We had an interesting climb down. And we thought our experience was the 
same as everybody else's which is, um, at some point and I don't remember the 
first time, but we got pulled out of the staircase we were in and moved to a 
floor and just held on the floor for a while and then moved to a different 
staircase.

	Ah, at that point firemen had started coming up. And that was again a move 
to the right, where the firemen would come up. And these poor guys, I mean 
they were just laden, absolutely laden and, um, some-some firemen had-a lot of 
the floors had vending machines on them, and so the firemen had broken them 
and would-were just sending bottles of water up for anybody who needed it, not 
nec-necessarily for them. And there's a bit of, more than a bit of guilt, you 
know, when you're standing there thinking I'm walking down and these guys are 
walking up. But, um, but nonetheless, that, you know, that one time we were 
pulled out, we were pulled out and held on a floor a total of four times. And 
one time we were pulled out because they wanted to make one of the staircases 
exclusively for the rescue workers. And that made sense cause they're carrying 
axes and other things and, you know, they don't need-it's hard enough walking 
up stairs, let alone having to walk up and worry about what you're hitting. 
And-at one point we were held on the 23rd floor, it was actually very smoky 
there, very smoky. And it was kind of weird that-cause you could barely even 
see, it was a wood, um, entrance, I don't know if it was a law firm or what it 
was but you couldn't even read the words it was that smoky. Um... 

	Yeah, yeah. Other people I know have said they smelled the gasoline, when, 
ah, the fuel, the jet fuel.  I didn't-I didn't have any of that at all. Ah, up 
until this point. And-and at that, then again, another time we were pulled, 
um, and held on the 11th floor and I was gonna go to the bathroom, because I 
had to go to the bathroom, and then I decided, 'I don't want to go to the 
bathroom. I just want to get out of the-I don't.' You know, I didn't want to 
delay anything. I just wanted to get out of the building. Um, somewhat out of 
sequence, I-I was on the 23rd floor. I ran in to a colleague from our press 
office and she-she understood the breadth of what was happening in the-in the 
country that day. She had a Blackberry. And in that regard the Blackberry 
probably didn't serve her well because she under-she knew that Two was hit.  
She knew the Pentagon was hit.  And I guess at the time there was a rumor that 
there were eight planes unidentified and, um, and so she had shared that with 
me and I-my response was "That's really nice. Does your Blackberry send 
messages to-can you send messages out?" And she said yes. And I said I want to 
send one to my husband. So I send a message to my husband, forgetting that 
it's not going to come from my name, you know, cause you're not thinking, so I 
send this out and I just said, 'I'm on the 23rd floor. The stairwell is clear. 
I'm gonna be fine. Let my-call my family.  I love you.  Love PC.' So my 
husband is in California. He wakes up. He gets this message from this person 
he doesn't know, but from the Port Authority. He reads it and it's making no 
sense. And again, as I mention, we don't have a TV, so Neil's inclination is 
not-most people in a hotel, the first thing they do is turn on the TV to just 
hear the news, hear the weather. You know, he looks outside to see what the 
weather is. You know, that-that's just kind of his gig. So he's totally 
perplexed. And then there's a knock on his door which was his colleague who 
was traveling with him. His-the New York Office called him and called the 
colleague and said 'You-you should probably go get Neil' cause they knew where 
I work. So the colleague said, 'Why don't you come with me.' And by the time 
they got to this guy's room, Two World Trade had collapsed. And, as I said 
before, apparently the reports that day re-referenced everything as North and 
South Tower, which meant nothing to anybody in the entire world. And so my 
husband is looking at the time that I sent this message 'I'm on the 23rd 
floor,' can't remember if I'm in the building with the antenna or not, and 
just, you know, just-and he's trying to calculate, could I have gotten down 
twenty three floors in the-in this time.

	So, we moved down, I wind up seeing, at some point in the 20s, ah, I see 
our head-our Chief of Police going up, which is the first time that of any of 
the uniformed personnel, and-and he wasn't in uniform obviously but, um, I saw 
Fred and I just waved to him and he-he just waved back.  He was actually 
struggling to walk up and he was with another guy who said, he goes, "Look 
folks, I got up so that means you can get out." And, you know, just very 
reassuring. There was, you know, one of the things about the stairwell, there 
was a lot of banter. You know, there was a lot of, it-very much like, you 
know, the family sitting in a waiting room when, you know, the loved one's 
having brain surgery. You just keep it light, da da da da. You make-you just 
you try and take care; you try and just keep everything kind of light talk, 
whatever.  And it was much like that until we were in what became our final 
staircase, which was narrower than the other ones. And we were somewhere like 
the 4th floor so we're just about out and we heard this-a rumbling, which just 
got more and more intense. And then the rumbling became shaking. 'Til the 
building, had-it was a violence that I'd never experienced. It felt worse than 
the morning, different, very different from the morning cause it wasn't like a 
pendulum. This was just a-a vibration. And, um, it felt like it lasted an 
eternity and I, at one point looked-I was, you know, in the safest place you 
want to be. I'm on a landing in a stairwell. And I looked up because that's 
kind of your tendency when the sound comes up, you look up, and you could see 
our staircase twisting. And then the lights went out. And this rumbling and 
this violence just went on until it stopped. And you just, you know, at this 
point in my head I really regretted sending the email. I regretted giving them 
assurance that I was ok. I just-I was sorry I did it. And the lights came on. 
They-they came back on. And you talk about understatement; I looked at Charlie 
and just said, "I didn't like that." And he-he said, "I don't-I don't think 
that was good." You know, I-you just-you just don't even know what to say, but 
it was like, "No I don't think so." And then talking virtually stopped. No 
one, Kayla was actually, some-it was a-it was a laborer in the building, was 
clutching her. And just everything, just nobody talked unless you had 
something to, you know, say that was gonna get us out. And our-our staircase 
became impassible. And so we-we literally were just standing there for what 
seemed like an eternity and then there was a cry for-from below of "does 
anybody have a flashlight?" So you-you kind of send that message up and no 
body had a flashlight.  And then the next thing you know we start to move. And 
at this point we took-are you ok? Ok. We took-I put my backpack in the front 
and, so Charlie, myself and Kayla and I had Kayla holding on to the back of my 
skirt so I could feel her. I was afraid if she was holding on to something 
else I wouldn't know she was there. And so we were then, we were a pod from 
that point. And we got to a point where there-there was a-a man who was a 
World Trade Center employee, I-I don't know who he is, he was wearing a plaid 
shirt.  He had his walkie-talkie.  He-he alone at that point new what had 
happened, which was 2 World Trade collapsed.  Um, believe me that was 
in-totally unfathomable to us. That was not in the realm of possibilities.

[Interview(Craig)]	Did he tell you that?

	No. But I mean, you-I-he had a walkie-talkie. Their walkie-talkies never 
went down.  I'm certain