INTERVIEW WITH JUDY WEIN, AON, 3-24-04, Hollis Hills, Queens

• JW was not at the WTC in 1993;

• Continuing fire drills not very helpful; JW confirms basic procedure, e.g.,
occupants gathered to center of floor, told to use phone, check for heat,
informed about re-entry floors; fire drill coordinators blew whistles for them
to listen, but people did not always pay too much attention; would have been
more helpful to do actual evacuation drills, e.g., go into the stairwells and
down the stairs; does not recall any uniform instructions on which way to go,
e.g., up or down;
• Aon occupied most of floors 98th - 105th floors (half of 104th floor leased to
different company), and 92;
• On Sept. 11th, JW was in her office in the southwest corner of the 103rd floor;
office window faced West;
• JW heard explosion and felt the building shake;
• Turned toward window and saw fireball which seemed like it was coming
from below; felt heat in office, like her face was in an oven, and ran out of the
room;
• Screamed to everyone on floor to get out; JW does not recall how many were
on the floor at that time but it was not filled;
• JW ran down stairway to the 78th floor; some people took the local elevators,
but JW's instinct after seeing the fire was to use the stairs;
• Stairway was already filled with people walking down 2 at a time, one holding
onto each side banister; some people were actually going up, perhaps to get
something they forgot; not great sense of panic in stairwell;
• JW exited stairs at 78th floor Sky Lobby, thinking maybe there would be more
information there; there was no immediate PA announcement when the 1st
plane hit;
• The Sky Lobby was packed, like a subway at rush hour, people cramming as
many as they could into each elevator car;
• There were 10 express elevators, 2 of which had been out of service for
months; they were to the right as you faced the elevator bank, towards the
center in a group of 5;
• JW met up with some colleagues and stood waiting in a group of six;
• Most people in JW's group knew a plane had hit the building, and assumed,
based on the fact that it was a clear day etc, that it was not a mistake; JW
cannot say what conclusions others drew;
• Though some people planned to or actually did go back up to personal items,
most people in the Sky Lobby were trying to get down; that's why they were
there; JW had left purse and everything upstairs but had no intention of going
back up to get it; her boss said, no, you're not going up, and offered to give
her money to get home;
• Then came the announcement, which JW recalls as saying, the building is
secure, it is safe to proceed; JW took this to mean it is safe to proceed down.
that the building is sufficiently secure to do so; could only assume that proper
procedure was to exit;
Others began going up at that point; 1 person left JW's group to head towards
elevator but JW does not know how far he made it (he did not survive);
[JW knows of one Aon person who got down to the lobby and went back up,
but did so of his own volition (e.g., not directed to) to try to help colleagues
above;]
As they continued to wait, the 2nd plane hit; JW went flying and landed on her
arm, which got broken; [found out later she also had punctured lung and
abdominal bleeding];
Out 5 five people in JW's group, 1 (her boss) died immediately; another was
pinned by marble which broke his legs; 1 man survived but stayed to help
others and did not make it out; the remaining lady also had broken limbs (1
arm broken and other badly burned];
JW heard no further PA announcements or the fire alarm, though the
sprinklers apparently went off because there water on the floor (could've been
a burst pipe); it was dark but not extremely smoky, there were some ambers,
but no real fire in the Sky Lobby;
JW walked towards the center of the Sky Lobby, where there was normally a
person stationed at a desk, but all of that was gone; it got darker and darker as
she went in that direction, more and more bodies; knew she should turn back;
Walked back to the north side of the building, near the western wall, where
some windows had been blown out, so there was some fresh air and light; on
her way there, she passed an escalator and there appeared to be fire on a
higher floor; could see 1 WTC from window; JW got the 2 surviving members
of group to walk to that area;
While they were, there the "man in the red bandanna" came in and announced
that anyone who could walk should go down stairs, and those who could
should help others; JW does not know if he checked other stairways first but
he led them to stairway A (this was probably always closest staircase to
people who survived on impact floors); [This man, Wells Crowther, who was
a volunteer FF, came from an office on SW corner of 104th floor, right above
JW's, but was not from Aon; his body was found in the lobby of the tower,
where he apparently stayed to help FF's after getting down];
There had been a previous group that the man directed down the stairs, as told
