than I ever imagined. Im from Oklahoma City and I remember the horror of the murrah building. The day care... that was horrible but this was even worse! Sickening, heartbreaking.
Can you imagine being stuck in an elevator after a free fall.. only for the janitor to dig their way through a wall for escape.. just to get right back on another elevator?! Faaaaaaaaaaq that shyt bro !! “taking the stairs from here”
As a person that frequently used to screw around with elevator doors as a kid and teenager, what you said there is true! It’s hard, but it’s definitely not impossible to pry an elevator door open.
Just watching this gave me the chills.. Just thinking about it is enough... Imagine if people weren't told to go back to their desks after something like that happened.. Kind of made me wonder if more people would have survived?
I read where the machines used by the express skylobby elevator were designed for use in diamond mines. They were the largest and fastest machines made by Otis at the time.
I remember the elevator ride up to the restaurant “Windows” but I am remembering having taken 2 elevators to get there. One of the 2 was so fast it felt like it was going 100 MPH.
I would have never stayed in the south tower seeing the north tower in a blaze!! I would have left immediately! I've gone home from work for way less! 😅
Danny Jones has a really good interview. At 23min into his video, he talks about his experience with an elevator rescue. The elevator was at the lobby, and the doors were open. You could just see the peoples feet. The jet fuel was on fire in the pit.
@@lilybond6485 there was footage that showed a camera man following firefighters into the lobby of the south tower (I believe it was the south tower as it was the first to collapse) and the narrator said that he deliberately didn’t pan the camera right as he could see people on fire staggering out of one of the lifts. Absolutely horrifying.
@trudim6024: Every time I think I can’t get more sick about what happened on 911, something else horrible is revealed to me. Ugh. Thanks for your response.
There are several reports, from both towers, that when the planes impacted people felt the buildings move....actual move, up to several feet. If people were "thrown out" of the open doors of an elevator on the 90th+ floor i can see this sudden jolt of movement being the reason. You'll never heard "go back up to your offices, you'll be safe there" ever spoken during an emergency in a highrise building in the Western world ever again!
I worked from 2008 to 2020 with a woman who got stuck in an elevator in WTC 1 on 9/11. I am not sure how she got out, didn't ask for details as had PTSD from it. She was very afraid to use elevators, especially alone.
Without knowing anything,I just want to be in a place where I can see,know where I'm and not feel trapped.More than 30 seconds in a non moving elevator is starting to get scary!!!
I remember watching, I think it was the Naudet Bros. film of the firefighters arriving in the lobby to set up their command post & seeing folks that had been incinerated in front of the elevators from a fireball of burning jet fuel that had shot down the elevator shaft. Not sure if they were actually in the elevator or had been standing in front of it. The firefighters were directing people away from the area to avoid seeing the burned bodies laying there.
Those people were most likely burned by the fireball that travelled down the freight elevator car 50 shaft. There was no chance fuel would pour down via elevator shafts other than freight and windows on the world/GBOE.
Your first story about the "janitor" digging his way through the elevator wall sounds like the story of my neighbor at the time. He lived two houses down from us in Jersey City. For those who aren't familiar with where Jersey City, NJ is... it's right across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan. Looking to the east, our tree-lined street framed the World Trade Center Towers. Anyway, that story sounded like my neighbor's story, except he was an indoor window washer. He used the end of his squeegee to chip away at the wall that started to make a hole big enough so they could start to pull away larger pieces of the wall. I think he told me when they eventually walked through the wall to the other side, they were in a restroom. And I also believe they walked all the way down to get out. Most of his story we got from his wife. He didn't speak much at all for the longest time. His family and ours both lived up near the Heights back then. Now we live down by the harbor in the Exchange Place area, for those familiar. We lost track of him and his wife after we moved. I wonder how's he's doing? On a quick side note, I used to work as a waiter on the 107th floor in the Windows on the World restaurant. Although, I left Windows with everyone else after the '93 bombing. They had closed it for a couple years after the bombing. They had to gut the entire restaurant spaces on the 106 and 107th floors mostly because of all the smoke damage. All that smoke from the basement where the bomb went off eventually rose and collected itself inside the top floors.
The first story is his story . I guess he technically might have been considered part of the janitorial crew. And I actually do know where Jersey City is. When I was 15, my best friend and I ran away from our homes here in western Massachusetts . We walked and hitchhiked to New York City.In January. We actually walked over the George Washington Bridge. It was freezing. When we reached the other side we were spotted by a cop in the building we had gone into to get warm. They took us to the juvenile detention center there where we stayed for a week. We were lucky that the other girls there thought we were gang members and were tough. Why, I don't know. 😂 But because of that we actually had a good time there.
The last one out of the elevators was a man alone in an express elevator in the North Tower lobby. After 2WTC collapsed power failed in 1WTC which stopped the door motor from closing the doors. Most elevators had retrofitted door restrictors which would not allow the doors to open unless the cabin was within 6" of a door landing. His elevator probably not had this installed since it was a purely manual lock which was not dependent on power.
FDNY Tim Brown gives an account of a stuck elevator in the lobby of tower 2 where you could only see their feet and lots of fire/jet fuel in the open pit. He was tasked with rescuing them until another fire fighter told him he'd handle it instead. They found that fire fighter in that exact spot with the jaws of life in his hand under the rubble. He managed to save two people out of the car. Tim's entire interview is facinating, anyone interested in 9/11 should go watch it. He dived into the marriot during the collapse. Crazy story.
Each tower had 99 elevators. So ironically most of the elevators were in the middle of being fitted wirh a "safety system". This system would lock the doors if the elevator was stuck between floors. If this system engaged it would require an elevator tech or a firefighter to get on top of the elevator and use a special key to unlock the doors. You can imagine how many people got trapped by this system. Especially since almost all the elevator techs left after the first plane hit. And the fact that the firefighters didnt make it very high up (except Oreo Palmer). There was also reports of entire elevator cars having their doors ipened only to find burnt corpses of 20 to 30 people. The jet fuel ran down the elevator shafts. Many of these people were burnt alive wirh no way to ipen the doors. I think that plummitng to the ground would have been more merciful. There are a lot of stories online of elevators makimg it to the lobby only to have people who are on fire stubke out of them
@@stevenroshni1228 When you have no sprinklers working due to severed water lines, and have a much larger jet hit, at super high speeds, with a never planned for fuel load, crap happens.
There was a story of a man who was in the sky lobby on the 78th floor of tower one. When he was heading his way to another elevator on the 78th floor to go up to his floor, which was on the 101 floor. He was a few feet away from the elevator when the airplane crashed And then he saw three people jump out the elevator. The first person that jumped out of the elevator had second-degree burns. The second person that jumped out had third-degree burns, and the third person that jumped out died because of their burns a few hours later.
