Long Pond woman recounts her Sept. 11 escape from World Trade Center Tower
Kevin Kunzmann Pocono Record Writer
At 8:46 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Kathy Whelan was talking about Notre Dame University football. The Fighting Irish were playing Purdue that Saturday, and a young Port Authority employee under Whelan in the Procurement department wanted a day off to go the game with her father.
The first plane hit 30 floors above Whelan’s office on the 63rd floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Whelan didn’t see it, but she felt it. The structural sway of the building that only needed a windstorm to start was sometimes enough to give employees motion sickness, Whelan said. This sway was worse — Whelan had enough time to jump out of her chair and make her way out to the main office’s center aisle before the building “kicked back” from the blow of the plane crash. Her employee ran away.
At first, there was nothing to do but think. The building is collapsing. A helicopter must have hit. It had to have been an accident. No, the building is okay now. The employees went out into the main corridor to listen for announcements on the intercom. Whelan didn’t hear any announcements, but heard a liquid flowing down the elevator shaft — aviation fluid. Most people headed for the stairwell, but not all.
Whelan was among those who was in the North Tower during the 1993 terrorist bombing that killed six, but failed to destroy the towers as intended. Once the building had stopped swaying Tuesday morning, Whelan was convinced everything was fine. Though she planned to leave the building, she understood why so many didn’t at first.
"That’s all we kept saying, that the building was so safe, the building is so secure,” Whelan said.
But she couldn’t understand why Eileen wouldn’t leave. Her petite coworker was already in a state of shock, and would have to make it down the thousands of steps with lupus, two hip replacements and a scar from her recent shoulder surgery. As people began to crowd the stairs, Eileen told Whelan, “I can’t do it.”
“Yes you can,” Whelan said, “because if you’re not going, then I’m not going.”
The pair began the long walk down. The crowds rushing down were so big, and the stairs took so long that Whelan would make Eileen take breaks between a couple of flights. She would shield Eileen in the corner of the stairwell, and occasionally someone staying on a nearby floor would invite them in to get out of the way and rest. Whelan always said no — getting out was her priority.
When Eileen got tired, Whelan offered to carry her — knowing she’d turn down the offer and keep moving. Besides, it might’ve been something of a bluff. Whelan was diagnosed with a torn meniscus just five days before. Between pumping adrenaline and a concern for her coworker, Whelan was able to shut down the pain.
Since the 1993 bombing — when people were evacuated down a dark staircase that got closer to the explosion’s smoke at the bottom — the stairs were improved, Whelan said. It was well-lit and painted to reflect light, but was still void of any windows or view to the outside. It wasn’t until about halfway down when Whelan saw firemen toting heavy gear up the stairwell, headed for the crash site. They were encouraging everyone to keep going down, but eventually one told Whelan what was happening.
"One of them eventually told us the other building was hit and they didn’t know if anything else was coming in,” Whelan said. "Then it was a little bit of a panic-mode, because you realize it wasn’t an accident.”
It had been about a half hour since the North Tower was hit, and the two women were only about halfway down the stairs.
A feeling of helplessness
At 9:03 a.m., Buz Whelan was on the phone with his brother-in-law. Kathy’s brother was asking him which tower she worked in, when her sister screamed in the background — the South Tower had just been hit.
Buz was in a South Plainfield video store that he and a business partner owned. It was about an hour before they were set to open, and Buz was learning about the attacks through the phone. None of the many televisions he had running in the store had cable. He locked up and sped back to his and Kathy’s garden view apartment, turning on the news in time to watch the South Tower collapse. The chill in his spine grew into total fear.
A captain and combat helicopter pilot for the 1st Cavalry Division during the Vietnam War, Buz had a few bad days in his service. But it never got to him, so as long as he had a job to do.
"But here, I have nothing to do,” Buz said. "I’m helpless.”
He went downstairs and smoked his first cigarette in 30 years, just to have something to do. When he came back upstairs, he called the house of one of Kathy’s co-workers, hoping someone would answer. Someone did — Kathy’s co-worker.
"I was so mad, because she had taken the day off,” Buz said. Why couldn’t have Kathy?
