Between 9:10 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. September 11, 2001: South Tower Employee Sees No Inferno on 78th Floor

Brian Clark, the executive vice president of brokerage firm Euro Brokers, was on the 84th floor of the South Tower, where his firm’s offices are, when Flight 175 crashed into it. He had headed out, going down Stairway A, which is the only staircase in the tower that remains intact from top to bottom, and was soon joined by Stanley Praimnath, who also works in the South Tower. They reach a point that Clark later guesses to have been around the 77th or 78th floor, where the stairway walls are cracked, allowing them to look through. This would be around the lower end of the floors where the plane impacted. However, Clark sees no large fire. He later says, “[Y]ou could look through the cracks and see flames. They were just quietly licking up, not a roaring inferno. And there was some smoke there, but again I think the stairs were pressurized, pushing the air out so we had less smoke in the stairway than you might imagine.” [BBC, 3/7/2002; New York Times, 5/26/2002; Sun, 9/6/2002; 9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004] This apparently contradicts later claims that the tower was subjected to “extreme fires” prior to its collapse. [New York Times, 10/20/2004] Firefighter Orio Palmer will make it up to this level of the tower later on, and also report only finding small fires there (see 9:52 a.m. September 11, 2001). Clark and Praimnath continue down the stairs and make it out just minutes before the collapse. They are two of only four people who were at or above the impact zone after Flight 175 hit, who are able to escape from the South Tower. [CNN, 9/9/2002] A further 14 people are able to get out of the building from its 78th floor, which is the lower part of the crash zone. [Dwyer and Flynn, 2005, pp. 255]