Speaker 1: Approche Production.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Secrets of the Underworld.
Speaker 1: I am Neil the Muscle comments.
Speaker 3: And in this episode, I speak to Tom Canavan, survivor
Speaker 3: of the nine eleven terrorist attacks.
Speaker 1: And it hit behind us. When the plane hit, we
Speaker 1: jumped up again when they started bringing down people from
Speaker 1: upstairs that were burnt. Horrible. If your thing just came
Speaker 1: in and I was just placed it to the ground,
Speaker 1: she was there and then she wasn't. I heard noises
Speaker 1: around me and things started hitting around me, which it
Speaker 1: was people jumping, and I was starting to get hit.
Speaker 1: I was hit with a leg. Thanks for coming on, Tom,
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
Speaker 3: My question before we get into the nitty gritty, I
Speaker 3: just want to know about you as a person before
Speaker 3: we know, like living in New York and your family
Speaker 3: growing up, and then we'll.
Speaker 2: Get into how you got your job in the Twin Towers,
Speaker 2: if that's all right.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm from New York City originally, I'm born in
Speaker 1: New York City, Manhattan. When I was a baby, we
Speaker 1: lived in the Times Square area Hell's Kitchen, so I'm
Speaker 1: a Hell's Kitchen kid forty second Street, so kind of
Speaker 1: when you grow up in the city, you know your
Speaker 1: block is everything. Ye you fight with guys on the
Speaker 1: block over from you, but then if someone else picks
Speaker 1: on you, it's sort of like a brother thing. Then
Speaker 1: it's your two blocks against whoever is coming into your
Speaker 1: neighborhood at the time, you know, And that's been being
Speaker 1: a kid, a teenager. You sort of mine your own business.
Speaker 1: You don't people, you don't look people in the eye,
Speaker 1: but you're always aware of your environment around you. So
Speaker 1: that was I grew up there, and then when I
Speaker 1: was a teenager, we moved to one of the suburbs
Speaker 1: and Queens it's actually not a suburb, it's one of
Speaker 1: the five boroughs, but it was called Sunnyside, Queens very
Speaker 1: very Irish. I'm kind of in you know, Irish, you know, Irish,
Speaker 1: Irish bar every block and Sunnyside is only about nine
Speaker 1: blocks long and is at lee the twenty five bars
Speaker 1: on those nine blocks. So so again, growing up in
Speaker 1: you know, in the city, you you you become hardened
Speaker 1: to certain things, but you also become aware of what's
Speaker 1: going on around you. And as a kid, history has
Speaker 1: always been my favorite subject. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I loved about history that I always read were
Speaker 1: sort of a disaster, the Titanic, the San Francisco earthquake,
Speaker 1: the Chicago fire. It always fascinated me, and I think
Speaker 1: I realized earlier that I'm reading this because people survived
Speaker 1: it and they got to tell the story. Otherwise no
Speaker 1: one would really know some of you know, some of
Speaker 1: the true things that go on. Of course, they're not
Speaker 1: being any internet. Everything was rumors back then. Now people
Speaker 1: just make up anything they want put it on the internet,
Speaker 1: you know. So, and as far as working in the building,
Speaker 1: I had been doing banking. It was First Union Bank
Speaker 1: at the time, was just turning into Wakobia Bank, and
Speaker 1: we had moved into the trade center. Now my second
Speaker 1: job that I had for twenty years, I was a
Speaker 1: project manager for commercial movies. So I had done a
Speaker 1: lot of jobs in the trade center. I also knew
Speaker 1: that when your company made money, you moved up in
Speaker 1: the building. When your company wasn't doing as well, you
Speaker 1: were moving to the lower flows. So because I had
Speaker 1: done a lot of work in the building, I knew
Speaker 1: where the elevators were, I knew where all the staircases were.
Speaker 1: And it just by happenstance, the company I was working for,
Speaker 1: we moved from down there Wall Street into the trade
Speaker 1: center of May of that year Memorial than weekend. So
Speaker 1: I was only on the forty seventh floor. I wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, only about not even halfway up in the
Speaker 1: North Tower. But that's how I ended up working there.
Speaker 1: But again I had knowledge of the building of the
Speaker 1: you know, of the interior of the building in the
Speaker 1: parking lot, and I sort of knew my way around
Speaker 1: the place.
Speaker 3: Okay, So now now we know that you've you've gone
Speaker 3: in there, talk me through the day before.
Speaker 4: A normal day at the tower for you, just a
Speaker 4: normal day, all right.
Speaker 1: Well, for my normal day, I would get up at
Speaker 1: about five o'clock in the morning. I lived. I was
Speaker 1: living ninety miles away at the time in the Lower
Speaker 1: Hudson Valley Fishkill, New York. So I would catch I
Speaker 1: would drive to the train station, catch the Metro North,
Speaker 1: take that train to Grand Central, hop on the subway.
