The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

by Garrett M. Graff

At first, I thought I’d blown up the fax machine. It’s like the initial stage of shock—I thought, My God, what did I do? Then I realized it wasn’t me.

As we were about to hit the stairway, Sal D’Agostino said to me, “Hey, Cap, I wonder where the air force is?” I says, “Yeah, I wonder how many thousands of fires I’ve been to in my career and I’ve never hit a stairway wondering where the air force was.”

We were the next-to-last aircraft to land at LaGuardia. They put us on a taxiway, pointing at the World Trade Center, watching the World Trade Center burn.

“Father Judge,” I said, “please pray for us.” He put a smile on his face and said, “I always do.” I said, “Thanks.” We didn’t quite have a chance to do the whole joke—I used to say to him, “Pray for me.” He would say, “I will.” I’d say, “It’s more effective if you pray ’cause you’re in a lot better shape than I am with God.” He would say, “Yeah, but it’s better if you do it ’cause it’s more unusual, and it will be more of a surprise to God.”

Ari Fleischer, press secretary, White House: As we were flying out of Sarasota, we were able to get some TV reception. They broke for commercial. I couldn’t believe it. A hair-loss commercial comes on. I remember thinking, In the middle of all this, I’m watching this commercial for hair loss?

David Kelley: Later, I called Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. I told her Barry Mawn was killed. She laughed and said, “I just talked to him—he told me you were dead.”

The woman kept saying, “Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?” I realized the woman was in shock because the baby was in her arms, and she had no idea.

As you’re running, you’re looking over your shoulder—you could feel some of the shrapnel flying by. I saw a cop in front of me fall. I figured he got hit with a piece of shrapnel. I reached down and picked him up by his gun belt, because he was going to get trampled. I said to him, “You all right? Where did you get hit?” He said, “No, I dropped my pen.” It goes to show you how people’s minds go—here he is running for his life and he bent down to pick up a pen that he dropped.

I found a fire truck and I jumped underneath the rear axle. I was the only one, initially, underneath the fire truck, and then every inch of that fire truck was occupied by somebody doing the same thing.

When I saw the North Tower start to go down, I had to look at my television to confirm what I was seeing with my own eyes. It was unreal.

I crouched down and got to the corner of the staircase by the railing, and I got as small as I could possibly get. I guess the best way to describe it is that I tried to crawl into my fire helmet.

Somebody came down that long, steep flight of stairs to start the engines, and in the darkness, he stepped on my chest. I let out this loud scream. I scared the daylights out of him.

George Pataki: I’ll never forget one obviously homeless gentleman coming up and giving me a hug, and me telling him, “We’ll get through this,” and him saying, “Thank you, I’m sure we will.”

She said, “I’m going to come back in with a Secret Service escort and get some clothes for Mrs. Bush. We don’t know what’s going to happen from here and we’d like to pick up the dogs and the cat.” They went off to an undisclosed location.

Can't blame her, I'd do the same.

Ileana Mayorga: It was completely amazing, the feeling of support, of unity. I felt so proud that my community, the Hispanic community, were calling. Suddenly the phones were ringing and saying, “This is the country that we chose to come to. Nobody will destroy our country.” They would say, “I’m not legal in the United States. Do you think they will accept me to do volunteer work?”

One of the phone calls with Cheney, Don Nickles, who was the Senate Republican whip at the time, suggested that we ought to leave. He was agitated, asking, “Why are we all here? The situation is clear. We need to get back.” Cheney was clearly annoyed by this, and his voice came out of the speakerphone in the middle of the table and said, “Don, we control the helicopters. We’ll decide when you leave.”