about six thousand people were in the building unaware of what had happened they used their phones to get information from the outside world and to make contact with loved ones problem the calls came from survivors  and they came from some of the three thousand never came  transmissions they show us through sound what we couldn't see with our eyes the deluge started almost immediately there were three a thousand calls to nine eleven on the emergency dispatchers in the first ten minutes and the calls kept coming in the plane hit from the ninety third to the ninety ninth floor and it destroyed the stairwells in the ninety second floor  at the top of the north tower one hundred people were attending a conference at windows on the world restaurant among them was christopher hanley an executive for radiance a financial systems company he made one of the first recorded calls to nine one one that very important the most emotional kloden moment for me is funny essam please hurry and thank you please hurry i think it was his last words noone yes was an office manager at cantor fitzgerald on the one hundred fourth floor of the north tower he was just six floors above the planes impact i left that message and that must have been the first or second phone call that i received that morning and i mean i just didn't realize it now it's really hard to struggle with you know what would happen if i answered the phone but i mean i couldn't do anything and even if i did one of the reasons why recordings were made it was so people could record the last words and i think it gives me a little bit of guidance i like trial from brian strength when i have a message melissa harrington hughes was a business executive attending a meeting on the hundred first floor of the north tower melissa was in new york for just one day september eleventh started like any other morning woke up put a pot of coffee and so is making the bed and the telephone rang i don't usually answer the phone but this morning i did it was my daughter melissa i knew she was in new york she was only going to be there that tuesday when the merger was done me she was flying back to california the next day i didn't nec at particular point time most it was a little hysterical i told her honey you have to slow down so that your body can understand what the problem is she got her composure to be dad i'm on one hundred  first floor of the world trade center and a bomb just went up in my bedroom with the t v set i turned it on happened to be on c n n and i saw the fire i saw the smoke i  heartbroken she told me to fire wasn't her major concern but there was an awful lot of smoke so i said to her honey i said can you see an exit sign she said yes dad i may said well under all the exit signs how they are stairwells i said you get that out stairwell as fast as you can get out of the building it was very unusual that people outside at almost a greater sense of alarm an urgency than the people inside who were in the dar families were seeing billowing smoke in the flames licking up the side of the building it was just a terrible responsibility for the people on the outside to have to say it's worse than you not going to be a good day and little did i know that it would be it a day that changed the rest of my life went to work that morning and worked at world trade center one for lehman brothers we were based on the fortieth floor started going through my e mail list that was normal routine preparing for the day and the next thing i know the building roads and i could hear the computers sizzling fadi the whole floor just evacuates michelle's brother james was also working that day in the twin towers but in the south tower in his job as an electrician james cartier a move between different floors the only thing that i wanted to do was to find out where jeems was even though he was four years younger he always had that older brother role in taking care of everybody as part of a large close family growing up in queens james used to go biking with his older brother jo john was teaching james how to how to ride a motorcycle so they they have they shared that passion and love for the motorcycle john was working nearby when james called him from the south ill we immediately went into you know fairly mode you know and i said to my brother james had i known of my last words i would have probably chose better words but you know i as we were descending people were helping one another or just regular everyday workers just helping each other get down the stairs and i remember saying to myself well as soon as i get to the last step and i get outside i'll mcgavin crowd of thousands of people i look up and i see my brother john was at the world trade center because he had received a phone call from his brother james who was on one of the higher floors of the south tower their plan was to meet and find michelle and i would have been there at all had he not called me but his thoughts were of himself his thoughts  two were still at their desks he was trying to reassure us that he was ok but you could tell was acquired as for its money talked about sad someone fall from the ninety first floor but there was a lot of fear and has  it's available any time i want to play it back it's there i hear it and i know i right know it and i'm still very fragile to listen to it and so i'm comforted to know it's there but i don't i don't listen to it charley kara her a systems analyst from morgan stanley worked on the sixty eighth floor in the south tower just bags of my journey looked out and i could see the like the window looking out over a new jersey it actually looked like snow there are so many pieces of paper it actually looked like snow there's a group of about ten of us standing looking north towards the empire state