Speaker 1: So it was about a two and a half hour
Speaker 1: ride each way, so about five hours a day I
Speaker 1: was traveling. Because of my job. I was doing what
Speaker 1: was pretty new at the time on Wall Street. It
Speaker 1: was Euroclear, it was called we were dealing with Europe
Speaker 1: mainly Cardiff. We were going to through Cardiff and Wales,
Speaker 1: so because the market opened earlier, instead of a nine
Speaker 1: o'clock start for my area, we had an eight o'clock
Speaker 1: start here, being with a time difference you know, over
Speaker 1: in England. So that was my day. I would get
Speaker 1: to the office between probably around seven point thirty to
Speaker 1: eight o'clock. On the nice days, I would when I
Speaker 1: got out of subway, i'd walk across the plaza. If
Speaker 1: it was crappy weather, i'd stay underground because you never
Speaker 1: had to leave the World Trade Center, you know. The
Speaker 1: mall in there had one hundred stores in it. You
Speaker 1: could do all your Christmas shopping. There were doctors, there
Speaker 1: were dentists everything. There was a post office in there.
Speaker 1: You know. You never had to leave the place if
Speaker 1: you didn't want to come outside. But so so i'd
Speaker 1: get there. Sometimes it was if I was really early,
Speaker 1: a little early, i'd have coffee outside on the plaza
Speaker 1: and then go upstairs to work, which was a kind
Speaker 1: of normal thing for a lot of people who worked
Speaker 1: in the trade center. But because of the markets, I
Speaker 1: had to be in by eight o'clock instead of nine o'clock.
Speaker 3: With the morning of the nine to eleven and when
Speaker 3: it all the chargity happened. Do you ever have you
Speaker 3: ever like, do you ever get suspicious or any to like,
Speaker 3: you know, like feel things differently when it happened later on?
Speaker 2: Did you ever feel that way?
Speaker 1: No, not at all. In fact, in the morning, coming in,
Speaker 1: I slept on the train because everybody sleeps on the
Speaker 1: train coming in. Everybody usually drinks on the way home,
Speaker 1: on the train going home. But no, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a normal day. I mean, it was what they
Speaker 1: used to call Indian summer. Now now it's called like
Speaker 1: global warming, I guess, but you know, it was September.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful out, no clouds, it was still warm.
Speaker 1: The summer was just about over. So I had, you know,
Speaker 1: a light jacket. But it was to me, it was
Speaker 1: just a normal day. It was a Tuesday. Every Tuesday.
Speaker 1: There was an Amish market that was out on the plaza,
Speaker 1: which I used to find funny because I used to think, well,
Speaker 1: they're Amish, But how did they get here? And I
Speaker 1: see trucks, like, but money's money, you know, But no,
Speaker 1: it was. It was just come in, go upstairs and
Speaker 1: start work. Nothing, nothing out of the ordinary, just just
Speaker 1: a Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Tell me if you can't remember fifteen minutes before it
Speaker 3: all happened.
Speaker 1: So At I was in my boss's office at the time.
Speaker 1: So we had the forty seventh floor of one World Trade,
Speaker 1: which is the North Tower, and our office was on
Speaker 1: the west side of the building, so we faced the
Speaker 1: Hudson River in New Jersey on the other side. So
Speaker 1: in the southwest corner in my boss's office, you'd be
Speaker 1: able to see the Statue of Liberty, New York Harver.
Speaker 1: You could see the bridge, the Barrizonal Bridge, plus all
Speaker 1: the Jersey Liberty State Park everything and Ellis Island. So
Speaker 1: her office, of course had the corner, and we were
Speaker 1: in there because we were on a meeting call with
Speaker 1: Our home office was in Charlotte, North Carolina, so that's
Speaker 1: where we were on a meeting with those At about
Speaker 1: eight thirty quarter to nine was the meeting, so we
Speaker 1: were all shoved in that off. There were about eight
Speaker 1: of us in that and the first plane hit at
Speaker 1: eight forty, so it hit my building, but it hit
Speaker 1: on the up. It hit them around the ninety second floor,
Speaker 1: so I was about halfway up to where it hit
Speaker 1: and it hit behind us when a lot of the
Speaker 1: debris went straight through the building. So as we were
Speaker 1: looking in south when the plane hit, we jumped up
Speaker 1: because the building actually rocks where you're almost thrown off
Speaker 1: your feet, and it sort of wobbled three times and
Speaker 1: then it righted itself. But I could see south stuff falling,
Speaker 1: panes of glass, concrete, things that don't register at the time,
Speaker 1: but when you think about it later, pieces of airplane
Speaker 1: like you see like seatbelt buckles or a seat. You know,
Speaker 1: there wasn't that much left of it, but yeah, So
Speaker 1: I went over by the window that faced south. I
Speaker 1: looked down the Married Hotel, which was twenty four floors,
Speaker 1: was attached to the south tower, and I could see
Speaker 1: the roof of that was on fire that were causing
Speaker 1: the street on fire. And my first thought was it
Speaker 1: was like a gas explosion of something, because you know,
Speaker 1: nobody envisions an airliner hitting your building. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: in down in Manhattan. When it hit, we, like I said,
Speaker 1: we jumped up. We wobble back and forth. I went
Speaker 1: at it to the main office to see what was
Speaker 1: going on with the people out there. They were starting
Speaker 1: smoke starting to come in under some of the doorways
Speaker 1: that we had two doorways in our office that led
Speaker 1: two staircases out of the building. But another thing about
Speaker 1: growing up in New York City is when you learn
Speaker 1: with the fire departments. As a kid, when I when
Speaker 1: we called the cops, sometimes they didn't show up. When
Speaker 1: you called an ambulance, sometimes it didn't show up. But
Speaker 1: when someone rang that fire alarm, they were coming. So
Speaker 1: you have the utmost confidence in the New York City
Speaker 1: Fire Department. And I could see some of their rigs
Speaker 1: pulling up outside the building. So as people were panicked,
Speaker 1: starting to get a little nervous, I was telling them
Speaker 1: I'd fire apartments here, We're okay, it's above us, we
Speaker 1: can get out below some of the smoke coming in.