@ The man escaped the north tower from the 78th floor to ground level. The second person that jumped out of the elevator was actually a coworker that he didn’t get along with, but he said God put him in that position to see what he will do. He got down on the ground level with the woman and helping her. When they got down first responders told the man to take the woman in one of the ambulance and he did. The woman said she will not leave or go on the ambulance only if that man goes with him. The man got in the ambulance when the ambulance was full because that’s what they needed to do fill up all of the ambulance and then leave. They got to a hospital and nurses took the woman. They said the man couldn’t go in with her unless he was a family member of hers, which he wasn’t , long story short he didn’t have a phone like many other people didn’t have a phone or lost their phone. A man was telling people they can go in his apartment to make phone calls if they needed and he did. He called his wife and his wife thought he was gone and she started, crying on the phone. He got back home very late and he was very grateful to be alive. His full story is on UA-cam. I’ll send the link soon.
I saw the Naudet documentary, and then was able to see a traveling exhibit of 9/11 at Washington State History Museum years ago. They had the actual camera the Naudets were filming the documentary with.
*'Insane Work Ethic' ?? Yeah must be real hard work talking in to microphone 3 times a day. You and DG Don't know what a hard days work is. You have no idea what 'Work Ethics' means ya 🤡*
in french movie crew video with fire chief in North tower quite a big size portion footage showing guy calling in from main console into every elevator and mostly none comms working
A lady in a bathroom says the noise she heard from the elevator dropping, hitting, bouncing off of the shafts, an elevator she just got off of, was so loud and created so much force that it broke the bathroom wall completely and left an intense ringing in her ears. But yeah, not all elevators breaks where able to catch and a few dropped all the way down to the sublevels. The two guys who were thrown out of the elevator happened because the doors where open either because they just got on OR someone got off. Either way, they where both lucky. Some would say God or an Angel where with them which is kinda sucky to say because many people did not have God or Angels on their side that day
The Naudet video shows some of the elevator aftermath, including the destruction of the marble that encased them. Also, there is a clip that shows people exiting the elevators on the main floor who were stuck for many minutes but managed to escape.
I've read that a window washer that was among those stuck in an elevator offered his squeegee as a tool to carve a hole in the sheetrock and they escaped. Not sure if that is the same story you brought up
@kookytoots6755 I know I've seen it too buddy.there was most probably a good few in there..what I'm saying is a good old size 9 foot get get through drywall very easily.i reckon with the adrenaline you could smash through them.without a window squeegee.
I just can’t comprehend how the fireballs going down the elevator shafts killed everyone and made its way down into the lobby and kill those in the lobby too (ie: Jennieann Maffeo)
Even if the elevators were in free fall, they have another mechanism that stops the elevator from smashing into the floor if the brakes stop working. Elevators have springs at the bottom, like mattresses. So they won't crash. The elevator will bounce up and down and slow down. Until it's able to come to a complete stop.
3 different types of elevator in those towers, main elevators with emergency brakes, freight elevators without emergency brakes and the single glass elevator that was express to the top.
Im guessing you got this idea from my comment on one of your previous videos. Something ive always found interesting is the fact that the local elevators below the impact zone stopped working. Its not like they were connected to where the plane hit. They just suddenly dropped by themselves. Im quite intrigued as to the cause of that
I remember a story where someone who survived decided to put a magazine in an elevator and sent it down. Then they called it back up and the magazine was OK so they rode the elevator. It's one of those "seemed logical at the time" decisions.
If they just stopped working, that could be an electrical issue like maybe the main controls got wipes out by the initial impact. But if they dropped to the ground, they doesn't really make any sense to me 🤷♂️
According to the FDNY the Burning Jet Fuel cascaded down the Elevator shafts and blew out into the Lobby, resulting in many people being burned to Death. The Firefighters and other First Responders found NO working Elevators from the Lobby upon arrival, which necessitated them having to Ascend on FOOT carrying all their Turnout gear.
You skipped over the gruesome parts. Maybe you're not aware of it... There's a survivor who went down stairs...and said one floor had a scene of indescribable hell. The elevators shafts filled with jet fuel, and burned people in the elevators as they plummeted to the transfer floor. There, the smashed elevator doors unleashed a tidal wave of jet fuel, on fire, over the people waiting in the lobby. The bodies of people in the elevators, exploded out of the doors, because they impacted near maximum velocity. The walls/ceilings/floors were bespattered with pieces of humans, all burned to bits. Burning, black skeletons littered the floor, with some in a strange seated position. (Maybe from exhaustion from running down there, sitting down to wait for elevators?) I'm really sorry - I've looked for a few hours to try to find the video (on UA-cam) of the survivor describing his story. My watch history has too many long videos to go through them all. I believe it was a man, alone in a chair (no reporter sitting with him.) This is the most gruesome story I've ever heard about 9/11. FYI - there's also a very, very sad report on how the elevators trapped hundreds of people, who could have been rescued. Unless elevator was inches away from a floor, they couldn't open. These were special devices installed on purpose to prevent this. Many were down near the lobby, waiting for rescue, but the firefighters failed to even check for trapped people. drive.google.com/file/d/1-QjMyaRehX4yPVINAivcwZ7QdrYk2ojo/view
Can you do a video on what if they crashed one of the planes into the Empire State Building instead of the Pentagon and how that would’ve effected the emergency response at the WTC.
There was Chris Young; who was stuck in an elevator (lift-sounds so weird as a Brit typing that, but i digress) in the Sky Lobby on the 78th floor of the North Tower. He spent the majority of the 102 minutes trapped in the elevator, then the power to the doors failed, and he was able to get out. With only about 20 minutes left before the first tower collapsed.
The "thinking it was an accident" thing doesn't make sense to me. Sure to us watching the news at home that makes sense as we had no footage and only speculation at the time, but there must have been tens of people who saw exactly what had happened live to the North tower, so can't conceive that anyone who saw a Boeing 747 line itself up and fly directly into the North tower would think that was an accident and just went to back to work
I think the people still trapped when the collapse occurred would have first likely died from the highly increased burst of pressure ahead of the collapse due to the confinement of the elevator shift. If the pressure wave wasn't strong enough, I could either see debris impaling them as opposed to them falling and dying upon impact, due to the speed of collapse.
As far as I know the express elevator all together failed. People using the elevators after the impact always used local elevators. You could travel the building without the express elevators: For example say you were on the 89th floor. Use a local elevator to the 78th floor sky lobby, walk down 4 flights of stairs (passing the MER floors) to 73 and use another local the 44 floor sky lobby. It would take longer but you don´t need the express elevators.
