With the building in flames, one man needed help. Another man refused to leave him.
Adam Mayblum used to enjoy watching as storms lashed the windows of his office: You think that’s power? Mayblum would scoff. I’m on the 87th fl oor of the World Trade Center. That’s power. The drawstrings on his window shades would appear to sway slightly, but it was an illusion. Although they were 1,040 feet in the sky, The WTC was quite steady.
When Mayblum felt a devastating rumble on that September morning, he glanced at the drawstrings. They were careening wildly, three feet in either direction.
Mayblum would be one of thousands cast into an extraordinary purgatory that morning1. While as many as 25,000 would find their way to safety, 5,000 would not.
For some, it was a matter of geography2 — not just which tower they worked in or on which floor, but in which corner of the building.
For some, the choices were as basic as which staircase to use. Others faced the ultimate moral dilemma: Save yourself, or save another.
The confusion inside Adam Mayblum’s office at May Davis, a financial services firm, lasted just seconds. He knew he needed to get out.
He ripped his T-shirt into pieces, soaked the pieces in water and gave them to colleagues to cover their faces. Among them: Harry Ramos, head trader at May Davis. Mayblum had worked with Ramos off and on for 14 years.3
Sparks bit at Mayblum’s ankles as he raced for the stairs. He bolted down two flights before realizing that his trading partner, Hong Zhu, had been left behind. He went back upstairs, the whole area now filled with smoke and burning jet fuel.
There was no sign of Hong. Mayblum hurried down again and made it to the 78th floor, a transfer lobby where one set of elevators and stairs ended and another began. He saw a reassuring sight; Ramos had waded into the pandemonium to help panicked workers into a stairwell.
Together, Ramos and Hong helped the man down one more flight to an elevator.
“Don’t take it,” a Port Authority official screamed.
Hong and Ramos tried to send a magazine down in the elevator to test its safety. But when they pressed the “down” button, the doors wouldn’t close. So Hong decided that he would be the guinea pig instead.5
He stepped inside, and the doors shut behind him.
Hong took the elevator down to the 44th floor, the next transfer lobby. So far, so good. He pressed “52,” went back up and collected Ramos and the heavyset man.
On 44 Hong and Ramos helped the man toward the last bank of elevators that would take them all the way down.
Hong pressed the “down” button again. Nothing. They would have to take the stairs.
Ramos a nd Hong tried to support the man. “One step at a time,” Hong said.
They had been trying to get out for an hour and five minutes. They were on 36 when they felt the South Tower collapse.
“We really have to move,” Hong said.
The rumbles of the collapsing tower next door seemed to sap the heavyset man of his last gasps of energy. “I can’t do it anymore,” he said, sitting down.
Hong and Ramos tried to persuade him to continue. “You don’t have to move your legs!” Hong shouted. “Just move your butt. Let’s go!” But the man couldn’t go on.
A fireman ran up to them. Hong expected that he would join in to get the heavy man to move. Instead, the fireman turned to Hong.
“Who are you, screaming at him to get out?” the fireman shouted. “You get out!”
Hong looked at Ramos, who was still standing with the heavyset man.
“I’m coming down with you,” Ramos told the man. “I’m not going to leave.”
“I left,” Hong says sorrowfully. “Alone.”
The next day, Adam Mayblum sent an e-mail describing his experience to friends and relatives, who sent it to still others. The e-mail was read by someone in San Francisco who knew a woman in New York named Rebecca. Her husband, Victor, a heavyset man, was missing.
On Saturday, September 15, May Davis’s chairman had a gathering at his New Jersey home. Adam Mayblum was there. So was Hong Zhu. Rebecca was also there, learning how her husband, Victor, had been comforted in his last moments, how Harry Ramos had refused to leave him behind.
Ramos’s wife, M icky, was there too. She kept asking Mayblum and Hong where her husband was, convinced that somehow, Harry —the only May Davis employee still missing — was alive.
Piece by piece, she developed a picture of his escape: Harry was on 87 when the plane hit. He stopped to help on 78. He met up with Hong on 53. But as hard as she tried, as many questions as she asked, the picture began to fade on the 36th floor.
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