Speaker 1: I took my jacket from my desk and I shoved
Speaker 1: it under the door so the smoke wouldn't come in,
Speaker 1: and I took the back of my hand I was
Speaker 1: tapping it against the doorknob because heat conducts through the metal,
Speaker 1: and if the doorknob is hot, you do not open
Speaker 1: that door. That means it's fire on the other side
Speaker 1: of the door. But the smoke was coming in, it
Speaker 1: was like, all right, let's get our stuff together, let's
Speaker 1: get out again. We didn't. We didn't know the magnitude of,
Speaker 1: you know, what was going on upstairs. And because we
Speaker 1: worked in a bank, we had a lot of securities
Speaker 1: out that you just can't run out and leave. You know,
Speaker 1: they're worth a lot of money, and we had we
Speaker 1: actually had a vault on the floor with a little
Speaker 1: moat that you needed a bridge. It was like forty
Speaker 1: seven tons suspended in on our floor. So a lot
Speaker 1: of our employees were taking their bonds and stuff off
Speaker 1: their desk, putting it in their lock boxes and bringing
Speaker 1: into the vault. At which time I said, all right,
Speaker 1: you guys, do that. I went out into the hallway.
Speaker 1: We had the electronic eyes at the time you swipe
Speaker 1: your card to get in and out of the floor.
Speaker 1: I asked someone to hold the door open for me
Speaker 1: so I could get back in. We had a satellite
Speaker 1: office around the other side of the building, and each building,
Speaker 1: each floor was one acre. It was two hundred feet
Speaker 1: each side. So I ran to the satellite office. I
Speaker 1: know we had three girls working in there. I wanted
Speaker 1: to see if they were okay. When I got there,
Speaker 1: there was nobody in there. It turns out one was
Speaker 1: off that day. One was bringing her kid to first
Speaker 1: day of school, which was September eleventh that year, So
Speaker 1: that saved a lot of people from being in the
Speaker 1: building because first day of school, what a parents do,
Speaker 1: They bring their kids to school. So she wasn't in,
Speaker 1: and the third girl that was in there, as soon
Speaker 1: as the plane hit took off, smartest one out of everyone,
Speaker 1: she was out of there on her way out. So
Speaker 1: I went back to my office. Then people were putting
Speaker 1: wet rags over their faces, and on the way there,
Speaker 1: I passed one of the staircases. I opened the door.
Speaker 1: It was just a massive people coming down the steps.
Speaker 1: So by the time I got back to my office,
Speaker 1: I told everybody, we're getting out of here. Let's go.
Speaker 1: We went to that doorway, but by then it was
Speaker 1: so crowded you couldn't get in the staircase. But since
Speaker 1: I knew it that was stairwell C stairwell B, I
Speaker 1: knew it was in the center of the building, so
Speaker 1: I ran to stairwell B. There was like nobody in there.
Speaker 1: So by the time I got back, though we had
Speaker 1: sixty people working with us, they were about thirty left.
Speaker 1: The other thirty had squeezed into the staircase. I said,
Speaker 1: come on, come with me, there's an empty staircase, and
Speaker 1: then we proceeded down in stairwell B. It started to
Speaker 1: get crowded, though.
Speaker 3: You know by this time Tom is panic stations going
Speaker 3: like dramatically or He's all still kind of like what's
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 1: There's no panic. There was never a panic for when
Speaker 1: the plane hit again. You know, ignorance is bliss. We
Speaker 1: had no idea what was going on upstairs. It was
Speaker 1: sort of like being out for a walk with a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Everyone was very courteous coming down the steps.
Speaker 1: It was everybody was helping each other. There was no
Speaker 1: smoke in the stairwells because after the nineteen ninety three attack,
Speaker 1: the stairwells were reconfigured and air was pumped into them.
Speaker 1: The lighting was changed. There were fluorescent strips, so all
Speaker 1: the lights were on. Everybody was just walking down, helping
Speaker 1: each other. We got down into the twenties and then
Speaker 1: they they stopped us. There were some firefighters coming up,
Speaker 1: so we had to go single file on the steps
Speaker 1: on the right side. They were carrying, some of them
Speaker 1: seventy pounds of equipment. They estimated it took about a
Speaker 1: minute to walk one floor and they were going up
Speaker 1: ninety two floors, so it was gonna take them about
Speaker 1: an hour and a half to walk up there. And
Speaker 1: that was the before the start to even put out
Speaker 1: the fire, which at that time they believed they can do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't know also on the way down that the
Speaker 1: South Tower had been hit. We were in the staircase
Speaker 1: with all the noise in the footsteps and people talking.
Speaker 1: We really didn't, you know. Notice I didn't find out
Speaker 1: till much later the day anyway, But they stopped us.
