Patty Clark. I wa-I'm the senior advisor to the Aviation Director at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. I worked on the 65th floor of One World Trade Center, ah, which has become the no-known as the North Tower. Now I didn't know that a plane struck, but when the incident happened, and literally the building-the building moved, the building shook. The building, you could see, you know, your-the immed-I stood up and I looked out the window. You could see the building. It sort of, you could see parts of the building. Then it came, it-almost like a pendulum, it went back, it moved again, and at that point, building parts could be seen coming, flying. [Interviewer(Craig)] You didn't hear anything. Oh you heard a boom. You heard a loud boom. Didn't know what it was. Didn't-and the sensation that I had was that I was never going to see my little boy again. At this point I was looking out over towards Brooklyn. So towards the Brooklyn Bridge. But the remarkable thing was once the building settled, it was like, I'm going to be ok. All I wanted to do was get out of that building. And what raced through my head, I was not there in '93, but had had enough conversations with people that experienced that, one of the things they uniformly described was the darkness, was the smoke, and that's exactly what I anticipated. And I also put in my head, and these-it's-it's-it's funny how the human body works but I just decided that, my husband was in California, I would be out of the building before he would be awake and he wouldn't know anything, and therefore I could contact him and tell him I was fine and he would be none the wiser. And we don't have a television and so I convinced myself that my son Ian and his nanny, Judy, were went for a walk and therefore they didn't know anything. And once I did that it was very easy to move because in my head they were taken care of so I didn't have to worry about them. All I had to do was worry about myself. I do have to say that the-the good news about this is you did not have to think about where to go and what to do. The Port Authority was religious about having, um, fire drills. And the important thing was because of the way we occupied so many floors in the building, that more often than not you would get caught in fire drills on floors that weren't yours. And so you knew what to do, and that, I cannot underscore how important that is. And that you didn't have to rely on, like, your, you know, being sane or rational or anything else. You just, by rote, went. And when I got in to the hall, went to-to-towards the stairwell that was closest to me, and I don't remember A, B or C, I, you know, who knew they had names, numbers, letters before that, I saw Charlie, a good friend of mine, he was one of the first non-health care professionals that ever met my son and his wife also worked with us on the floor. She had act-actually took the day off, so she wasn't there. And so Charlie and I entered together with a number of other people from the floor and really, we stayed together through the-the balance of the experience. That was what was also very comforting when you-when I got in to the stairwell, it was light. The lights were working. It was not smoke; I-I-I had none of those sensations, so the thought of 65 floors is-is-isn't bad, you know, let's keep going. No, no, the-it was funny. Before, in the aisle closest to the exit door, there was one of the contract-consultants who worked on the floor was there and he was directing people and he was going "Alright, come on come on, come on-move." And he was very authoritative and he turns around to me and it's like "Oh my god Patty, what do you think it is?" He'd been completely, and then he'd turn right back and goes "OK come on, come on." So when he was in, it was like he was completely composed when he was doing what he had to do, but he was as, you know, scared out of his-his wits as-as everybody else. I'm like [in a whisper] "I have no idea". You know, we didn't know. Immediately you think bomb because past experience. Never conceived of the airplane, I mean that just wasn't-yeah. Unfortunately, colleagues of mine who worked on the other side, on the north side of the building saw it, saw the plane. And so they knew exactly what happened. I-I didn't know that until later. Well, we obviously knew something happened. What it was, we didn't know immediately. Then you started-people had pagers. And then you started to get 'a plane hit the building.' So immediately you-you know, you kind of think, like-cause terrorism is not in your, you know, in our lexicon at that moment, you think, 'Some stupid jerk is looking at the Statue of Liberty,' and-and then somebody else says, "It's a 747." And then you realize this is not-this was not a mistake. And that's, you know, that's-that's kind of like when you, it takes on a different sense of reality. I mean, obviously you're in, you know, survival mode already, but then when you know that somebody did this on purpose, it's just really... ...I had a back pack. That's what I had. I had on, well even then, I-it-I mean it's funny, I had the night before I had forgotten to switch my shoes 'cause normally I wear shoes that are more like sandal type because it was still September, and in this case I had closed and I said, then no big deal, I don't have time to go back. I'm going to miss my train. So the shoes I had on were closed, which was better in the long run for what I wound up going through. Um, at some point, I can't tell you when, the-my jacket, I curled up into a ball and threw it in to my back pack just 'cause, wasn't that it was hot, but it certainly wasn't, you know, pleasurable in the stairwell. But there was a dynamic about the stairwell and you-you had-we-we moved rather quickly and then people were feeding in from lower floors and-and you got to points of congestion and then it would move again. Um, there was a sensation, somewhere in the high 30s, where the building kind of shook again which, you know, we didn't know what it was and you just kept going. But-but we did re-you know, it was notable and you just kind of moved on. Not-Nothing like the initial strike. Nothing-nothing like that but yet it shook again. Um, then there-there came from above these, you know, kind of calls down "move to the right." And as you moved to the right, ah, people, victims I mean people very badly burned being escorted by-by others, would be walking down and, um, you know, that was just a very, you know difficult, you know-people would all move as far away as possible to-to allow this to happen. But as a result, once that-that passed, the void then caused the dynamics of the group to constantly change. And so, you know, people who you were with, suddenly you were not with because of the way people moved and so on. Um, one thing I found on the way that because I was with someone and I knew what comfort that gave me, it wa-I really felt it important to kind of befriend people that were clearly by themselves. Um, I remember a man who was-who was holding a library book and so I was teasing him saying "Well, you know, it's a really good thing you took that because the fine for bringing it home late is pretty, you know, is pretty stiff." And there was another guy who had a Rite Aid bag filled with back up tapes. And I said to him, I'm like, you know, "Someone's going to kiss you on the lips for that." You know, and-and again thinking, not thinking destruction but just thinking out of the building for two or three months. And, um, there was a man I talked to, he was-he spoke Japanese, but we had a very nice conversation. Um, he didn't speak any English, but it was ok. We-we still talked. And a-a laborer who, um, was there with his tools and he-he was working in an elevator and he-he had another guy with him and he said, I-I couldn't find him. He looked for him; he couldn't find him. And I said, "No, you-you-you know, he's alright. There's a lot of people, you know, he'll be ok you..." But it was-it was-it was important to me to, I guess it's the maternal instinct, but you try to take care of somebody else and you kind of get your mind off of what it is you're-you're doing. Um, I did mention, at one point to-to Charlie that this was a lot like labor. And he thought I had lost my mind. And I-but I explained it, that-that when you're in labor you have a job. You might not be happy about where you are at that moment. You may, you know, you might be scared, you might be in pain, but you had a job and you really had no choice. So that was it. And I said but the loved on who has to stand and watch you in pain and watch you, you know, having that same fear and have-having, being completely helpless, it's a lot more difficult. And I believe to this day that the people who had to watch not knowing how their loved ones were, that that was far worse. I mean, I knew I was ok, and so what they went, experienced, I think was a far worse, you know, feeling and-and it was a far worse morning for them than it was for me.