I recall watching one 9/11 Doc where a survivor mentioned a very graphic scene in regards to an elevator. Don’t recall if he said he was going in or coming out of one. But he saw a person who had no head and only bone sticking out. This was sometime shortly after the impact of the plane. I don’t recall which tower he said he was in.
Unfortunately ,no elevator is going to withstand ,thousands of tons, crashing down on it, also freefalling at the speed of the towers collapse,& being inside an elevator ,is instant death when it stops suddenly.
The sad realization after hearing this news is that there must have been some people trapped in elevators right up until the towers collapsed down on them.
i recall something about security bars being fitted into many elevators that prohibited manual release of doors and i think some cabs were just fitted out like months possibly prior to disaster
Many reasonable questions-Do the elevator plans exist with the contractors or the manufacturers? The architects? Engineers? Port Authority? City of New York? Fire Department files? State review boards? Surely they aren’t classified. These elevators were in 3 separate zones. Like a maze to get down. The fuel and fire only had two elevators with a direct path to the ground floor. Two out of three express elevators were at all not affected? The electrical source was below them? Not a single elevator power system. Where were the elevator transformers located? Far below the impacts. How many were there? How were these affected? Does the narrator have access to NIST building documents and plans? Who is funding these videos? So little technical information here.
Can u do a video about the toilets and waste that left the twin towers every day? Did they have trucks pick up the waste or did the building have a sewage system? That is a lot of ‘crap’ in one building
I remember watching a reenactment in 2002 about the janitor who used a box cutter he had to tear ooen the wall to save a group he was with. They all had a quick moment of laughing when they realized how one of the tallest buildings in the country was made of the cheapest material.
First hand account from people who survived the "gore floor" estimate North of 100 people died almost instantly from the impact. I've seen some accounts closer to 300.
In the movie the walk philippe after crissing the towers is allowed to sign a panel at the top of the towers did that really happen ? If so was it found at ground zero
I know nothing of elevators, but what if the elevator shaft acted like the barrel of a gun and the elevator the bullet, when the explosion from all the fuel combusting happened, it maybe sent a force like a gun, shooting the elevator downward regardless of safety systems.
Es war ja schließlich auch schon aus den 1970ern nur gelegentlich wurden mal neue Teppiche verlegt, oder Farbe an die Wand geschmissen. Das schlimmste waren die büroplätze in der Mitte. Eingesperrt rings rum neonleuchtene über dem Tisch. Rigipswände kaffeeküche Toilette Flur aufzug. Rein arbeiten raus die Chefs saßen aussen mit Blick. Ätzend seitdem Einsturz, kann ich nicht mehr in ein so hohes Gebäude hab mich versetzen lassen in meine Heimat zurück. Deutschland. Wohne in einer Kleinstadt vermissen tue ich New york nicht.
Hi Depressed Ginger, have you heard the story about the woman who jumped through the window and survived the jump.. kinda.. there’s some amount of information about her story, but I would like hear your thoughts
remember a story of a woman that was trapped in one of the towers Elevators are and she couldn't get out but she made a call and her call is on UA-cam and she said it was really hot and smoky and she died.
Do you ramble and repeat yourself to make the video longer? I guess I can't expect quality from a 9/11 influencer capitalizing off of the infamous attack.
I'll always be amazed by Pasquale Buzzelli who was in a stairwell on the 22nd floor when the building started to collapse, he essentially rode it down crouched in the corner of the stairwell. Nothing short of a miracle.
I lost my friend John in the north tower. He worked at the 105th floor and saddly didnt make it. May he and all the people who died that day rest in peace
Sorry to hear,the loss was tremendous and some of the stories where people talked right before the end,unreal!!!
@@dariusbalaceanu As far as I’m aware, the highest floor in the North Tower that anyone made it out from was the 91st floor. I’m sorry your friend didn’t make it out. I can only imagine what the conditions were like up there before the collapse. The only clues I have are the last phone calls (the last and final one was 2 minutes before the North Tower collapsed), a few transcribed conversations like the one made by a woman named Christine who was the assistant general manager for Windows on the World, and the numerous photos of people doing God knows what to get air. Just know that your friend didn’t die a painful death and he’s in a better place with those who love him.
By any chance was that John and Sylvia R?
It hurts my heart that people who were out were told to go back up, then didn't make it out.
I was 30 when this happened. And started watching the coverage about 10 min after the first plane hit. No way I hell would I have gone back into that building. Period
@@user-et2fj8xm5l Yeh,I was 34 and agree,I would use my own common sense and got the hell out as quickly as possible.
Same kind of thing happened on the Titanic, where they told passengers to go back to their cabins after the ship hit the iceberg. Moral of that story. If there is danger and the authorities tell you to go back to were ever you came from, don't. Just get out and leave what ever way is possible.
@@lotstodo this Philly kid (who was exactly 40.5 years old that day) would have said, "Yeah. I'll follow YOU right back up! Now outta my way!!! Please." And calmly walked right around whomever had said that 😉👍
Considering the dream in 93 was for one tower to topple over the other, I would have been outta there
I was in the north tower. If you want an interview with me reach out I would love to do an interview with you.
Whoah! Really?
If true, I hope that peace and health forever be upon you
Can u tease us? What's sound like a 400meters building collapsed? Did you see decapitated bodies outside?? How long it took you to sleep well after this horrible events?
I worked at Primarch Decision Economics
I visited the South Tower about a year before it happened. I'm from Florida and I was in New York for one of my cousins wedding. The wedding was at a hotel resort somewhere in upstate New York. After the wedding My dad and I decided to stay in New York for a day or two to take a tour of the city. We stopped at a few places, The statue of liberty and the Twin Towers. On a previous trip to New York probably about 5 yrs earlier we went to the Empire State Building and took a tour of Teddy Roosevelts house. One of the things I remember about the twin towers was there was a vendor who sold dippin dotz ice cream. It was kinda neat because they didn't have dippen dotz in Florida where i lived yet. I always wondered if the nice vendor that sold me and my dad ice cream was there on 9/11. The vendor had a stand at the observatory. I tried looking up to find out searching business list of tenants on 9/11. I didn't see anything that suggested dippendotz was there. My cousin worked at Building # 7. He worked as an insurance actuary in Building #7 and was late to work the day it happened. He arrived at the WTC shortly after everything started falling. He won't talk about what he saw that day. He saw all the people jumping. It deeply affected him. I visited New York probably about a yr after 911 for another wedding. That time we just drove through New York City. We drove by where the towers were. They had a big plywoodwall around the site. It was sad seeing that after just being there 2 yrs earlier.
@@patatebanine4278 I was on the 36th floor when the north tower got hit soon as the building got hit you could feel it sway for side to side the lights dimmed for a second and came right back on.