Speaker 1: The fire department came up. We were passing up some
Speaker 1: of their equipment. Some of us were breaking into the
Speaker 1: vending machines, taking out some of the bottles of water
Speaker 1: and juice and giving it to the firefighters. I remember
Speaker 1: I took a bottle of water I poured over a
Speaker 1: firefighter's head. He was sitting sweating, and to which he
Speaker 1: yelled at me, you know, I'm kidding. You know you're
Speaker 1: trying to drown me. I'm not. You know, what are
Speaker 1: you doing? Go ahead, just get out, Just get out,
Speaker 1: they kept saying. And we got down to the teens
Speaker 1: at that point, and then they stopped us again. But
Speaker 1: they started bringing down people from upstairs that were burnt horrible,
Speaker 1: like yeah, they were even blinking. They just came down.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a sound and it got very quiet. I
Speaker 1: can see one lady, she must have had a cross
Speaker 1: on her chest. It was the indentation of it. The
Speaker 1: metal burnt into her chest. Some of the people the
Speaker 1: skin was peeled back, and I think at that point
Speaker 1: we started to realize, you know, something a little more important,
Speaker 1: bigger was going on than we knew upstairs. And once
Speaker 1: they got them past us, it was like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's start, get a move on a little faster. My
Speaker 1: staircase b you had the plaza level, which was on
Speaker 1: the street level, you had which also known as a mezzanine,
Speaker 1: and then you had the lower level, which was where
Speaker 1: them all was with the stores the concourse, and our
Speaker 1: staircase emptied out onto the concourse. So when we came
Speaker 1: out of the elevators, out of the steps the elevators
Speaker 1: that were down there, all the doors were blown off.
Speaker 1: The lobby of of the trade center at one time
Speaker 1: was beautiful white marble. A lot of the marble was
Speaker 1: on the floor cracked, and the walls were scorched or
Speaker 1: blackened by the elevators. There were piles of rags in
Speaker 1: front of the elevators, just smoking. And I remember asking
Speaker 1: some of the firefighters there, like I stopped and I'm
Speaker 1: looking at them, you know what is that? And they
Speaker 1: were just saying, just go down the concourse Headford Krispy
Speaker 1: Kreme Donuts because if you worked in the trades, said,
Speaker 1: everybody knew where Krispy Kreme was. They didn't want people
Speaker 1: going in the street with all the debris falling, people jumping.
Speaker 1: You know. Another thing we didn't know at the time.
Speaker 1: And as we started to exit out there onto the
Speaker 1: concourse level, all of the doors had been shattered. They
Speaker 1: had big, huge revolving doors, and it was that safety
Speaker 1: glass that you see in bus stops, a sort of
Speaker 1: half plastic and half glass where it doesn't really shatter,
Speaker 1: but it gets very slippery. And all of the sprinklers
Speaker 1: were on. So I was last in line of the
Speaker 1: forty people I was with. When we got to the
Speaker 1: front doors, now we were forty feet down. We were
Speaker 1: about four stories down at that point in the mall.
Speaker 1: I heard a noise behind me. There was an elderly
Speaker 1: couple coming through. They were sort of sliding around. They
Speaker 1: had some bags, and I told the people I was
Speaker 1: with keep going to where they want us to go.
Speaker 1: I'll catch up with you. And I turned around and
Speaker 1: went back inside. I helped the people through the doors,
Speaker 1: and I turned to catch up. I got maybe ten
Speaker 1: feet out, and all of a sudden I heard this
Speaker 1: rumble and felt like this heat pushing pushing down in
Speaker 1: a wind and a thumping noise. And one of the
Speaker 1: women with me that I had come down the whole way.
Speaker 1: Her name was Antonett Duger. She was maybe twenty feet
Speaker 1: in front of me, and she turned and stopped and
Speaker 1: looked at me, and I just looked at her, like,
Speaker 1: what's that noise? But it was getting faster and faster.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even describe a thousand locomotives coming down.
Speaker 1: And I yelled at her to get in a doorway,
Speaker 1: like they tell you to do an earthquakes, it's the
Speaker 1: most stable. I didn't even think I got that out
Speaker 1: of my mouth when all of a sudden, everything just
Speaker 1: came in and I was just plasted to the ground.
Speaker 1: She was there and then she wasn't. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I was knocked unconscious, but a peace fell like
Speaker 1: a tent leaned to and it hit the top of
Speaker 1: my head, knocked me down and buried me. So again,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I was knocked out, but my
Speaker 1: first thought was, wow, I'm dead. I mean it was
Speaker 1: I didn't hear anything, I couldn't see anything. And then
Speaker 1: it was like, wow, that wasn't too bad. I didn't
Speaker 1: feel anything if I'm dead, you know. But then I
Speaker 1: was thinking my son was turning three on September seventeenth,
Speaker 1: and my wife was pregnant with my daughter at the time,
Speaker 1: so I was like, okay, I'm not dead. I could
Speaker 1: taste grit in my teeth and sand, and by then
Speaker 1: there were little fires all over the place. But I
Speaker 1: couldn't really move. You couldn't. I couldn't even get on
Speaker 1: my knees. That's how compact it was. I felt concrete
Speaker 1: above my head and I fell for the edge and
Speaker 1: I said, all right, so the ceiling probably fell in.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna crawl out on top, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: follow everyone out because no matter what happens to you,
Speaker 1: your brain never catches up. I even think to this day,
Speaker 1: all the things that happened, it hasn't caught up. Yet,
Speaker 1: and I started moving and somebody grabbed my ankle and
Speaker 1: I said, who's that because I couldn't see who it was,
Speaker 1: and they said, I'm a security guard. If we stay here,
Speaker 1: they'll find us. And I said to him, if you
Speaker 1: stay here, you're either gonna suffocate or you're gonna burn
Speaker 1: to death. I said, I got a birthday party to plan,
Speaker 1: and I have to see my daughter be born. I'm
Speaker 1: out of here. And I started just crawling and then
Speaker 1: the gentleman came behind me. We tunneled up just over
Speaker 1: I don't remember any furniture glass. I remember his concrete rebar.
