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CNN Live At Daybreak
America Under Attack: Suriving the Attack
Aired September 13, 2001 - 07:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: And we're back here in New York City, where I am joined by Tim Chung, a man who is very lucky to be alive this morning. Welcome.
TIM CHUNG, SURVIVOR: Thank you.
ZAHN: You were in the first tower that was hit. Describe to us what happened.
CHUNG: That is correct. I was in my office on the 64th floor and it began like an ordinary day. I got up to look at the fax machine and answer some voice mail and I got up to go get some breakfast. And all of a sudden we heard and you felt this tremendous crash which came from the north side of the building.
The building rocked like you were on a ship, and it swayed back and forth a couple of times. And I remember just standing there and thinking, I think this could be it.
When it stopped swaying, we all started yelling and telling people to go to the center core of the building, which is supposed to be the safe area of the building, as well as where the stairways are. From there we made our way down the stairways and it was pretty easy going all the way down to about 40 or so. And that's about where it started to back up. It started to get just gridlock with so many people there.
We...
ZAHN: Were people panicking at that point?
CHUNG: People were absolutely terrific. They were helping each other, they were supportive of each other. People were talking to each other, making sure everyone was OK. And it was just real easygoing to that point, no traffic. You just kept moving along and people kept entering.
ZAHN: Had any of these people been through the '93 World Trade Center bombing? If they had, one would not have expected that kind of calm.
CHUNG: Right. I think some of them probably had been. I had been there in '93 and I remember the darkness and the smoke and the soot. But this time the lights worked terrifically. Again, people were under real good control.
When we got to about 38 it slowed down and that was giving also an opportunity for the firefighters to walk up the stairs and also to bring some injured people down the stairs. And that, I think, kind of slowed the process up.
ZAHN: You were already seeing injured people being taken out of the building at that point?
CHUNG: That is correct.
ZAHN: That had to be pretty scary.
CHUNG: It all was very scary. I can't tell you all the emotions that run through a person or ran through me during that time period. I also remember each and every one of the firemen who were walking up into the crisis and we were walking away from the crisis. And I remember people thanking them, telling them how much we appreciated them being there and just applauding them, because they were walking up, you know, 80 flights of stairs.
ZAHN: God bless them.
CHUNG: Absolutely.
ZAHN: I guess that's the one part of this story that has hit such a raw nerve in New York City now that we know we have lost over 250 firefighters here, including the fire chief and the deputy fire chief. So you were watching the firefighters go up.
CHUNG: That's right.
ZAHN: How long did it take you to get down from that 30 range to the bottom?
CHUNG: It took probably another perhaps 45 minutes to an hour. As I said, the going was very slow. We tried to move as best as we could. We got down to about the sixth floor and it stopped again. And at that point we heard rumbling. I mean it was a thunderous rumble and the building started to shake and I think we all thought that the building was coming down right on top of us.
At that point, we started to run. Water began pouring into the stairways and we were walking through maybe six or eight inches of water at that point. Smoke started coming up from the bottom. We finally started to get out. The lights went out. Luckily people had some flashlights. We did get out to the mezzanine level, which is one level above the lobby level. And we walked out and you couldn't recognize it, mostly because you couldn't see anything. The smoke was so thick. The soot was flying.
ZAHN: So you suspected, then, the second rumbling perhaps was a bomb going off or a secondary attack? You at that point had no idea what was going on?
CHUNG: I definitely had no idea, you know. And emergency personnel were along the way and they kept telling us keep coming, keep walking and walk away from the building. Get away from the building as quickly as you can. And we kept walking. We kept stumbling. We kept walking over debris, steel, rebar, aluminum ducking, everything was out there. And we did make our way away from the building.
I tried looking back and you really couldn't see the second tower because of all the smoke. I could see the first tower because I could see the antenna and I knew that was the building that I had come from.
We did get away from the building and about, I would say, two to three blocks away at the most, people started running and screaming again. And we looked, we turned around to look and I could see World Trade Center One's antenna begin to sink down, which told me that the building was going down.
ZAHN: Then one would expect you ran even faster?
CHUNG: We did run even faster, actually, and we were so exhausted by that time. You know, we had walked down 64 flights of stairs. We were running for blocks at that point and just people were just all over, just running away, but also helping each other along the way, picking up people who had stopped to rest, picking up people who had fallen down, just making sure everyone else was OK.
ZAHN: There are such terrifying stories about how people were trying to seek some sort of cover under vans that were parked in the area. Your instinct was to run, run, run.
CHUNG: That's right. That's right. Yes.
ZAHN: Is that what saved your life?
CHUNG: Paula, I'll be honest with you, I'm not really sure what saved my life because it was a really terrifying experience. But I thank all the people who were there to help us. I thank my fellow office mates and everyone there who offered assistance. I know my heart goes out to them because, you know, when they talk about the bravest of the brave, they really are the bravest of the brave.
ZAHN: Tim Chung, thank you very much for sharing your story with us and we wish you the best as you try to find some sense of not normalcy, but some new pattern to your life.
CHUNG: Thank you very much.
ZAHN: Thank you.
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