I was with a colleague of mine we looked at each other and we knew something happened. We just didn’t know what we thought 💭
There was an elevator in the North Tower lobby in the Naudet brothers documentary that opened up randomly about 30 mins after the plane hit & the people exited unharmed. They had no idea what even happened. Imagine how many people in the elevators that had no idea what even occurred. Such a terrible tragedy.
One woman who survived said she went to work that day at her desk, on a very high floor, And left early in time because she felt something hit. There were firefighters on the ground floor yelling at everyone to leave... She said the elevator seemed to take forever. They were also told to go back upstairs and get back to work.
In another documentary called Inside The Twin Towers the breaking out of an elevator into a bathroom story is shown
That's the south tower@noorrougelewis6704
I came here to say this. Those people looked so shocked
@@noorrougelewis6704 Hindsight is always 20/20, but I'm kind of always surprised people were made to go back to work. There were multiple people in both buildings that required their employees to have drills for that exact scenario. Especially with the 1992 attack.
When Orio Palmer got up to the 78th floor before the South Tower collapsed he did radio that he got a stuck elevator open that people had been trapped in. So some people who had been trapped for nearly an hour just had the excitement of being freed from an elevator only to die minutes later when the South Tower collapsed.
😢That sucks
Yes that entire radio call is a heartbreak. Doesn't he even say "we can put this out if we can get a hose up here...fast!" ?
@epaddon at least they felt like they had a fighting chance, until they didn't.
He also said there were multiple casualties there. I imagine some of them were burn victims because of the jet fuel going down the elevator shafts. I remember the story of the poor lady walking by the lobby down at ground level who was hit by one of those.
I believe Ron Bucca also ran up the stairs, both he and Palmer were very athletic runners.
It’s almost 23 years ago. I still can’t belive it happend. I was on top of one of the tower as a kid in 1984. It was an amazing view
It’s so tragic that people were told to stay in the towers or go back in. It should have been an immediate evacuation 😢we definitely live different lives now. I think every where I go I look for the nearest exit and make a plan just in case- movies, malls, hotels etc
@stacieo8001: What’s funny is that I never did that before, but when I had dinner at Windows on the World in the 70s during a trip to NY, that was my first question upon getting out of the elevator “What happens if there is a fire up here ? How do we get out of here ? Where is the escape route ? Where are the stairs” ? The Maitre ‘d was amused at my questions stating “Madame - that could never happen” as he was holding a laugh in. and I said “Well just in case - where are the stairs” ? Eventually, he showed me the stairs which we now know did not help anyone escape. I was so uncomfortable the entire time I was up there and no amount of alcohol made me feel better/less uncomfortable. When we finally finished dinner and were back down on planet earth outside of the building, I looked up to where we just were and felt like I had just dodged a bullet.
even more tragic that most of them didn't even know the cause of the fire or that the towers were attacked by terrorists. there were no social media at the time and very few people had cellphones then, and even if some had Nokia phones, people weren't glued to their phones then so they had little access to real-time news and information then
Very interesting video. 9/11 has almost never ending topics to talking about maybe millions.
The janitor was Jan Demenczur, I remember this off the top of my head
Impressive you remember that - but strange the things that get seared into our memories. Do you know if the janitor survived - and the window washer ?
Oops - just read that the window washer survived.
@@lilybond6485 Jan survived along with a few other port authority members. His story was featured and recreated in the documentary “Inside the World Trade Center”. Documentary is available on UA-cam for free.
I recall reading Jan's story, he and several other men were trapped in an elevator. He was a window washer and he and the others used the handle of his squegee(sp?) to dig through a wall. He and the others he was with all lived.
@@lilybond6485the window washer had worked there for 30 years, his name was Roko Camaj. Unfortunately he WAS murdered on 9/11.
Honestly, it still breaks my heart knowing that there were people in these elevators that even died.
The sky lobbies. the floors. everything...they didn't deserve to die like that...no one did on that day...
No. They. Did. Not. Deserve that. And. Are. Country did. Not. Deserve it. Ether
"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."
In this video, you show pictures of an elevator motor, I assume is on display at the 9/11 museum. There are rumors or maybe true that the museum is closing or closed. What is the latest on this, if you know?
@@anndinotoThe museum was called the Newseum and it closed December 31, 2019. I was there the last week it was open. In hindsight, the closing of a museum dedicated to the 1st amendment right before 2020 is all too fitting.
@SlickBlackCadillac I understand that it was closed due to lack of funds and lack of interest. I didn't know it, actually closed, I would have thought that someone from the city or government would have stopped it. Although it's an event that should be preserved for future generations to know it was real, with all the videos, books, and everything else out there about it, a museum might be overkill.
Also it’s been documented by Firefighters in the North Tower, that there were found remains(burned) in several downed elevators upon entering the North Tower lobby. There were people stuck while jet fuel made its way down the building.
I would be curious to know if that’s even possible or being that most of the fuel became vaporized and ignited due to the impact
@@Fleetwoodjohn I’ve read that there was evidence of fuel spilling down a through the elevator shafts. As far as it being ignited or not, your guess is good as mine.
@@bennyblanco2091
It just seems strange that it all wouldn’t have ignited on impact. There was definitely a large enough fire ball
@@Fleetwoodjohn Maybe most of the fuel, but not all of it. Remember that these Airliners also had a significant amount of fuel located in their wings. It was inevitable that a good portion of fuel was not ignited on impact due to the fierce collision.
@@Fleetwoodjohn Jet fuel requires oxygen to combust. Immediately after impact, the fireball would have immediately consumed most of the available oxygen. And the building, being a (mostly) enclosed space, would have slowed the rate of oxygen consumption significantly.
The express elevator shafts were huge (elevators could fit 55 people), way bigger than the local elevators. A few of these shafts extended up to the explosion region and were the main conduits for blast energy to reach all the way down to the lobby. Witnesses escaping from high floors of WTC1 reported that when they reached the sky lobby they could see a waterfall of fire (burning jet fuel) in one of the shafts that had doors blown out. Sadly many people trapped in stuck elevators below were cooked alive by the rain of burning fuel.
I hope all those poor people are in a better place.
Yeah..I've always felt that if the twin towers didn't collapse that the horrors of that day would be felt even worse. The recovery of body parts and remains would have been the stuff of nightmares.
@@thaismatsumoto The whole trauma came from the collappsing of the towers, not by hitting it alone.
You should remember that there was a bomb blasing in the parking garage of the WTC in 1992, and it didn't make an impact in history.
As tragic as this would have been for everyone that would have died IF the towers didn't collapse, it wouldn't have changed the trajectory of the West so drastically.