Speaker 1: Every now and then like muffled voices if someone wants
Speaker 1: to throw a blanket over you and throw you in
Speaker 1: a closet and shut the door. And that's sort of
Speaker 1: the only thing I heard at that point. And they
Speaker 1: askedimate about twenty minutes of digging. It would seemed like
Speaker 1: ten seconds for me. Yeah, but I felt some air
Speaker 1: and I stuck my hand through. I was out in
Speaker 1: the center of the plaza and I said to the guy,
Speaker 1: we're in the street. I said, I don't know how,
Speaker 1: but you know, And I couldn't fit through the rebody
Speaker 1: get out at that point, and I said to him.
Speaker 1: Now I could see him. He was thinner and older
Speaker 1: than me, and I said, I'll push you out. See
Speaker 1: if you can move some stuff so I could get out.
Speaker 1: And I did that and I waited. I didn't see anything,
Speaker 1: and then I stuck my head out. I'm getting like
Speaker 1: a prairie dog that you see they stick the head
Speaker 1: out of a hole. And he was walking away and
Speaker 1: I was like, yo, I can't get out, and he
Speaker 1: just kept saying, come on, come on. And I noticed
Speaker 1: at that point he had like his shoes must have
Speaker 1: got knocked off somewhere. He had no shoes on, and
Speaker 1: he sort of left me. And as I was watching,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things fell and big puff of smoke,
Speaker 1: and the next thing I know, he was gone. So
Speaker 1: now I figured, okay, I need to get out. I
Speaker 1: squeezed through the hole. I was scraped from the top
Speaker 1: of my head to my feet and now I'm standing
Speaker 1: on a beam and I could feel my shoes starting
Speaker 1: to melt into the beam like on a hot day,
Speaker 1: if you're ever walking on tar, you feel that give.
Speaker 1: And I'm sort of shuffling my feet and I'm wet
Speaker 1: from the sprinklers being on, and I'm all glooey from
Speaker 1: all the concrete dust and powder which is wet stuck
Speaker 1: to me. And I'm glancing up and I see my
Speaker 1: tower still there, and okay, it didn't dawn on me.
Speaker 1: What happened was the South tower had fallen on top
Speaker 1: of us while we were on the ground on the
Speaker 1: way out. That's what it had hit us. And as
Speaker 1: I started shuffling my feet, I knew I couldn't go
Speaker 1: the way he went because I could see some of
Speaker 1: the parking levels, so I knew the plaza had collapsed in.
Speaker 1: But then I heard noises around me and things started
Speaker 1: hitting around me, which it was people jumping, and one
Speaker 1: of the things I got I was starting to get hit.
Speaker 1: I was hit with a leg someone jumped and I
Speaker 1: guess when they hit whatever they hit. The leke came
Speaker 1: just across hit me off the shoulder. If I didn't
Speaker 1: see it out of my peripheral it would have taken
Speaker 1: my head off. But then it was like, okay, I
Speaker 1: can't stand here. And then I remember there was a
Speaker 1: staircase on Vesey Street on the north side, so I
Speaker 1: worked my way over to there, where there were escalators
Speaker 1: going down to the street and what's called the Survivor staircase.
Speaker 1: If you ever come down to the nine eleven Memorial,
Speaker 1: it's still here. You could look it up out there.
Speaker 1: It was a way off the plaza that I was
Speaker 1: protected overhead, which a lot of people were able to
Speaker 1: use to get off. And there were two workers there
Speaker 1: and they looked like they've seen a ghost. When I emerged,
Speaker 1: I had no idea what I looked like. I didn't
Speaker 1: know I was hurt. You know, Adrenaline is a great thing.
Speaker 1: My arms were like cannonballs. I was moving things that
Speaker 1: I could tendem Me couldn't move on a good day,
Speaker 1: you know. And they said, all right, head down to
Speaker 1: the street. When I got up to the corner of
Speaker 1: of VESSI and church people start interviewing me that I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've seen on the internet the interviews
Speaker 1: with me in the street. Again, I didn't know I
Speaker 1: was hurt. And at that point an FBI agent came
Speaker 1: along and he grabbed my arm and he said, we
Speaker 1: can't stand here, we need to move. We were only
Speaker 1: a block from the North Tower, and we got maybe
Speaker 1: half a block away, and then the North Tower started
Speaker 1: to come down. So some of the video I see,
Speaker 1: I'm looking back up. The last thing I remember happening
Speaker 1: was three people just hold hands and jump jump as
Speaker 1: the building was coming down, and they just broke apart.
Speaker 1: They look like if you took a rag doll through
Speaker 1: it in the air. So I got up against the
Speaker 1: building put sort of put one arm over my head.