to JW by Ling Young; LY (who was badly burned) had left a fire extinguisher
in the stairway which the man in the red bandanna had given her and JW
remembers seeing it;
JW walked down with 2 other people, her female colleague from Aon and
another male Aon co-worker who she did not know previously; JW knew that
another plane had hit;
JW does not know if there were other people alive on the 78th floor when she
began exiting, but her husband later heard that the man in the red bandanna
had brought injured people into the stairways to help rescue workers reach
them and take them down;
The stairs were bright and clear and the conditions were pretty normal; if
debris was blocking certain places, it was already removed; at one point, they
had to go under something, like a pipe, that had fallen; there was also one
section with a puddle that had a wire going into it; JW did not want to have to
go back and turn around, so she walked through and was all right;
Somewhere in the 70's they encountered a person communicating on a
walkie-talkie; he was not in uniform and had no gear; (could have been PA
civilian or perhaps a fire warden from another company); JW told him about
the injured people on the 78th floor; he ran up and down past them and then
back up;
About 10 to!5 flights down, in the 60's, they began encountering FF's in full
gear who looked very tired; FF's told them to go down to the 40* floor for
help; between there and the 40th floor, they encountered 3 or 4 sets of FF's;
this was approx 9:30 AM;
As instructed, they exited on the 40th floor, where there was one FF and 2
security guards in blue blazers (Summit); JW saw a kitchen, and one security
guard got her some water which she shared with the other two civilians;
1 FF and 1 security guard took them down in a small elevator, which appeared
to be an internal elevator belonging perhaps to the company whose space they
were in on the 40th floor;
When they got down to the lobby, the FF went back up; [JW's husband later
heard that the next elevator got stuck and presumably destroyed in collapse];
JW did not see the other part of the lobby but heard that they were doing
triage there;
JW and other 2 civilians were turned over to a uniformed female security
guard with a walkie-talkie who walked them through the concourse to the
designated exit on Church St, near Vesey; the lobby and the concourse were
empty, like a ghost town; they were the only people in the concourse; there
were many ambulances and emergency workers on Church St, as well as
patients, with relatively less serious injuries, waiting to be transported;
The female security officer got JW into an ambulance and said she was going
back;
JW was then taken out of the ambulance to fit 2 women who were burned
(one was Ling Young), but then put back in after she told EMS workers of
pain in her chest area (punctured lung);
As the ambulance was pulling away, JW saw the south tower collapse out of
the back window (heard noise and saw billowing smoke); they had somewhat
of a difficult time driving out, but were able to get to NY Presbyterian
Hospital where JW was treated;
In general: JW felt there were not good instructions on what to do; after the
first plane hit, she left her floor by her own decision, because she had seen the
fireball from tower one; also, fire drills could have been more helpful;
on fire; RD had to run through the fire and may have gotten most of burns
there; he was by himself at this point;
He had told people to get low, so they were lying down "going to sleep" or
passing out in the transfer hallway; [apparently these people were too
overcome to proceed];
After this point, the conditions on the stairs were more normal; from the 80's
to the 40's, RD was by himself in stairway A;
In the 40's there was another cross-over;
Ran into 3 firefighters on their way up; RD told them he was having trouble
breathing and they told him to go down; he could get help there;
3 FF's kept climbing;
Also in the 40's, RD saw an injured lady being helped by a man; they were
proceeding but walking slowly; RD passed them; [these people were likely on
the stairs when the tower collapsed, see timing later]
At the plaza level, RD directed to go through concourse by a female PA
worker [see Brian Clark interview, confirming this]; the woman did not
question him as to what floor he came down from or how;
In the lobby, there were some firefighters and police; RD tried to go out on
Liberty but he thinks PD told him he had to go into the concourse; not
questioned by these people either:
Maybe told to come out by Krispy Kreme but thinks just told to go through
concourse, not where to come out;
Concourse was fairly empty, not too many emergency workers; RD ran into a
colleague of mine, John Kren [he's the obese employee who later died]; did
not discuss where Kren had come from etc;
Then heard loud thunder and saw a fireball coming at him and ran; next thing
he remembers is waking up 4 days later in the hospital;
RD was not there in 1993;