The elevators were equipped with a safety system whereby if the buildings moved more than a set amount, due to wind loads on the buildings, the elevators would automatically shutdown and stop. This lead to people being regularly trapped in elevators until maintenance went and reset the elevators. Because of the force of the planes hitting they caused the buildings to sway, especially the south tower, which would have shut down basically all of the elevators, except maybe for some of the lower elevators where the movement of the building would have been less. Building staff did manage to get some of the elevators working again by resetting them. There's a video of the WTC elevators where an elevator maintenance guy explains this 'safety' system. Video is called "WTC elevator installation". There were 99 elevators in each building, so lots of people would have been trapped especially in the south tower.
Didn't some elevators' hangings get cut by the airplane strike and hence the elevators fell to the ground?
I remember some people who were trapped in one of the elevators in Tower 1.
They dug through the sheet rock wall into a restroom on the 60th floor.
That was a window washer, he used the blade from his squeegee to cut through the wall.
@@patricknedzHe lost the blade actually & used the medal holder of the blade for the squeegee which is even more impressive. He gave it to the 9/11 memorial museum where it is on display.
They were Jan Demczur, Shivam Iyer, John Paczkowski, George Phoenix, Colin Richardson & Al Smith on the 50th floor men's washroom of the north tower.
So if you had suddenly fell over in the restroom into the wall with big force, you migth have fallen down the elevator shaft?
I have been asking this question for years.I'm so glad somebody's answering it
Tough to find straight info on it
@kw6713a I was watching a video on survivors who got out. They talked about trying to rescue people from an elevator, but couldn't open it enough. They slid them in some tools so that maybe they could open it from the inside. They said they don't know what happened to them. I kept waiting for an update, but we never got one. That's an example of no one really talks about the people in the elevators unless they got out, I guess
USA Today has a much more detailed and well-sourced article on this titled "Disaster within disaster: World Trade Center elevators created more tragedy."
Orio Palmer's team helped a group of people trapped in an elevator to get out. 3 minutes before the collapse of the south tower. So close to life but so far away, what an unfair way to die all the people on that fateful day
One of the things I had drilled into my head during building evacuation drills was to never set foot inside the elevator. Find the nearest intact stairs and take them.
As the Airport in Duesseldorf went ablaze in 1996, people died because they used the elevator out of the parking garage, moving into a burning hall, and the elevator never closing because the smoke blocked the light sensors.
That's one of the reasons why you should never use an elevator when a building is on fire.
there is a play written by Patrick James Carson called 'Elevator' where five are trapped in an elevator during 9/11, one of the people being a janitor. This was later made into a low budget movie called '9/11' and starred Whoopie Goldberg, Charlie Sheen and Louis Guzman. Its not a long film, and most of it was filmed inside an elevator. The last few seconds are heartbreaking and always leaves me with goosebumps
That was playing on tubi for awhile.. I believe it still is
It was a window cleaner that used the squeegie tool to clean windows to dig through the wall in the elevator and all the people in the elevator ended up in a bathroom after digging and kicking through the wall.
So smart. How did they know to break thru the wall and help wasn’t coming?
@@helenf.7221 He was aware that the wall was made of 3 inch sheetrock.
@helenf.7221 I guess it was claustrophobia maybe that got to them, I have it really bad and I was once stuck in a lift. All the 9/11 thoughts went through my mind at a million per minute
There was a terrifying hour-long television documentary called The Elevators of 9/11. It used to be on UA-cam, but it's been scrubbed from the site and it's basically memory-holed now. Still has an IMDb page though.
You aren't lying. I looked for it and holy crap Noone has it.
I used to have that Elevators of 9/11 special recorded on VHS when it came out. There were several stories on there, but other than the six people (including the window washer) stuck near the 50th floor of the North Tower, I remember the South Tower Sky Lobby elevator story with insurance executive Alan Mann, who worked on floor 105 of Tower 2, took and elevator down the the 78th floor Sky Lobby after the North Tower was hit, then squeezed into the last elevator to go down a few seconds before the second plane hit. His elevator then free fell until the brakes kicked in near the lobby, and he escaped underneath the damaged elevator floor and through shaft doors to enter the lobby. I'm not sure if anyone else inside escaped though.
Probably it only came out on TV…
It is available on torrent sites, i have it.
Depending on the location of the elevators in relation to the impacts, those inside may have been protected but subsequently the heat and even widespread smoke may have been channeled into the shafts, transforming the place into a chimney. In any case, only those who were below the impacts had the chance to descend.
In irgendeinem Turm von beiden sollen wenige Leute durch ein fast intaktes Treppenhaus aus den oberhalb der einschlagspunkte. Es gab aber nur das eine Treppenhaus und dies soll nur wenigen gelungen sein. In den Stockwerken wo die Flugzeuge rasten, gingen lt. Diesen Leuten nicht mal die Türen auf bzw. Sie waren so heisst, daß man den Lack runterfliessen sah. Ich bin der Meinung es wären welche aus dem Restaurant gewesen, sie hätten sich gleich nach dem Einschlag auf den Weg gemacht, obwohl ihnen Leute entgegenkommen, die meinten sie sollten wieder an die Arbeit gehen, es bestünde keine Gefahr. Sie gingen weiter runter und waren kurz vorm Einsturz raus.
I was in my 20's, I was in the middle of moving into a new home. Listening to CD'S oblivious to what was happening. By the time I found out it was 5 pm. I was in shock and worse yet, no cable, no Internet. I couldn't watch anything until 2 weeks later. By then everything had moved to investigation. I am just now bringing myself to watch actual real time footage and its worse than I ever imagined. Im from Oklahoma City and I remember the horror of the murrah building. The day care... that was horrible but this was even worse! Sickening, heartbreaking.
Can you imagine being stuck in an elevator after a free fall.. only for the janitor to dig their way through a wall for escape.. just to get right back on another elevator?! Faaaaaaaaaaq that shyt bro !! “taking the stairs from here”
Ikr It would have been the stairs down for Me after that
I know 😫😵💫, but the thing is , that I believe if they would have taken the stairs they would not had made it out in time.
As a person that frequently used to screw around with elevator doors as a kid and teenager, what you said there is true! It’s hard, but it’s definitely not impossible to pry an elevator door open.
If I had been stuck in an elevator and finally got out- NO WAY IN HELL would I enter another one. Stairs for me thank you!
Just watching this gave me the chills.. Just thinking about it is enough... Imagine if people weren't told to go back to their desks after something like that happened.. Kind of made me wonder if more people would have survived?
I read where the machines used by the express skylobby elevator were designed for use in diamond mines. They were the largest and fastest machines made by Otis at the time.
I remember the elevator ride up to the restaurant “Windows” but I am remembering having taken 2 elevators to get there. One of the 2 was so fast it felt like it was going 100 MPH.