Speaker 1: Two of the things that you know on TV. In
Speaker 1: the video, you see the plane hit the building. What
Speaker 1: you don't see is you know it's an inch high
Speaker 1: on your TV set. In real life, the hole in
Speaker 1: that building was a sixth story hole. If you could
Speaker 1: pick a six story building and putting in, you could
Speaker 1: plug it into that hole. The other thing was the
Speaker 1: smoke that you see that comes up the streets, sort
Speaker 1: of like if you were ever at the beach and
Speaker 1: the tide comes in. You see the wave and it
Speaker 1: hits you. You don't see the drift wood, the shells,
Speaker 1: anything else that's in that wave. Well, in that smoke,
Speaker 1: you don't see the desks, the file cabinets, the chairs,
Speaker 1: the telephones, the people, the file cabinets, the copy machines.
Speaker 1: You don't see anything that would be in one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten story building. All you see the smoke, but
Speaker 1: all that stuff is in there and somehow, you know.
Speaker 1: I got knocked around a few things, but I made
Speaker 1: it up by city Hall, where police officers grabbed me.
Speaker 1: They asked me, you know where you're going. I said
Speaker 1: I had enough today, I was going home. They said
Speaker 1: where do you live. I told him Fishkill, New York
Speaker 1: and he said that's like upstate. I said ninety miles
Speaker 1: and they said how are you getting there? I said,
Speaker 1: I'm walking, you know, total shock, and they said you
Speaker 1: need to come with us. So they grabbed me. They
Speaker 1: put me in an ambulance. I went up to Beth
Speaker 1: Israel Hospital. When we got there, I was the only
Speaker 1: one there. They had doctors, nurses, gurneys in the street
Speaker 1: and they took me out. They said, well, he's critical,
Speaker 1: and I was, who's you know? Critical? I'm fine, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: So they brought me in. I didn't realize I had
Speaker 1: fractured my skull. I got burnt, pretty good cuts, bruises,
Speaker 1: I had a little fractured bone, just my nose here.
Speaker 1: But they brought me in. They cut my clothes off.
Speaker 1: I had to go through two tanks of oxygen because
Speaker 1: of all the smoke, to call them monoxide, to call
Speaker 1: them dioxide, the open wounds with god knows what chemicals, asbestos,
Speaker 1: everything else. And as they were stitching and stapling my
Speaker 1: head up, I was watching the TV seeing the towers
Speaker 1: come down, and I kept saying, like, what happened? And
Speaker 1: they were like, you were there, But I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have no recollection that this happening at
Speaker 1: the time. And then they hooked me up. They left
Speaker 1: me alone in the room, at which time I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I've had enough. I'm not a good patient
Speaker 1: at the hospitals. And I sat up, I pulled the
Speaker 1: tubes out, I went out in the hole. I went
Speaker 1: into a dirty scrub bin and I put dirty scrubs
Speaker 1: on and I put them on and I walked out
Speaker 1: of the hospital. Wow, I don't remember ever signing anything.
Speaker 1: I remember lines there, people giving blood and I walked
Speaker 1: about thirty five blocks up to Grant Central Station. In
Speaker 1: between I used the phone. Back back in the day
Speaker 1: they had the payphones. I was able to get on
Speaker 1: the phone to my mother in law back home was
Speaker 1: watching my son. She got touch with my wife who
Speaker 1: worked in Midtown on the West Side, and I got
Speaker 1: to meet her in Grand Central station, right under the
Speaker 1: clock where do you ever see some of the Disney movies?
Speaker 1: They always have that clocke in there Madagascar? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I ended up going home on the train. I remember
Speaker 1: people looking at me like I was a freak because
Speaker 1: I still had all bandages. I had dirty, bloody scrubs on,
Speaker 1: melted shoes and a shirt from a clothing bin that
Speaker 1: was too small. It was white with gray pinstripes venues
Speaker 1: and came halfway down my arms. I couldn't button the
Speaker 1: top the bottom, and I looked like I probably was
Speaker 1: a homeless guy again into a fight and lost.
Speaker 4: But so what was actually when did they actually hate it?
Speaker 1: So when it hit me when I got home and
Speaker 1: I started watching the TV, and people started calling the
Speaker 1: house because they're my name being you know, Thomas Cannavan.
Speaker 1: There was a gentleman killed here named Sean Thomas Canavan.
Speaker 1: So my parents listening to this, they live upstate, They
Speaker 1: live on the other side of the river in Monticello,
Speaker 1: New York, and they had seen what was happening. They
Speaker 1: got in the car to come down to see because
Speaker 1: they seen me on TV. But when they first heard
Speaker 1: the names of people that were missing. They you sort
Speaker 1: of block out the Sean, but then they hear the
Speaker 1: Thomas Canavan part. So they tried to get to the city.
Speaker 1: They weren't allowed. They would turn back. Nobody was allowed
Speaker 1: in Manhattan. But that night watching TV and then people
Speaker 1: that I work with calling the house saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we saw you on TV. You know, we saw the interview.
