WSJ -- For Some, Avoiding Tragedy Seemed Like Pure Chance
[Not sure if this was posted already. Jon.]
September 13, 2001
For Some, Avoiding Tragedy
Seemed Like Pure Chance
By ROBERT TOMSHO, BARBARA CARTON and JERRY GUIDERA
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Monica O'Leary thought her luck had taken a turn for the worse on Monday
afternoon, when she got laid off from her job.
But the fact that she didn't go to work on Tuesday turned out to be nothing
short of miraculous for Ms. O'Leary. She had worked as a software
saleswoman for eSpeed Inc., a technology company with offices on the 105th
floor of the World Trade Center.
Ms. O'Leary, 23, is still grappling with memories of her last visit with
co-workers on Monday afternoon. "I worked with a lot of guys, so I kissed
them on the cheek and said 'goodbye,'" she says. "Little did I know that it was
really good-bye."
For hundreds of people in New York, Washington and other cities affected by
the deadly terrorist assault, Tuesday morning turned out to be an incredibly
lucky time to oversleep, reschedule a meeting or take time off to sneak in a
haircut. By doing so, they managed to sidestep the almost unimaginable fate
that befell their co-workers and friends in the devastating attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Greer Epstein, who works at Morgan Stanley & Co.'s offices on the 67th floor
of the World Trade Center, escaped possible injury by slipping out for a
cigarette just before a 9 a.m. staff meeting. Bill Trinkle, of Westfield, N.J., had
planned to get an early start on his job as sales manager for Trading
Technologies Inc., a software concern with offices on the 86th floor of the
World Trade Center's Tower One. But after fussing with his two-year-old
daughter and hanging curtains in her bedroom, he missed the train that would
have gotten him into the office about a half hour before the attack. Instead, he
took a later train directly to visit a client company, where workers hugged him
as soon as he walked through the door.
Joe Andrew, a Washington lawyer and former chairman of the Democratic
National Committee, had a ticket for seat 6-C on the ill-fated American Airlines
flight 77 from Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, but switched to a
later flight at the last minute. "I happen to be a person of faith," says Mr.
Andrew, "but even if you aren't, anybody who holds a ticket for a flight that
went down. ... will become a person of faith."
In some cases, it was simply a good day to sustain seemingly bad luck.
Nicholas Reihner was upset when he twisted his ankle while hiking during a
vacation to Bar Harbor, Maine. But it was the reason he missed his Tuesday
morning trip home to Los Angeles from Boston on the American Airlines flight
that was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center.
"After I sprained my ankle, I was bellyaching to my hiking companion about
how life sucks," says the 33-year-old legal assistant. "I feel now that life has
never been sweeter. It's great to be alive."
Then there's George Keith, a Pelham, N.Y., investment banker who had a
meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday on the 79th floor of the World Trade Center. While
he was driving through Central Park the night before, however, the
transmission of Mr. Keith's brand-new BMW sport-utility vehicle got stuck in
first gear. The breakdown forced him to cancel the morning meeting. But by
the time he called the BMW dealer Tuesday, he was anything but furious. "I
told them it was the best transmission problem I'll ever have," he said.
David Gray, a compliance officer for Washington Square Securities, lives in
Princeton, N.J., and was due to arrive by commuter train at the Trade Center
for a meeting with one of the firm's brokers just at the time the first plane hit.
But a few days earlier, Mr. Gray, the husband of New York City Ballet
principal ballerina Kyra Nichols, broke his foot while jumping rope at home.
Mr. Gray said he had been feeling very "sheepish" about the nature of the
accident, but now says, "Thank God I was a lousy jump-roper."
After he broke his foot, he rescheduled the meeting for later in the day so that
he could drive into Manhattan instead of taking the commuter train. "So I was
on the New Jersey Turnpike watching the World Trade Center go up in flames,
instead of being in it."
