danny burstein

September 9, 2005
9/11 Firefighters Tell of Isolation Amid Disaster
By JIM DWYER and MICHELLE O'DONNELL

The firefighters had 29 minutes to get out of the World Trade Center or die.
Inside the north tower, though, almost none of them realized how urgent it had
become to leave.

They had no idea that less than 200 feet away, the south tower had already
collapsed in a life-crushing, earth-shaking heap. Nor did the firefighters know
that their commanders on the street, and police helicopter pilots in the sky,
were warning that the north tower was on the edge of the same fate.
....
On close review, those accounts give a bleaker version of events than either
Mayor Bloomberg or former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani presented to the 9/11
Commission. Both had said that many of the firefighters who perished in the
north tower realized the terrible danger of the moment but chose to stay in the
building to rescue civilians........

rest at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/09records.html