You Better Read This

Michael Wilson blogged being there that day and escaping. It's incredible to read. Even better is the aftermath, the path his life has taken, how he answered the "Get A Life" call, loud and clear.

Now, down below the 30th floor, the firemen were in the individual floors with their pokes, prying apart vending machines to get at something to drink. There were also firemen just dropping bottles of water on the way up the stairs because they were just too damn heavy. Promptly someone would pick them up and offer drinks to the others until the bottle was empty or accepted in it's entirety.

My heart began to sink and I became heavy with guilt as the "rescue workers" (as is now apparently the polite euphemism) went up the stairs to do whatever they possibly could. Not knowing what that even might be. A part of me, a big part of me, wishes I could remember more if not all of those faces. I didn't know it at the time; that they were climbing to their deaths. It was a couple days before I had another thought about that... They may have known full well.

See, I've waited too long to pen this account. But it is only now I can keep my head clear and eyes dry enough to get a significant amount of words out on paper.

In the mid-20s, the flow of firemen became fairly consistent. People stayed to the outside edge of the stairwell by default now as best they could. Descent was extremely slow, taking a couple minutes at each floor. It was here I believe a number of people switched to stairwells. Some advantage seemed apparent to them. I didn't find the going quite that slow, and frankly I wasn't that bothered.

On 22 was where they were all congregating. They were stopping on the way up for a breather, and going up in shifts of 8 or 10. All of them had radios and they were referring to each other by what company they came from. It did me some good to see them resting. They were human after all, and after what I'd seen already, I was beginning to wonder about that.