9/11 survivor recounts haunting escape from 81st floor of World Trade Center tower

David Paventi was on the 81st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the first plane hit on September 11.

Paventi, a banker from Charlotte, North Carolina, was in New York City on business at the time. His company had a new office in the World Trade Center that it was still moving into. TV mounts were screwed into the walls, but the TVs had not yet been installed.

Paventi remembers looking out the skyscraper's window the day before, September 10. It was a day so humid and foggy that he couldn't see the streets below.

“There was another gentleman … who was up there with me that day – he and I had gone up there that morning to have coffee – and I remember him saying to me, 'How come planes don't hit this building?'” Paventi recalled.

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At the time, he did not make much of the comment, but simply said that there were aviation security and control methods in place to ensure that such things did not happen.

The next day was a bright, crisp foretaste of fall, Paventi said. Just before he and his team at the World Trade Center were to begin their morning meeting at a long table in an 81st-floor conference room, American Airlines Flight 11 arrived at 8:46 a.m. on the 93rd floor of the North Tower, just 12 floors above Paventi's office.

He said it felt like what he imagined an earthquake would feel like, even though he had never experienced one himself.

“I remember looking up … and the light was flickering back and forth across the table,” Paventi said. “So my first instinct was to get under the table because I didn't want the light to hit my head. And when I did that, literally everyone in the conference room got up from their seats and ran to the front of the room.”

Victims trapped in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 sought help for themselves and others by telephone

Pedestrians in Lower Manhattan watch smoke rising from New York's World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

Some of the people in the building that day had experienced a bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Paventi followed his colleagues out of the office and went down several flights of stairs. He remembers it being crowded and very quiet before he decided to wait for his friend Bob, who had stayed behind to make sure everyone had left the office. Bob caught up with him a few minutes later and they went down the remaining stairs together.

“We all know what New Yorkers are like. They can be boisterous and loud and stuff. So you would have thought there would be some noise in the stairwell, but there wasn't,” he said. “It was very quiet.”

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A firefighter walks through the rubble of the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001, while a US flag hangs from a traffic light pole. (Doug Kanter/AFP)

He remembers being asked to step aside as a few people helped a man with severe burns quickly go down the stairs. He and Bob smelled something unfamiliar in the stairwell, which they now believe must have been jet fuel.

The descent from dozens of floors to the ground floor was very bumpy due to the number of people trying to escape, and Paventi said he and Bob seemed to have had the same unspoken thought that perhaps they were in the wrong place and should perhaps try a different staircase to get down faster.

“And every time one of us wanted to say something, the line started moving again,” he said.

“Thank God we never left that stairwell because obviously we were able to get out.”

— David Paventi

They both had pagers at the time, and on the 30th or 40th floor they received messages that a plane had crashed into their building. Then they learned that at 9:03 a.m. a second plane – United Airlines Flight 175 – had crashed into the South Tower.

The Bank of America shirt David Paventi wore on September 11. (Caregiver)

The entire walk from the 81st floor to the lobby took about an hour and a half, Paventi said, adding that he felt the instinct to flee rather than panic. He just wanted to get out. Meanwhile, he saw firefighters rushing to get into the building, moving in the opposite direction as everyone tried to escape. He described it as a “sobering” memory.

The firefighters, in full gear and with heavy equipment, had stopped in the stairwell to get some air and asked people to move on because the ground floor was open.

“I remember one of the firefighters looking up and saying, 'For $35,000 a year I get to do all this.'”

— David Paventi

“I just thought, 'My God. That's a gut decision,'” Paventi said.

Eventually they reached the lobby of the building, which Paventi described as a scene from “Die Hard,” with large windows blown out and debris everywhere.

A woman wearing some sort of official police jacket told Paventi and Bob to run and “don't look back,” which they did. Paventi actually looked back at one point and saw a huge cloud of smoke rolling toward them, but they cut a corner and ran behind a building just in time to avoid the cloud.

Almost 3,000 people were killed and thousands injured in the terrorist attacks of September 11. (Photo12/Universal Images Group)

Escaping the city was a logistical nightmare. Paventi didn't want to take the subway after the terrorist attack and thought bridges were the best way to get off the island of Manhattan. So they walked to the nearest bridge. Paventi remembers watching the South Tower collapse completely.

“I remember looking over where the World Trade Center was, and our building was gone, and there was just rubble and smoke and stuff. I remember looking over, and that's when the second tower started to collapse and literally melted,” he said. “It looked like it had melted into the rest of the city. It was … disturbing and eye-opening and just … the strangest thing you could ever see.”

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He and Bob then hitchhiked to JFK, thanks to a Good Samaritan who gave them a lift, rented a Chevy Blazer and drove first to Bob's family on Long Island and eventually, with much mishap, back to Charlotte.

A year or two after the September 11 attacks, authorities found, identified and returned Paventi's burned wallet and cards. (Caregiver)

Paventi's wife fielded calls from concerned relatives and friends while still trying to find out if he was OK. He was not able to call her until he reached Bob's parents' house on Long Island.

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Immediately after the attacks, Paventi said, he was scared. Loud noises scared him, even though he's not a particularly jumpy person. In recent years, Paventi said, he thinks about those who weren't lucky enough to survive that day, or the first responders who sacrificed their lives to help others. He also thinks about how much things have changed in terms of security since 9/11.

“I find it sad that it takes an event like this for people to realise how much freedom we enjoy in this country.”

— David Paventi

“Even a few days afterward … there were no flights. Everything was grounded, and that was very bizarre. … There was a really strong sense of patriotism. There were flags hanging on people's houses that you don't normally see flags hanging on. I think it's sad that it takes an event like this for people to realize how much freedom we enjoy in this country and then think about which of those freedoms have been taken away from them in response to everything that's happened.”

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Nearly 3,000 people were killed and thousands were injured, some of whom still suffer from illnesses resulting from the harsh chemicals and fumes they were exposed to that day and in the days and weeks following the devastating attack.