1700 feet per minute is about 20mph I think.
I would have never stayed in the south tower seeing the north tower in a blaze!! I would have left immediately! I've gone home from work for way less! 😅
I read that ppl were just incinerated. And the elevators went to the bottom, opened the doors and it was just black stuff. Sickening
Danny Jones has a really good interview. At 23min into his video, he talks about his experience with an elevator rescue. The elevator was at the lobby, and the doors were open. You could just see the peoples feet. The jet fuel was on fire in the pit.
I remember seeing a documentary where some people in the lobby saw the Elevators explode into the lobby.
@mattt233: I remember that - but I am not remembering if they were - hopefully - empty ?
@@lilybond6485 there was footage that showed a camera man following firefighters into the lobby of the south tower (I believe it was the south tower as it was the first to collapse) and the narrator said that he deliberately didn’t pan the camera right as he could see people on fire staggering out of one of the lifts. Absolutely horrifying.
@trudim6024: Every time I think I can’t get more sick about what happened on 911, something else horrible is revealed to me. Ugh. Thanks for your response.
@@trudim6024that was Jules Naudet who went in the North tower.
@@johndaniels7609 yep, you are correct 👍 I knew it was from that documentary, I didn’t know the guy’s name though.
What a nightmare scenario.
There are several reports, from both towers, that when the planes impacted people felt the buildings move....actual move, up to several feet.
If people were "thrown out" of the open doors of an elevator on the 90th+ floor i can see this sudden jolt of movement being the reason.
You'll never heard "go back up to your offices, you'll be safe there" ever spoken during an emergency in a highrise building in the Western world ever again!
Not allowing people to get out...breaks my heart ..awful day awful weeks and year since
I worked from 2008 to 2020 with a woman who got stuck in an elevator in WTC 1 on 9/11. I am not sure how she got out, didn't ask for details as had PTSD from it. She was very afraid to use elevators, especially alone.
Without knowing anything,I just want to be in a place where I can see,know where I'm and not feel trapped.More than 30 seconds in a non moving elevator is starting to get scary!!!
I remember watching, I think it was the Naudet Bros. film of the firefighters arriving in the lobby to set up their command post & seeing folks that had been incinerated in front of the elevators from a fireball of burning jet fuel that had shot down the elevator shaft. Not sure if they were actually in the elevator or had been standing in front of it. The firefighters were directing people away from the area to avoid seeing the burned bodies laying there.
Those people were most likely burned by the fireball that travelled down the freight elevator car 50 shaft. There was no chance fuel would pour down via elevator shafts other than freight and windows on the world/GBOE.
Your first story about the "janitor" digging his way through the elevator wall sounds like the story of my neighbor at the time. He lived two houses down from us in Jersey City. For those who aren't familiar with where Jersey City, NJ is... it's right across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan. Looking to the east, our tree-lined street framed the World Trade Center Towers.
Anyway, that story sounded like my neighbor's story, except he was an indoor window washer. He used the end of his squeegee to chip away at the wall that started to make a hole big enough so they could start to pull away larger pieces of the wall. I think he told me when they eventually walked through the wall to the other side, they were in a restroom. And I also believe they walked all the way down to get out. Most of his story we got from his wife. He didn't speak much at all for the longest time. His family and ours both lived up near the Heights back then. Now we live down by the harbor in the Exchange Place area, for those familiar. We lost track of him and his wife after we moved. I wonder how's he's doing?
On a quick side note, I used to work as a waiter on the 107th floor in the Windows on the World restaurant. Although, I left Windows with everyone else after the '93 bombing. They had closed it for a couple years after the bombing. They had to gut the entire restaurant spaces on the 106 and 107th floors mostly because of all the smoke damage. All that smoke from the basement where the bomb went off eventually rose and collected itself inside the top floors.
The first story is his story . I guess he technically might have been considered part of the janitorial crew. And I actually do know where Jersey City is. When I was 15, my best friend and I ran away from our homes here in western Massachusetts . We walked and hitchhiked to New York City.In January. We actually walked over the George Washington Bridge. It was freezing. When we reached the other side we were spotted by a cop in the building we had gone into to get warm. They took us to the juvenile detention center there where we stayed for a week. We were lucky that the other girls there thought we were gang members and were tough. Why, I don't know. 😂 But because of that we actually had a good time there.
The last one out of the elevators was a man alone in an express elevator in the North Tower lobby. After 2WTC collapsed power failed in 1WTC which stopped the door motor from closing the doors.
Most elevators had retrofitted door restrictors which would not allow the doors to open unless the cabin was within 6" of a door landing. His elevator probably not had this installed since it was a purely manual lock which was not dependent on power.
FDNY Tim Brown gives an account of a stuck elevator in the lobby of tower 2 where you could only see their feet and lots of fire/jet fuel in the open pit. He was tasked with rescuing them until another fire fighter told him he'd handle it instead. They found that fire fighter in that exact spot with the jaws of life in his hand under the rubble. He managed to save two people out of the car. Tim's entire interview is facinating, anyone interested in 9/11 should go watch it. He dived into the marriot during the collapse. Crazy story.
Each tower had 99 elevators. So ironically most of the elevators were in the middle of being fitted wirh a "safety system". This system would lock the doors if the elevator was stuck between floors. If this system engaged it would require an elevator tech or a firefighter to get on top of the elevator and use a special key to unlock the doors. You can imagine how many people got trapped by this system. Especially since almost all the elevator techs left after the first plane hit. And the fact that the firefighters didnt make it very high up (except Oreo Palmer). There was also reports of entire elevator cars having their doors ipened only to find burnt corpses of 20 to 30 people. The jet fuel ran down the elevator shafts. Many of these people were burnt alive wirh no way to ipen the doors. I think that plummitng to the ground would have been more merciful. There are a lot of stories online of elevators makimg it to the lobby only to have people who are on fire stubke out of them
The towers were supposedly built to withstand a small plane crash so I would think they made out better
@@stevenroshni1228 When you have no sprinklers working due to severed water lines, and have a much larger jet hit, at super high speeds, with a never planned for fuel load, crap happens.
There was a story of a man who was in the sky lobby on the 78th floor of tower one. When he was heading his way to another elevator on the 78th floor to go up to his floor, which was on the 101 floor. He was a few feet away from the elevator when the airplane crashed And then he saw three people jump out the elevator. The first person that jumped out of the elevator had second-degree burns. The second person that jumped out had third-degree burns, and the third person that jumped out died because of their burns a few hours later.