Stronger together
The rush to get down the stairs began to slow near the bottom. Sprinklers had caused a cascade of water to flow down the stairs, and the lower level concourse was almost flooded. As they got to the Austin J. Tobin Plaza floor — on level with the metallic sphere sculpture — people began shouting to not look out the windows. So Whelan looked out the windows.
"It was so surreal, because it looked like a war scene,” Whelan said. "You could see all different parts of the building and plane. It was just — it was weird, it was so weird.”
They were redirected below the plaza to the concourse, where Whelan help Eileen walk through the knee-high water. Finally, they made it up to street level and started running. Only when they made it to the fence of the cemetery at St. Paul’s Churchyard did they stop and look around. Within a few minutes, the South Tower fell.
"It was just so surreal — it just wasn’t happening,” Whelan said. "And when the building came down, everything was so quiet. There was no traffic, everything was so quiet. I didn’t even hear the building come down. It was so eerie.”
A cloud of dark smoke erupted from the base of the fallen tower and smothered the surrounding block. When it cleared, Whelan found Eileen and again made her walk. Whelan needed to get back to New Jersey, but was afraid now. The firemen’s warning — “We don’t know what else is coming in” — made every landmark around her a potential target. She took Eileen away from the nearby city hall, walking past the Pace University campus towards the East River.
The diabetic Eileen was without medication and needed something to eat. They cut up north before the Brooklyn Bridge, into Chinatown. Many of their business owners didn’t know what was happening still, Whelan said, and weren’t accommodating. They headed further north to Little Italy, where vendors offered them free food and drink and a place to wash off the soot. Eileen, a former alcoholic, kept saying she needed a drink.
"Not today,” Whelan told her. “You can’t do it today.”
Whelan called Buz at about 1:30 p.m. and gave him a list of colleagues’ loved ones to call and inform they were all okay, including Eileen’s husband. They then walked another couple dozen blocks west to the Holland Tunnel, where the two Port Authority employees finally used their credentials to get a ride through the closed tunnel to a Port Authority facility. From there, a friend drove them to Newark Airport, already shut down and under military police guard.
Buz managed to drive through security to pick up Whelan from a terminal. After showering that evening, she still had soot on herself from the tower. Since she was essential staff, the Port Authority called her to come in the next day — she told them call someone who had the day off. But she did report to a makeshift office in Newark Thursday, and spent the day answering a hotline for employees to call about their status. It was too upsetting for Whelan, and she asked for another task. She spent Friday ordering essential items — office phones, respirators, body bags and rental freezer trucks.
Taking the time to move forward
All the Whelans did for the next month was attend funerals. The Port Authority lost 37 police officers, along with dozens of other employees throughout the towers. Some were those who offered Whelan and Eileen a place to rest on the long walk down.
About five months later, Whelan went to a celebration — Eileen reached her fifth year of sobriety. At the party, Eileen presented her landmark coin to Whelan and said, “I was going to have a drink that day.”
On June 16, 2002, Whelan was among the Port Authority employees to be presented a medal for their actions by Mayor Michael Bloomberg at Madison Square Garden. Buz still remembered that date 14 years later. Kathy has never taken the medal out of its box.
Eileen was among those to never come back to work, Whelan said. About two years ago, Whelan heard she had died from cancer. Buz pointed out that Whelan gave her another 12 years to live.
Whelan went back to work, and never took a September 11 off. It was important for her to be with her co-workers — taking a moment of silence with them, visiting the site and attending a local service. She and Buz moved out to Long Pond, Pa. and built a quiet home off a lake. She made it a goal to get back to her old workplace before she retired. She got her wish on March 15, 2015, when she got an office on the 21st floor of Four World Trade Center. From her window, she could look down on the two reflecting pools where the towers once stood.
She retired on September 29, 2015, after 37 years with the Port Authority. Most of the colleagues she had during the attacks were gone, and the atmosphere was changing. People couldn’t understand what it was like watch young firemen, certain to die, running up the stairs and shouting encouragement to everyone. And they definitely couldn’t understand why Whelan would feel bad for her husband watching at home — why on September 11, she was glad to be where she was.
"I wanted to be with them,” Whelan said. "I didn’t want them to be alone. I’m glad I didn’t take off, you know? I would prefer to be a part of it and just help out, or do something.”