building and there was like a lot of smoke was almost like clouds and all sudden this this person pap's out of it and he just made it look so easy he just he seemed so calm he just like looked to the left to the right and then two people jumped in and it is the lady passed by the window she made eye contact you could see through the windows and that really spooked me i mean you can numb you can communicate a lot by just you know with your eyes and i had to get away from the window they started you know making a choice you know burn to death in two thousand degrees or jump the smell of jet fuel is getting stronger and stronger and the sound of the fire alarms just going off and then these bright light flashes which is really getting annoying and it went first to use the the elevators but the elevators weren't leave the message on her phone charlie's decision to call his wife nearly cost him his  phone rang and it was shipping my don't worry i'm fine and i said please don't waste any time i know all about it get out and he said listen and he put the receiver up to the loud speaker and i heard the announcement do not leave your office this building is secure as we hung up my nephew of course and he was practically incoherent when the second plane hit on live t v what dawned on the world is that it wasn't an accident it wasn't a plane just flying too low that it was a deliberate attack on the world trade center and on america seventeen minutes after the north tower was struck united airlines flight one seventy five crashed into the south tower the emergency services were immediately deluged with calls some seven hundred people were trapped above the impact so the message that charlie carried her left for his wife catherine records the moment the plane hit the second tower if you listen to the message it was like if you didn't even get my name out before the plane hit my building progressive leave my timeline for the future got shorter and shorter and by the time the plane hit i was only thinking of you know forty five seconds ahead can i get to that or can i get to this store and it was it was city it was sick i was sick i was sad there was going to die it was really upsetting and i think if it just happened bam out of the blue i don't know what would happen but i just watched a bunch of people die in office in that somehow i guess get used to the idea of dying and it was just what sadness charlie's wife katherine was unaware of what had happened she was on the subway going to work i was late as usual as i was i was late for work and i got on the train and the train kept stopping and starting i was there lots of delays and they kept saying there's been an incident at the world trade center that's why that's causing the delay everybody gave me their phone and used everybody's phones and i know no phone would work and i didn't and i never i was just glued to the windows watching watching it me they were right there you can touch them patric we had fire drills i think once a month a guy would come out and not he'd say this section uses this staircase and i went to that staircase and it didn't exist anymore first of all that the building slant where i was it was like walking in what we call like a funhouse you know you know everything everything looks right but it's not an angle and then when i got to the feyerick skate section it was like a fire door with with  window you could see through and there is like i beams hanging down you know it just walls not there i couldn't you know the fire escape was the door going down the building was maybe ten feet away from was completely empty the second plane hit the floors from the seventy eighth floor to the eighty fourth floor and it hit a much sharper angle than the first one and the real tragedy about it is that the bottom wing went through the seventy eighth floor which is where the elevator lobby was in the elevator lobby at the time had probably two hundred people in it and it was a scene of incredible carnage clark a fifty four year old executive vice president at investment company euro brokers had worked in the world trade center for almost thirty years we lived through the one nine hundred ninety three bombing and the fact that something had happened catastrophic let's call it next door and fifteen seventeen minutes later the same thing in the south tower i knew in that instant that it was terrorism the room we were standing in absolutely fell apart walls were torn of the jagat eng goal everything fell out of the ceiling speakers lighting cables air conditioning ducts everything came down the sensation was that the whole building was moving to the west very slowly and in just this one half oscillation and the sensation was that it moved at six to eight feet my instinct was that i have a responsibility to try and get people off the floor brian's training as a volunteer fire marshal would prove to be crucial there were six or seven other people in the room with us and i led them into the corridor and we went to the center court in that one hallway there were no stairways i had a choice to go up to my right to stairway c forward to stairway b or left turn to stairway i for unknown reasons just felt this nudge and turned to the my left and not it it's hit way higher than dad is and tim said my dad's not on the thirty first floor he's on the eighty fourth floor and then i realized i could see it so clearly that the plane had come in just about at his floor but brian's office on the eighty fourth floor was on the other side of the building from the plane's impact he led a group of seven people down the stairs at the eighty first floor they met two people coming up trying to escape the thick smoke below so the group decided to go back up the stairs but brian remained behind i got