Heeran had called his father, Bernie Heeran, a retired firefighter, a few minutes after the first plane hit, when the smoke on the 104th floor had already become unforgiving. Bernie Heeran knew his son needed a buffer of fresh air to buy a bit of time so that rescuers might have a chance to reach him. “Get everybody to the roof,” Bernie Heeran told his son. “Go up. Don’t try to go down.”