Speaker 1: Are you okay? And I was like, while I'm home,
Speaker 1: you know, And still at that point, the adrenaline was
Speaker 1: still like pumping. But I started watching the TV because
Speaker 1: if I survived, some of the people in front of me,
Speaker 1: maybe they're out, you know, maybe something happened. I'll see
Speaker 1: them on TV. Maybe they survived too. We did lose
Speaker 1: four Antonette being one of them. I don't believe they
Speaker 1: ever found anything of three of them. The fourth person,
Speaker 1: I think they found a little piece of her jaw
Speaker 1: bone in their recovery. But uh, yeah, what was it?
Speaker 3: What was it that you know, you know, when you
Speaker 3: were trapped, Like I know that you said that you
Speaker 3: wanted to get home for the birthday and all like that,
Speaker 3: But did you ever feel that this is it, You're
Speaker 3: not getting out or did did you always have confidence
Speaker 3: you were going.
Speaker 2: To get out.
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. I don't think the thought of I
Speaker 1: know I'm getting out or I'm not getting out ever
Speaker 1: came into my head. It was just keep going. One thing.
Speaker 1: One of the other things you learned being in New
Speaker 1: Yorker is unless you know, it's not the first guy
Speaker 1: that's knocked down, it's the last guy that standing that
Speaker 1: he's the winner. And you just I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's ingrained at this point, but you just keep going.
Speaker 1: You put your head down and you do what you
Speaker 1: have to do. Rather than being an active thing, I
Speaker 1: was more reactive because if I was going one way
Speaker 1: and I couldn't go that way, I had to adjust.
Speaker 1: Things falling, I had to adjust. So I was very
Speaker 1: reactive to what was going on around me. And again
Speaker 1: your mind goes blank, Well mind it anyway. It was
Speaker 1: more just keep going, you know the direction you're going.
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was going up at the time,
Speaker 1: but when I was outside the building, I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm outside the building. I didn't know what was going
Speaker 1: on with the other building. You know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: I'm going to get hit with a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to happen. I don't think
Speaker 1: you were when you go on instinct or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: that you can plan for anything, because I mean, it
Speaker 1: still doesn't register, like how does this happen? This is
Speaker 1: two thousand and one and New York City, like this
Speaker 1: is you know, this is happening here? Like how how
Speaker 1: is this going on? You know, it was so out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary where I fear today that something happens
Speaker 1: like this, where a building gets hit, people are not
Speaker 1: going to be orderly leaving. The first thing they're going
Speaker 1: to think of is a collapse, and they're going to
Speaker 1: be rushing and more people are going to get hurt
Speaker 1: or killed or trampled. You know. But up until then,
Speaker 1: it had never happened, so you know, you had nothing
Speaker 1: to go by. The only thing I had to go
Speaker 1: by was reading as a kid history that history is
Speaker 1: told by survivors. Yeah, and okay, I'm out. So now
Speaker 1: I can tell people, you know, what happened to me.
Speaker 1: I can relate to people because you know, got all
Speaker 1: the stuff out there on the internet. There's so many
Speaker 1: of these conspiracy theories, you know, and listen, two planes
Speaker 1: got hit by two you know, two buildings got hit
Speaker 1: by two planes here and people were murdered here. That
Speaker 1: that's to me, that's the very base thing, you know.
Speaker 1: As far as everything else, there's stuff I don't know,
Speaker 1: but there are things I know. I know what happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm here me on the internet,
Speaker 1: I have people saying it's fake, it's a I you
Speaker 1: know there. I don't believe there was AI in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. First off, you know that people could
Speaker 1: do that. I've learned to live with that. You know,
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory people whatever, you know, I can't change
Speaker 1: their minds.
Speaker 3: You know what you know when you you you finally
Speaker 3: got out and you say, because you were so far
Speaker 3: down in the building, what was the what was the
Speaker 3: noise actually like when you were on street level?
Speaker 2: Was it like intense? Was it like just screaming? Was
Speaker 2: it not like nothing?
Speaker 1: It was if you've ever been in a snowstorm, in
Speaker 1: a blizzard, like when it snows in New York, it's
Speaker 1: very quiet. Everything is muffled. There's a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of cars in the street. When I got out
Speaker 1: of the buildings, everything was white from all the ash.
Speaker 1: It looks like it had snowed, but the sun was
Speaker 1: out as I'm walking up the street. I think it
Speaker 1: was so soon after the collapse that there was nobody
Speaker 1: yelling in the street. There was no not that I
Speaker 1: recall anyway. The first thing that I recall hearing after
Speaker 1: my buildings started coming down was the doors of ambulances
Speaker 1: slamming shut and taking the ambulance taking off as people
Speaker 1: were trying to get out of you know, they were
Speaker 1: picking up people from the first collapse. Now there's a
Speaker 1: second collapse, and there were people trying to get out
Speaker 1: of there. I don't remember anyone screaming. I don't none
Speaker 1: of that at all. Some of the videos that I'm in,
Speaker 1: you know, there is sound and as I'm walking up
Speaker 1: the street, you really don't hear anything. You know, I
Speaker 1: have a firefighter telling the guy their ambulance is up
Speaker 1: up further or you know, I remember cursing someone's going
Speaker 1: to pay for this, and you know, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: not really proper non cussing words, but you know, and
Speaker 1: giving an ur rah and my thumbs up again and
Speaker 1: not knowing you know what I look like. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've seen the pictures, so they're not pretty, but.
Speaker 2: How did you deal with the trauma?