In some cases, a chain of unlikely circumstances added up to a collective
near-miss. For Irshad Ahmed and the employees of his Pure Energy Corp., the
circumstances were these: A postponed meeting, a delay at a child's school,
and a quick stop at the video store. Mr. Ahmed, president of the motor-fuels
maker, had been set to attend a 9 a.m. meeting in the company's 53rd-floor
conference room inside Tower One. But last week, the participants decided to
push the meeting back. As a result, none of Pure Energy's nine employees
were at work when the terrorists struck. Some were at a New Jersey lab.
Others were out at appointments. Mr. Ahmed's secretary was running late at
her child's school. As for Mr. Ahmed, he decided to stop off and return a
couple of Blockbuster videos. "It's one of those little decisions you make that
lead up to big events in life," he says.
For others, a decision to defy orders proved lifesaving. Michael Moy, a
software engineer for IQ Financial Inc., was at his workstation getting ready to
write software on the 83rd floor of World Trade Center Tower Two when the
first jetliner struck Tower One. A few minutes later, he says, building security
came on the speaker and instructed occupants to remain in their offices, saying
that it would be more dangerous in the streets due to falling debris from the
other building.
Disobeying those instructions, Mr. Moy and his boss told the 15 or so
employees in their wing to start heading down the stairs, Mr. Moy says. Once
again an announcement came over the speaker system, instructing employees
to return to their respective floors. A few employees decided to do so and
headed towards the lobby's elevators. Just then, the doors of several elevators
exploded, apparently because the second hijacked airplane had slammed into
the building just a few floors above them.
Pandemonium followed, but being familiar with the stairway systems in the
building, Mr. Moy and his boss directed co-workers to a little-used stairway
that was relatively empty. As a result, dozens of people were able to hurry
downstairs and escape into the street. "I'm glad we acted the way we did,"
says Mr. Moy, "otherwise I wouldn't be having this conversation with you."
In Washington, a woman who has spent years advocating tighter security
controls at U.S. airports learned first-hand Tuesday just how close a brush
with death can be. Marianne McInerney, executive director of the National
Business Travel Association, would have been on the doomed American
Airlines flight from Dulles if not for a last-minute flight change.
Ms. McInerney, a stickler for not paying more than $1,000 for business
flights, had reluctantly booked a ticket on the ill-fated flight. But last Friday,
she managed to find a less expensive ticket out of Washington's National
Airport.
Ms. McInerney, 38, says she intends to use her position with the NBTA to
raise the issue of lax security more forcefully with the airlines and Congress.
"We have thought for so long that we are six degrees separated from any
instance [of terrorism] we see. But Wednesday we became separated by one
degree, if that."
Marya Gwadz can thank her unborn son for being away from her 16th story
office in Tower Two. Ms. Gwadz, 37, a principal investigator for the nonprofit
National Development Research Institute, usually gets to work as early as 8:45
each morning. But on Tuesday, 8 1/2 months pregnant with her first child, she
was feeling tired so she caught a later subway from her Brooklyn apartment,
and got out a stop early. "It was a beautiful stop and a beautiful day," she
recalls. Then she saw the flames, and later watched her own building crumble.
"At that point, I grabbed my stomach and started to run," she says.
In some cases arising from Tuesday's tragedy, the questions of survival and
guilt are unusually complex.
Convicted of 1986 robbery and killing, Texas inmate Jeffrey Eugene Tucker
was scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening. Instead, he got a last-minute,
30-day stay from Gov. Rick Perry because the U.S. Supreme Court was
closed, preventing last minute appeals.
His lawyer, Robert C. Owen, of Austin, Texas, says he was relieved. "You
can't imagine the feeling of dread you get from representing someone when
your court of last recourse has just gone into hiding and isn't answering phone
calls."
-- Joseph Pereira, Scot J. Paltrow, Kathy Chen, Melanie Trottman, Rick
Wartzman and William Bulkeley contributed to this article.
Write to Robert Tomsho at robert.tomsho@wsj.com, Barbara Carton at
barbara.carton@wsj.com and Jerry Guidera at jerry.guidera@wsj.com
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