completely distracted by hearing his banging noise inside the eighty first floor and i continued on to this voice with my flashlight and as i got closer and closer in directing me left right toward his voice suddenly he said you can you see my hand can you see my hand and i mean we were just two yards apart probably and then suddenly this waving hand came into focus and i shined a light and he was down near the floor level schama light up his arm and saw really poking through a hole in the wall this these two bright eyes and immediately was know i've been saved stanley pray math was buried under heavy debris trapped there when the second plane crashed into his south tower office on the eighty first floor two of the stairways were blocked and could not go down stairway was on the far side of where the plane had crashed in it had hit in the floors where the elevator equipment was in the world trade center had this ma elevator engines and it literally stopped the impact of the plane in stairway was on the far side in that survived the impacts  when we got out onto the eighty first floor landing of course everybody else had gone up but my instinct was i want to try i want to see what's down there and shine my light down the stairs there was some smoke coming  and we dug our way through rubble for several floors mostly dry wall that had blown in on the stairs but in the darkness you weren't hundred percent sure what it was that we slid some because there was water flowing underfoot and by the seventy eighth floor as we passed that floor the wall was cracked in the little flames licking up inside the wall and we kept going it got a little better on seventy seven and by the seventy fourth floor we broke into what i would call almost normal conditions fresh air lights on in the south tower anyone below the impact zone between the seventy seventh and eighty fifth floors were getting out if they could stanley and i continued on down until we got to the forty fourth floor we went in there and in the middle of that floor which is like a long hotel lobby if you like that runs the entire length of the building there was one security guard in gray flannel slacks in his blue blazer and he looked at us quite excited said you have telephones and i and i small both of us said no we don't have phones he said oh he said my phones don't work he said but i'll stay with this man any kind of backed up and there was a man cook asian massive head wounds back wounds semi conscious lying on the floor how he got the injuries how he got to the forty fourth floor i don't know but the security guard said i'll stay with this man but you must promise me to get a medic and a stretcher to the forty fourth floor i said we'll do our best and i went back to the stairs down down down on the thirty first floor it was completely vacant nobody nobody was present except stanley and i we got into the conference room and i picked up the conference room telephone and got di some of the images and sounds you were about to see in here are graphic in nature viewer discretion is advised with the seconds ticking away brian clark kept his promise to the security guard and called for help i didn't call nine one one to tell them about the man on the forty fourth floor and they didn't get in the middle of evacuating i want to keep walking but i just want to make sure that somebody knows about this man on the forty fourth floor of tower t the response of the emergency service operators tell you what was happening in real time the sorrow the intensity the fear the lack of understanding of what what's going on  now he was trapped on the ninety seventh floor by nine fifteen shimmies loved ones had filled the family's brooklyn apartment the phone passed between them as each offered him consolation and advice we actually on the phone we were trying to find out from ways how to calm him down and relax some possibly of a different ways of maybe getting out there trying different exits at one point when i was talking to him he shared a few private things with me and all this time i was able to hear his voice but the situation was becoming a lot worse beer was now fire and dense smoke above the impact zone and those trapped there began to at the end of your life i would imagine you want some sort of comfort and i hope that it seems from a lot everyone has told me that he was given that that's all i could hope for final calls is the range of human emotion the terror when talking to a dispatcher who supposed to rescue him in the focus of giving one message to a loved one i love you and tell the children i love you is how focus and they didn't try to stay on the line they said what was most important to them ninth i was very pleased to be going to way yoga class around the corner in the village and at the end of the class i walked home and when i came into this house there was a blinking light on the answering machine and i had six massa tests not the usual thing there were messages then from people calling to say am i your children all right and then there was a message from my as and and he sat promise me you will not turn on the television and that was an easy promise to m family came girl boy girl so there was a little triumvirate at the top and then four boys came in a very quick succession and stephen was the third of that group of four i just went out in the backyard and i sat in a plastic you know five dollar plastic chairs under a train with the final lap preparing myself place that is now become the center of all the world's attention and this a chlamydia unfolding in your mind you're trying to place your loved one where are they in relationship to this terrible series of events that's unfolding jim gordon berg a successful real estate executive had recently accepted a promotion at