What happened to the man
@
The man escaped the north tower from the 78th floor to ground level. The second person that jumped out of the elevator was actually a coworker that he didn’t get along with, but he said God put him in that position to see what he will do. He got down on the ground level with the woman and helping her. When they got down first responders told the man to take the woman in one of the ambulance and he did. The woman said she will not leave or go on the ambulance only if that man goes with him.
The man got in the ambulance when the ambulance was full because that’s what they needed to do fill up all of the ambulance and then leave. They got to a hospital and nurses took the woman. They said the man couldn’t go in with her unless he was a family member of hers, which he wasn’t , long story short he didn’t have a phone like many other people didn’t have a phone or lost their phone. A man was telling people they can go in his apartment to make phone calls if they needed and he did. He called his wife and his wife thought he was gone and she started, crying on the phone. He got back home very late and he was very grateful to be alive.
His full story is on UA-cam. I’ll send the link soon.
I saw the Naudet documentary, and then was able to see a traveling exhibit of 9/11 at Washington State History Museum years ago. They had the actual camera the Naudets were filming the documentary with.
The 9/11 movie with Charlie Sheen kinda gives you an idea of what it was like for those stuck in WTC elevators when the planes hit.
Man how do you have this insane work ethic?
He gotta get to the bag 😭
@@cry4may what the heck does that mean?
@@_Breakdown He gets the views off of these topics.
*'Insane Work Ethic' ?? Yeah must be real hard work talking in to microphone 3 times a day. You and DG Don't know what a hard days work is. You have no idea what 'Work Ethics' means ya 🤡*
@victorpeirce4753 You shouldn't be hating on a guy who's doing what he loves. Sounds like you're projecting my friend.
in french movie crew video with fire chief in North tower quite a big size portion footage showing guy calling in from main console into every elevator and mostly none comms working
I remember that footage
A lady in a bathroom says the noise she heard from the elevator dropping, hitting, bouncing off of the shafts, an elevator she just got off of, was so loud and created so much force that it broke the bathroom wall completely and left an intense ringing in her ears.
But yeah, not all elevators breaks where able to catch and a few dropped all the way down to the sublevels.
The two guys who were thrown out of the elevator happened because the doors where open either because they just got on OR someone got off. Either way, they where both lucky.
Some would say God or an Angel where with them which is kinda sucky to say because many people did not have God or Angels on their side that day
Who the fuck tries another elevator after freefalling in one while hearing an explosion?
"The latest data indicate that 39.6 percent of U.S. adults are obese. Another 31.6 percent are overweight and 7.7 percent are severely obese."
@@QED_tf does this have to Do with Anything
The Naudet video shows some of the elevator aftermath, including the destruction of the marble that encased them. Also, there is a clip that shows people exiting the elevators on the main floor who were stuck for many minutes but managed to escape.
Suggestion-modern buildings reminiscent of the Twin Towers or even replicas of them (such as the ones in Tobu World Square in Nikko, Japan)?
There's one quite similar in Seattle.
Sad to think about how many people got stuck in the elevator, had no idea what was going on, only to be crushed to death 1-2 hours later.
I've read that a window washer that was among those stuck in an elevator offered his squeegee as a tool to carve a hole in the sheetrock and they escaped. Not sure if that is the same story you brought up
I don't believe this story...sheetrock or drywall... is easily breachable without a metal tool ..just doesn't ring totally true
@@paul-jd4dqyou can get metal squidggys? I've seen documentaries where they show the one which was used.
@kookytoots6755 I know I've seen it too buddy.there was most probably a good few in there..what I'm saying is a good old size 9 foot get get through drywall very easily.i reckon with the adrenaline you could smash through them.without a window squeegee.
I just can’t comprehend how the fireballs going down the elevator shafts killed everyone and made its way down into the lobby and kill those in the lobby too (ie: Jennieann Maffeo)
I saw a survivor from the elevator on the 50th floor. He survived but had severe burn marks.
In England you're encouraged not to use a lift/ elevator in the event of a fire.
Firefighters are trained to bash their way through drywall rather than fight blocked doors.
*When I clicked on this video it had exactly 2996 views. Creepy.💯*
Even if the elevators were in free fall, they have another mechanism that stops the elevator from smashing into the floor if the brakes stop working. Elevators have springs at the bottom, like mattresses. So they won't crash. The elevator will bounce up and down and slow down. Until it's able to come to a complete stop.
3 different types of elevator in those towers, main elevators with emergency brakes, freight elevators without emergency brakes and the single glass elevator that was express to the top.
Well, even the landline phone worked until the very end
Did they work above the impact zone?
@@ThePeterDislikeShow yup look up Kevin Cosgrove
@@MarylandGuy-ey3st You sure he didn't use a cell phone?
@@ThePeterDislikeShow I’m not sure tbh
I was watching about 4 hours of "unseen" "never released " "new footage" last night.
Interesting i was thinking about this!!
Where??
@@crandonborth you gotta get the algorithm right.... this channel has literally changed my algorithm and im not concerned. Just a like intrigued
Im guessing you got this idea from my comment on one of your previous videos. Something ive always found interesting is the fact that the local elevators below the impact zone stopped working. Its not like they were connected to where the plane hit. They just suddenly dropped by themselves. Im quite intrigued as to the cause of that
That is a interesting point.
I remember a story where someone who survived decided to put a magazine in an elevator and sent it down. Then they called it back up and the magazine was OK so they rode the elevator. It's one of those "seemed logical at the time" decisions.
If they just stopped working, that could be an electrical issue like maybe the main controls got wipes out by the initial impact. But if they dropped to the ground, they doesn't really make any sense to me 🤷♂️
According to the FDNY the Burning Jet Fuel cascaded down the Elevator shafts and blew out into the Lobby, resulting in many people being burned to Death. The Firefighters and other First Responders found NO working Elevators from the Lobby upon arrival, which necessitated them having to Ascend on FOOT carrying all their Turnout gear.
Hey man, found you from the subreddit, these videos are really well done, nice job!
thanks for this informative content 👍
I neglected to think about the elevators and now I can't stop 😢
You skipped over the gruesome parts. Maybe you're not aware of it...
There's a survivor who went down stairs...and said one floor had a scene of indescribable hell. The elevators shafts filled with jet fuel, and burned people in the elevators as they plummeted to the transfer floor. There, the smashed elevator doors unleashed a tidal wave of jet fuel, on fire, over the people waiting in the lobby. The bodies of people in the elevators, exploded out of the doors, because they impacted near maximum velocity. The walls/ceilings/floors were bespattered with pieces of humans, all burned to bits. Burning, black skeletons littered the floor, with some in a strange seated position. (Maybe from exhaustion from running down there, sitting down to wait for elevators?)
I'm really sorry - I've looked for a few hours to try to find the video (on UA-cam) of the survivor describing his story. My watch history has too many long videos to go through them all. I believe it was a man, alone in a chair (no reporter sitting with him.) This is the most gruesome story I've ever heard about 9/11.
