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CNN Live At Daybreak

Spirit of America: One Man's Ordeal in Escaping World Trade Center

Aired October 01, 2001 - 08:52   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: There are hundreds of stories of people who survived the World Trade Center attack. One man's ordeal is the cover story of "Fortune" magazine. It is about Ed Fine, a financial consultant who got out of the tower just seconds before it collapsed.

Ed Fine is here now to tell us more about his escape. You must feel like you are -- God is sitting on both shoulders. When you look at that picture yourself -- we'll put back up on the screen -- what do you see?

ED FINE, FEATURED ON COVER OF "FORTUNE": Actually, I see a terrific picture, taken by a great photographer, capturing the moment that will probably live in history. I don't actually see myself in the picture. I just represent any number of 35,000 or 40,000 people.

It's an amazing picture, and I'm happy to be alive, happy to have been subject of it.

ZAHN: You didn't even work in that building. You just happened to have a meeting that day? Walk us through your story as quickly as you can.

FINE: OK. I don't work in the building. About once every three or four months, I come into the city, and I visit with a fellow named John Paul DeVito, has an office on the 87th floor, I do some business with him, and that morning, I set up meeting with him for my son. My son got sick and couldn't make the meeting, so I went to the meeting instead of going to some other meetings I had uptown.

And I had just left John Paul's office, took the elevator to 78th floor, got off the elevator at the 78th floor to catch the elevator to ground floor. I just missed the elevator going to the ground floor, and then a minute later, I heard explosion, saw debris, and smoke, and fire, coming rushing down the corridor at me. I was standing next to an adjoining corridor, and I jumped into the adjoining corridor as all of the debris went flying by the corridor that I had been standing in.

ZAHN: So where did you go?

FINE: I was looking for the emergency exit, and I went down a couple of more corridors, and I reached a blank door I thought was the emergency exit, tried to open it, it was locked, banged on the door, and it turned out to be an office. It wasn't even an emergency exit. I walked into the office, asked if anybody knew where the emergency exit was, because I knew that seconds might make difference between living and dying if a bomb had actually gone off, and nobody knew where emergency exit was. I then finally ran out of the office, found the emergency exit...

ZAHN: How many minutes did that take?

FINE: You lose track of time, but I would say it was probably no more than two or three minutes.

ZAHN: That is a long time, when you know your life is in danger.

FINE: It seemed like an hour. And I ran, I found the emergency exit, went back to the office, ran back to office, told everybody, I found the emergency exit, follow me. We started out the door. I know people were following me. We got to emergency exit, and then started down the stairs.

ZAHN: And how long did it take you to get out of the building?

FINE: I would say it took about 45 minutes to perhaps an hour to make it down these 78 flights.

ZAHN: And describe what people were doing. I know people were making cell phone calls. Some people were panicking. Some weren't. What did you see?

FINE: In my group, and my group was a floor or two below me and a floor or two above me, everything was very, very calm. People move being very orderly, very quietly, particularly for first 20 floors, when we were literally running down the stairs two abreast without any traffic. Once we hit 55th floor, traffic started, and then we heard one or two people saying, hey, why aren't we moving? What's going on? And one or two people tried to push by, but everybody else remained very, very calm. And then from that point on, it was stop and go, stop and go, stop and go, each minute seeming like an hour.

ZAHN: And then describe to us once you finally got out of the building what you saw.

FINE: Once I finally got out of the building, I -- the entire plaza was covered with debris, and I walked about 50 feet, and that was the first time I looked up to see what had happened to the building. And I saw the fires coming out, just saying to myself, thank God I'm not in there anymore, but the emergency people were rushing us away from the building, so I got about a block, maybe three quarters of a block away, and my legs were killing me, I was really aching, and I heard this thunderous sound, that was -- I was out of the building maybe two or three minutes, and I turned back and saw the building collapse.

I then turned the corner on to Broadway. There was emergency services worker there, and he was looking back over my shoulder toward where I had come from, and he said -- and I turned around to look, this huge glow of smoke and debris was coming at us. He screamed "Get on the ground!" We all got on the ground. There was a priest there also. The priest put his arm on me. He was praying, and we were in complete black. About four or five minutes later, after it started to lift, I stood -- I had a wet paper towel which I used to breathe that somebody on the staircase had given me, and that's the wet paper towel you see in the picture. We got up, and that's when Stan must have snapped that picture.

ZAHN: We're going to put that up on screen one last time as we close out the interview. That's what he got as you took the...

FINE: Yes. I had just stood up, and I was starting to walk across to a cafe, to try to get some place where the air was clean, and I actually got into this cafe, Au Bon Pan, and they were taking care of all the people who were coming in, giving them water, cleaning them off, throwing water over them. They did a terrific job with people in there.

ZAHN: It is a miracle that you're here.

FINE: God was watching over me, there was no question.

ZAHN: Mr. Fine, Thank you for sharing your story.

FINE: Thank you very much.

ZAHN: And it's amazing that we actually found you, after we took pictures of thousands and thousands of people fleeing these burning infernos. Thank you.

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