David Paventi was on the 81st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the incident occurred. The first plane attack was on 9/11.
A banker from Charlotte, North Carolina, Pawentee was in New York City He was there on business at the time. His company had a new office in the World Trade Center that they were still moving into, with TV mounts installed in the walls, but the TVs hadn’t been installed yet.
Pawenty remembers looking out the skyscraper’s window the day before, Sept. 10, a day so humid and foggy he couldn’t see the streets below.
“There was another gentleman … who was there with me that day — he and I went to get coffee that morning and walked up — and I remember him saying to me, ‘How come airplanes don’t hit this building?'” Pawenti recalled.
David Pawenty’s temporary ID card for the 9/11 World Trade Center. (David Paventi)
He did not comment much on it then, except that he thought air safety and control procedures were in place to ensure this did not happen.
Paventi said the next day was a bright, crisp glimpse of autumn. Just before he and his team began their morning meeting at a long table in a conference room on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center building, American Airlines Flight 11 struck at 8:46 a.m. on the 93rd floor of the North Tower, just 12 floors above Paventi’s office.
He said it felt similar to what he had once experienced from an earthquake, although he had never experienced one himself.
“I remember I looked up … and the lights were shaking back and forth on the table,” Paventi said. “So, my first instinct was to get under the table because I didn’t want the lights to shine on my head. And while I was doing that, literally everybody in the conference room got up from their seats and walked across the room.”
Pedestrians in Lower Manhattan watch smoke rise from the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Amy Sansetta)
Some of the people in the building that day experienced the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center base.
Paventi left his office with his co-workers and walked down several flights of stairs, which he remembers as 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 joined him a few minutes later, and the two of them walked down the remaining flights of stairs together.
“We all know what New Yorkers are like, and they can be loud and rowdy. So, you would think there would be some noise on the stairs, but it wasn’t,” he said. “It was very quiet there.”
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A firefighter walks through the rubble of the World Trade Center’s twin towers as an American flag hangs from a traffic light post in New York on September 11, 2001. (Doug Kanter/AFP)
He remembers being asked to step aside while some people were helping a man down the stairs who was badly burned. He and Bob smelled something unfamiliar in the stairwell, which they now believe may have been jet fuel.
Descending dozens of floors to get to the first floor was a very “hold-and-go” affair because of the number of people trying to escape, and Paventi said it occurred to him and Bob that maybe they were in the wrong place; perhaps they should use a different staircase to get down faster.
“And every time one of us was ready to say something, the line would move again,” he said.
“We never left that stairwell, thank God, because, obviously, we were able to get out.”
They both had pagers at the time, and upon reaching the 30th or 40th floor they began receiving messages that a plane had crashed into their building. Then, they learned that a second plane – United Airlines Flight 175 – crashed into the South Tower at 9:03 p.m.
David Pawenty’s Bank of America shirt he wore on 9/11. (Pawenty)
Paventi said the entire journey from the 81st floor to the lobby took about an hour and a half. He said he felt more like running than panicking. He just wanted to get out. Meanwhile, He saw the fire brigade working quickly In order to get into the building, he went in the opposite direction when everyone was trying to escape, which he described as a “grim” memory.
Firefighters paused on the stairs to catch their breath because they were fully dressed and carrying heavy equipment. They were encouraging people to move on because the ground floor was open.
“One fireman … I remember him looking up and saying, ‘I get all this work for $35,000 a year.'”
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh! Talk about checking your insides,'” Paventi said.
Eventually they made it to the building’s lobby, which Pawenti described as a scene from “Die Hard,” with large windows blown out and debris everywhere.
A woman wearing some sort of official law enforcement jacket told Paventi and Bob to run away “and not look back,” so they did. Paventi looked back once and saw a large cloud of smoke heading toward them, but they rounded a corner and went behind a building and avoided it just in time.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and injured thousands more. (Photo12/Universal Images Group)
Getting out of the city was a nightmare. Paventi did not want to use any underground transport Aftermath of the terrorist attack And they figured the best way to get off Manhattan Island was via a bridge, so they took the nearest bridge. Paventi remembers watching the South Tower completely collapse.
“I remember looking up at the Trade Center, and our building was gone and there was just rubble and smoke and stuff. I remember looking up, and, at that point, the second tower started falling down, and it literally melted,” he said. “It looked like it melted into the rest of the city. It was … disturbing and eye-opening and just … the weirdest thing you could ever see.”
She and Bob then made it to JFK with the help of a nice guy who picked them up, rented a Chevrolet Blazer, and drove first to Bob’s family in Long Island, then back to Charlotte, facing many troubles in between.
Authorities located Pawenty’s burned wallet and cards a year or two after the 9/11 attacks, identified them and returned them to him. (Pawenty)
Paventi’s wife was on the phone with family and friends worried about Paventi while she was still trying to find out if he was okay. He was unable to call him until he reached Bob’s family home on Long Island.
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Paventi said he felt some anxiety immediately after the attacks. Loud noises frightened him, even though he is not a particularly irritable person. In recent years, Paventi said he thinks about those who were not so lucky to escape with their lives that day or about the first responders who gave their lives to help others. He also thinks about how much things have changed in terms of security since 9/11.
“It’s sad to me that it takes an event like this for people to recognize the freedoms we have in this country.”
“For a few days after that … there were no flights. Everything was shut down, and it was very strange. … The patriotic feeling was very strong. There were flags hanging on people’s houses that you don’t normally see hanging on their houses. To me, it’s sad that it takes an incident like this to make people realize how many freedoms we have in this country and then think about the freedoms that have been taken away after this incident.”
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Nearly 3,000 people were killed and thousands more were injured, some of them still suffering from illnesses caused by the harsh chemicals and fumes they were exposed to that day and in the days and weeks following the devastating attack.