a new company september eleventh was jim's last day working at the world trade center saying goodbye  is the last thing i can remember seeing him walking out the door that morning september eleventh julian jim had been married for seven years their daughter nicole was three years old i went to work soon after he did and my office is very close to our current so i just walked a few blocks when i got there there was a mess of slate blinking and i listen to the machine right away and that was i didn't know what that men listen to the message actually several times because i wasn't really sure what he was saying i couldn't believe what he was saying just a minute later i spoke to him unlike the message on the machine which sounded frantic when i first spoke to him he sent a very calm very controlled he said to me i'm going to be ok you know there's a fire but i'm going to be ok and he said he would i said stay down low i mean right what we learned stay down low there's a fire and he stayed down low and he was hiding behind a desk and he's trying to call for help and he had no idea what was going on in chicago jim's closest friend adam had just arrived at work i or turned on c n b c and they said you know we go live to the world trade center and there was smoke coming out of the building the first thing i did was call his office he picked up the phone right away and he had a voice that i'd never heard before and it was you know just utter panic and fear and expletives there's fire there's smoke everywhere there's debris i can't get out you got to get me out of here he had asked what happened and he he didn't know and i didn't know jim was six floors below the point of impact he was trapped by falling debris his comments were van we'll calm ok what are we supposed to do and i told him there's a fire and it's going up you need to get down and he said i can't go anywhere the stairs are blown out below us you know the degrees to have it we can move anything at this point a half hour had passed having spoken to his wife jill and best friend adam jim now wanted his predicament to be known to the watching world he managed to make contact with a reporter at the new york times jim dwyer i spoke with him several times that morning and i was trying to understand what his predicament was why he couldn't get to the to the directed very folks i mean he was you know there's a sense of great urgency in his voice but i didn't feel like he was panicking he wanted people to know where he was and that he couldn't leave the building jim has always been a leader and i think that show through on that day was all these qualities about him that all of a sudden i said wow this is a really special guy after speaking to the new york times jim's next call was to a new york t v news station at nine thirty to forty five minutes after the first tower was hit jim's voice was heard on national television jim idea i have no idea where the plane had on my understanding medical plane jim there are two point one one in a one tower one went into the other tower what do you what do you see around you i mean are you and are you in smoke are you in fire on the first thing that i wan make clear is that i'm stuck on the eighty sixth floor a fire door has trapped debris it fart around and part of the core of the building is blown out how many people i went into i'm with one other person and i'm told that people are aware that i'm on the eighty  floor on the side of the building they think the river and what time of the air i want to tell anybody that has a family member that may be in the building at the situation it's under control at the moment and the danger is not increased so please all family members take it easy i got a phone call from a friend of mine on my cell phone saying jelled since going to be ok he was just on national television and he said he's going to be ok she told me when he said in how confident he was about it they broadcast his voice and i saw tapes of them and listened to it and it's eerie the the voice that i hear on that is not his it's just so odd as far as the voice is concerned but his message was unbelievably calm and brave and stoic having seen that was just a tremendous tribute i think for a lot of people to be in crisis mode they would just sit there and scream and the kind of regroup to themself it seems like and said ok this is the situation how do i best deal with this and he reached out as many people as they could trying to figure out what resources he had to be helpful in a situation i mean he had the the sense of mind to do that and the danger not increased so please all family members take it easy i think that was wonderful but i knew in my heart he was not going to be ok if firefighters from across new york was sent to the scene knowing what he might soon face fireman walter hines left a hurried voice message for his wife was so serious i could tell from the sound of his voice you know this was something human i could have and i think that he just needed to to let us know that he loved us this you lose the sound of their voice that you can't remember the sound of people's voices or for their god and i tend to think that that's true i think it's a good reminder to have walter message for my daughters that they can continue to hear him stephen was with us for thirty three years and we have a choice we can either say we are so mad that he's not here but we can say we ha thirty three years and we have a fiend's to return to the feast of the memories stephen worked alongside a group of close college friends all former high school athletes very relaxed smiling laughing he was very laid back very happy you know he really was a happy of a lot of the time s is really a peace keeper within the family because we all have very strong