FYI - there's also a very, very sad report on how the elevators trapped hundreds of people, who could have been rescued. Unless elevator was inches away from a floor, they couldn't open. These were special devices installed on purpose to prevent this. Many were down near the lobby, waiting for rescue, but the firefighters failed to even check for trapped people.
drive.google.com/file/d/1-QjMyaRehX4yPVINAivcwZ7QdrYk2ojo/view
Thanks. Very interesting and heartbreaking😢
No it’s not that they didn’t check it’s they could get above the elevator shaft where the mechanism is to turn off that safety device
HORRIBLE
Can you do a video on what if they crashed one of the planes into the Empire State Building instead of the Pentagon and how that would’ve effected the emergency response at the WTC.
There was Chris Young; who was stuck in an elevator (lift-sounds so weird as a Brit typing that, but i digress) in the Sky Lobby on the 78th floor of the North Tower.
He spent the majority of the 102 minutes trapped in the elevator, then the power to the doors failed, and he was able to get out.
With only about 20 minutes left before the first tower collapsed.
The "thinking it was an accident" thing doesn't make sense to me. Sure to us watching the news at home that makes sense as we had no footage and only speculation at the time, but there must have been tens of people who saw exactly what had happened live to the North tower, so can't conceive that anyone who saw a Boeing 747 line itself up and fly directly into the North tower would think that was an accident and just went to back to work
I think the people still trapped when the collapse occurred would have first likely died from the highly increased burst of pressure ahead of the collapse due to the confinement of the elevator shift. If the pressure wave wasn't strong enough, I could either see debris impaling them as opposed to them falling and dying upon impact, due to the speed of collapse.
I met that janitor who escaped from the North Tower elevator at Ground Zero. He used the metal part of his squeegee to scrape the wall.
As far as I know the express elevator all together failed. People using the elevators after the impact always used local elevators. You could travel the building without the express elevators:
For example say you were on the 89th floor. Use a local elevator to the 78th floor sky lobby, walk down 4 flights of stairs (passing the MER floors) to 73 and use another local the 44 floor sky lobby.
It would take longer but you don´t need the express elevators.
I recall watching one 9/11 Doc where a survivor mentioned a very graphic scene in regards to an elevator. Don’t recall if he said he was going in or coming out of one. But he saw a person who had no head and only bone sticking out. This was sometime shortly after the impact of the plane. I don’t recall which tower he said he was in.
This is a part of 9/11 we never got to hear about! Imagine if the elevators were strong enough to survive the towers’ collapse!
Unfortunately ,no elevator is going to withstand ,thousands of tons, crashing down on it, also freefalling at the speed of the towers collapse,& being inside an elevator ,is instant death when it stops suddenly.
The sad realization after hearing this news is that there must have been some people trapped in elevators right up until the towers collapsed down on them.
There was a group of people trapped on the lobby level in an elevator and survived
i recall something about security bars being fitted into many elevators that prohibited manual release of doors and i think some cabs were just fitted out like months possibly prior to disaster
Absolutely horrific
“the walls were made of sheetrock” proceeds to display a one metre wall of solid marble instead…..ffs
He did mention that it's hard to find verified pictures of the sheetrock walls/particular parts of the towers.
There was no "solid marble" in that cheap-ass structure. It's veneer...
About 1/8" thick, and held on by glue.
@depressedginger did the elevators have buffers at the bottom of the shaft incase of emergency brake failure
Many reasonable questions-Do the elevator plans exist with the contractors or the manufacturers? The architects? Engineers? Port Authority? City of New York? Fire Department files? State review boards? Surely they aren’t classified. These elevators were in 3 separate zones. Like a maze to get down. The fuel and fire only had two elevators with a direct path to the ground floor. Two out of three express elevators were at all not affected? The electrical source was below them? Not a single elevator power system. Where were the elevator transformers located? Far below the impacts. How many were there? How were these affected? Does the narrator have access to NIST building documents and plans? Who is funding these videos? So little technical information here.
Can u do a video about the toilets and waste that left the twin towers every day? Did they have trucks pick up the waste or did the building have a sewage system? That is a lot of ‘crap’ in one building
Would people have been hit by debris from the North Tower if they had evacuated the South Tower through the mall before the second plane came?
I remember watching a reenactment in 2002 about the janitor who used a box cutter he had to tear ooen the wall to save a group he was with. They all had a quick moment of laughing when they realized how one of the tallest buildings in the country was made of the cheapest material.
I always have a question
In the building they have day care or not? Some people say they have it in the 80 or 90 fools.
Talk about “Tower of Terror” (Disney ride that’s a 1930s style hotel, the elevator is a drop tower)
First hand account from people who survived the "gore floor" estimate North of 100 people died almost instantly from the impact. I've seen some accounts closer to 300.
One of my family members worked in the South tower and saw the plane slam into the North Tower and saw and explosion from the elevators
In the movie the walk philippe after crissing the towers is allowed to sign a panel at the top of the towers did that really happen ? If so was it found at ground zero
I know nothing of elevators, but what if the elevator shaft acted like the barrel of a gun and the elevator the bullet, when the explosion from all the fuel combusting happened, it maybe sent a force like a gun, shooting the elevator downward regardless of safety systems.
7:06 geesh the interior of the towers were soooo dated..there gone now😢
Es war ja schließlich auch schon aus den 1970ern nur gelegentlich wurden mal neue Teppiche verlegt, oder Farbe an die Wand geschmissen. Das schlimmste waren die büroplätze in der Mitte. Eingesperrt rings rum neonleuchtene über dem Tisch. Rigipswände kaffeeküche Toilette Flur aufzug. Rein arbeiten raus die Chefs saßen aussen mit Blick. Ätzend seitdem Einsturz, kann ich nicht mehr in ein so hohes Gebäude hab mich versetzen lassen in meine Heimat zurück. Deutschland. Wohne in einer Kleinstadt vermissen tue ich New york nicht.
They turned to dust!
Hi Depressed Ginger, have you heard the story about the woman who jumped through the window and survived the jump.. kinda.. there’s some amount of information about her story, but I would like hear your thoughts
1974 towering inferno movie
Tempted fate 27 years later
On 9.11!
remember a story of a woman that was trapped in one of the towers Elevators are and she couldn't get out but she made a call and her call is on UA-cam and she said it was really hot and smoky and she died.
That’s a good question. What did happen to the poor people in the elevators? Wow 🤯
Do you ramble and repeat yourself to make the video longer? I guess I can't expect quality from a 9/11 influencer capitalizing off of the infamous attack.
Why on Earth would you have baths in an office building?