Local Man Shares 9/11 Experience from Inside the North Tower

In some ways Sept. 11 can be remembered as a series of numbers, beginning with the date — 9/11 — and continuing with times — 8:46 a.m. when the first plane hit the north tower, 9:03 a.m. when the second plane hit the south tower; 9:59 when the south tower fell and 10:28 when the north tower fell.

For Simsbury resident James Meehan there is one more number: 35. That's the floor he was on in the north tower when the first plane hit.

Meehan was a lawyer for Kemper Insurance Co., which had two floors in the north tower, 35 and 36.

“It was a beautiful day,” he said.

He had been at work about an hour when the Boeing 767 jetliner flew into the building between the 93rd and 99th floors of the 110-story tower.

“The building moved two or three feet,” said Meehan, who was standing in his doorway at the moment of impact. “We had thought it had been a bomb going off at the time.”

Some of his co-workers were there in 1993 when there was a bombing at the building. Meehan had been working there since 1999. Those with memories of 1993 urged others to evacuate.

They saw debris floating outside but were unsure if their building or the twin next door had actually been hit.

“It was relatively calm,” said the now 56-year-old.

The power was still on and people were talking about what to do. Meehan and some others decided it was best to gather everyone on the floor — 150 people — and get out of the building. The Kemper offices had recently been renovated so the staff was familiar with the stairwells and it was easy to know where to go. Meehan recalled that the elevators were hot.

“I was the last one to use our newly renovated bathrooms,” he said.

He said the World Trade Center management company had run evacuation drills before so there was a familiarity with what to do. Once in the stairwell — the lights were working — someone had a small radio and it was reported that a private plane had hit the tower.

“The stairwells were crowded,” he said. “It took about 15 minutes to come down.”

Water was coming down the steps as the fire suppression system had been activated.

Meehan said as they were descending police and firemen were going up. He said the emergency workers ended up using floor 35 as a staging area.

While in the stairwell the second plane hit the south tower. They felt it.

“People were orderly but tense,” he said of the trip down the stairs.

The stairwell was hot and decisions were made on the spot. One woman, due to some physical limitations, did not want to go down the stairs. Another woman chose to stay with her.

At another stairwell landing was a handicapped man in a motorized wheelchair. He was told help was coming. Several people stayed with him.

Meehan would find out after the towers fell that the women made it out, but the handicapped man and those who stayed with him perished.

While several people wondered aloud about the possibility of a building collapse, many said it would not happen. But at the time, it was not known that airliners had struck the buildings.

The good news was that everyone on his floor got out, Meehan said, but it was only after leaving the building and seeing the reports on television that he had a complete picture of what was happening.

Once down to the esplanade level, outside he saw that there were bodies and debris. The bodies were those who chose to jump.

Emergency workers were directing people to the concourse underneath to exit the building.

Once out, Meehan called the home office of his company to say that everyone got out OK. He and two colleagues walked to the business apartment in Battery Park City nearby. It was when they were there that the south tower collapsed. Although hit second, the south tower fell first.

“My car was gone,” he said, as he drove in that day rather than stay at the company apartment.

The company apartment was only about 1,000 feet away and so when the building collapsed, debris and dust were everywhere, and the power went out. The apartment looks out onto the Statue of Liberty but Meehan said he could not see the sky.

Meehan called home at 11 a.m. to let his family know he was OK. Neighbors and friends had started to gather at his home. It would be 12 hours before he would arrive back in Simsbury.

After about 20 minutes in the apartment, and after hearing the fighter jets along the Hudson River — at that time no one knew if more attacks were coming — he decided he was going to walk out of the city. He changed his clothes, got a backpack and some water. The others were planning on staying at the apartment.

But when he got outside he was told he could not travel north. He had to go south if he wanted to get out. A tug boat was in front of the building and after going back up to get his colleagues the three boarded the tug boat to New Jersey. In the middle of the river they saw building 7 at the World Trade Center complex collapse.

Once on the other side, they caught a light rail car to where another coworker had a car. He and one other colleague rented a car at the Newark Airport and drove home. He dropped his coworker off in western New Jersey and then made the eerily quiet drive home.

“There were very few people on the roads,” he said, adding he listened to the radio.

Aside from being a bit sore in the front of his legs from the pressure as he was going down the stairs, Meehan was unscathed. His asthma was exacerbated for about a year, he said, but is now better than it ever has been.

He also bounced back in other ways. He said by that Friday — the attacks were on a Tuesday — he was working again in the company’s New Jersey offices. In fact, all but two co-workers were working again.

“As a group it bonded us in a very strong way,” said Meehan.

The company ended up relocating to Rockefeller Center. The company apartment moved to another location — the 56th floor of a building in midtown. He was unfazed at the high elevation.

“You do look at the sky a little differently” he said.

Meehan said he saw reliance in the country and its people after the attacks, which ultimately claimed close to 3,000 lives when adding in the attack on the Pentagon and the lives lost when the passengers of Flight 93 tried to take control of the plane from the hijackers.

By 2004, Kemper was phasing out of insurance and Meehan moved onto another job. He has moved forward and that is what has been good for him and good for the country.

“The country needed to move forward and needs to continue to move forward,” he said.