personalities and a dinner table we all want to voice our opinion and stephen was the best i think of any of us of listening to all sides of an argument and really keeping the peace in the south tower the second to be hit conditions were now desperate as the fire spread stephen and his colleagues made a collective decision to stick together and try to reach the roof now faced a grueling twenty one storey climb up the stairwells through smoke and dust but once there they discovered that there was no access to the roof they retreated back down the stairwells and took refuge in an empty conference room on the eighty eighth floor sharing a single mobile phone each one took turns to say their goodbyes stephen and others passed the phone around and let people get word out to their family members and at this point there was a sense of dread among those people making the calls they were it was a sense that they were doomed and  they knew how isolated they were they knew they were in the sky far from the ground and that they were there chances were very slim people use their last minutes of conversation to talk with their families and their loved ones and their friends they said you made my life better you know i watched it take care of someone so i want you to you know know this about the truth of our lives and  it was a kind of a moment of a moment of truth for many people moment of desperate truth but i'm also transcendant truth an hour after the first plane struck the north tower some people were still trying to make first contact with loved ones but the phone networks were overloaded mcginnis a commodities broker was trapped above the impact zone like stephen moldering tom knew that there was no way down right away i said where are you where are you and i'm almost annoyed  answering me and then he says we're in a conference room that we can't get out of we're trapped in a conference room and i said well who's with you and he rattles off the names of a couple of guys i know three got other people and you could hear it in the background you could hear people talking you didn't hear panic you heard i remember one guy yelling let's just knock down this damn wall i remember telling him i said you're going to get out of there i keep telling him that he said i have to get down on the floor i love you and that's when the i lost connection at that point there is a great comfort in the fact that i got to talk to him and the funny thing about that comfort is it was not a great comfort that day or even you know weeks later but it was a good it's a great comfort now is a great comfort months later and the reason it was a great comfort is because you know it's not so much for me but i feel that it was for him it was his chance to say goodbye his chance to say take care of caitlin you know he said it will be a miracle if we get out of here he knew he knew he wasn't going to get out a was trapped on the hundred fifth floor of the south tower he had called his brother john to come to the site to help their sister michelle but she had already escaped from the north tower now she and john were on the ground looking for james i was trying to separate people and focus i'm seeing james coming through no and we waited and we didn't  for the people on the upper floors they really did have the knowledge that they were that they were going to die which is unusual even when you have disease you have time to reconcile with it but here there was people in the heart of their life young people they started on a sunny day one hundred two minutes later they're confronting really the most basic things in their life and they have just a few things to say and they say it with all their heart james then made a final phone call to another family member he says to my sister maria you know that he was with a lot of people and that was that was comforting to hear that that he wasn't alone and they didn't leave this world alone  said that they were looking for a way down and they couldn't find a way but there was still trying and he turned and he says the last thing he says to my sister he says tell mommy and daddy that i love them tell everybody that i love and then you know all the debris is fall around us but at the same time that both my sister and myself are running for our lives my brother was losing is by ten o'clock the rescue operation had made very little progress the fire department had been plagued by malfunctioning radio receivers within the towers inside on the stairwells firefighters were unable to communicate with each other but that silence was about to be broken someone was able to make the radio receiver work and we have i remarkable maying document obv that effort to get up to the high floors in the south tower the man who repaired the radio receiver was forty five year old as he entered the south tower he single handedly fixed an elevator and took it to the fortieth floor halfway to where almost seven hundred people were struggling to stay alive and then he started to climb on fire and because he was in very very fit man he was able to make tremendous progress he had run marathons he ran half marathon he went twelve floors in ten minutes wearing all the bunker carriages fifty or sixty pounds on his point on the tape during his ascent palmer discovered that one stairwell the side was still intact all the way to the impact zone for the hundreds of people trapped there this stairwell could have been an escape route the seventieth floor of the south tower the bridge point between living in the dead it was a transfer spot in the elevator system and a lot of people had mass there and when the second plane had a lot of them were killed outright a lot of them were injured and waiting for help and palmer was rising and racing to that point to get to them