Speaker 1: After you sleep for about three hours. For about the
Speaker 1: first ten years, three or four hours, you deal with
Speaker 1: the trauma much. I've come to deal with it much
Speaker 1: like getting old, which is it sucks to get old,
Speaker 1: but it's better than the alternative of not getting old.
Speaker 1: You have to adapt to things. You have to. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest things between survivor groups is you
Speaker 1: get it. We call it. You get it. You understand
Speaker 1: what it's like. You don't. You can't convince people who
Speaker 1: think they know what it's like. Same thing with military guys.
Speaker 1: They can communicate on a different level than regular people.
Speaker 1: Things they've seen, things they've done. You can't make people
Speaker 1: understand it if they weren't there. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is people say we'll get over it. You don't. You
Speaker 1: don't really get over it. You learn to deal with
Speaker 1: it and you and you move on again. It's putting
Speaker 1: your head down. I don't know, being a New Yorker
Speaker 1: from just too stupid or too stubborn to give up.
Speaker 1: But you just put your head down and keep going.
Speaker 1: Because when you don't do that, then then there's trouble.
Speaker 1: You have to face it. To me, you had. I
Speaker 1: faced it head on. I threw myself into talking, joining
Speaker 1: a survivor group called Strength to Strength, and it we
Speaker 1: deal with terrorism around the world. We have survivors from
Speaker 1: all over the world, Boston Marathon in Oklahoma City and
Speaker 1: Brussels and UH seven seven in in London, and we
Speaker 1: we can relate people who need help more than I do.
Speaker 1: I think I can handle it a lot better than
Speaker 1: a lot of people did. I don't know why. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's my upbringing of where I was again, the environment
Speaker 1: I was I was raised in. But they like to
Speaker 1: hear someone tell them, you know what, I went through
Speaker 1: this too, and look at me. And the best thing
Speaker 1: you can do is you're gonna get through it, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna turn it around and you're gonna help someone else.
Speaker 1: Because it's the way the world is right now. You know,
Speaker 1: every couple of weeks, something else happens and it's just
Speaker 1: not the trauma of terrorism. It's you know, it could
Speaker 1: be other you know, school shootings or mess shootings or
Speaker 1: anything like that that you know, people get affected. Everyone
Speaker 1: is different and everybody has a different way to deal
Speaker 1: with it, and you find your way. But when you
Speaker 1: can relate to other people. It becomes a little I
Speaker 1: don't want to say easier, but it becomes a little like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there is a light at the end of that tunnel.
Speaker 1: If this person can do it, I can do it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: How long did it take you to go back to
Speaker 4: a building, like to step inside a building again.
Speaker 1: I came back down to ground zero three days later
Speaker 1: because in my mind, I said, if if I don't
Speaker 1: go back now, I may never want to go back again.
Speaker 1: That's that's just me being That's just me being in
Speaker 1: New Yorker. That's like, no, this is my city. You're
Speaker 1: not taking this away from me. I love I love
Speaker 1: this place. Plus I couldn't really get in. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was all had the bandage on my head and
Speaker 1: everything else, and I was pretty you know, two black eyes.
Speaker 1: I was pretty beat up. But it was like, no,
Speaker 1: I need to go there because people I've lost people.
Speaker 1: I don't like the thought of leaving anybody behind, being
Speaker 1: alive or dead missing. To me, the family is like
Speaker 1: torn you want you can never give up that hope
Speaker 1: if they're missing. But if if you do have something
Speaker 1: definitive with closure, there there is a way that you
Speaker 1: can deal with it better than never not knowing what
Speaker 1: actually happened. You, you know, that nagging thing in the
Speaker 1: back of your mind. May be they're somewhere, Maybe they
Speaker 1: were knocked out and brought over to Jerry. Maybe they
Speaker 1: have amnesia. So to me, it was I need to
Speaker 1: come here. I need to see for myself what's still here.
Speaker 2: How did the field say in the building's not there anymore?
Speaker 2: How did that feel.
Speaker 1: It? It was kind of looking at it and saying, wow,
Speaker 1: it's a lot smaller than I thought, Like the buildings
Speaker 1: were closer than I thought they were. There was so
Speaker 1: much going on construction and you know, hoses to keep
Speaker 1: the dust down from everything, and they were removing things.
Speaker 1: The smell in the air, you know, they had to say.
Speaker 1: They were told tell everybody it's okay. We knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't okay. If you ever touch old coins, you get
Speaker 1: that that smell and that that taste on your hand,
Speaker 1: like a coppery which is like a blood smell. It
Speaker 1: was all over down here. You couldn't get away from
Speaker 1: the smoke. You couldn't get away. But I needed to
Speaker 1: come back here. Yeah, to me, it was part of
Speaker 1: I need to see it. I need to know what
Speaker 1: really happened because again your brain, you know, like how
Speaker 1: do you imagine two buildings collapsing in planes hitting and
Speaker 1: then a third building burning out completely and collapsing, and
Speaker 1: that was fifty four stories building seven, Like that would
Speaker 1: have been the biggest news on a day if it
Speaker 1: wasn't for you know, two one hundred and ten story buildings,
Speaker 1: and then seeing the hotel basically cut in half, and
Speaker 1: like marveling, like I don't know to this day, like
Speaker 1: how did I get out of here? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like it's I don't know how what why?
Speaker 1: You know? Everyone tells me, oh, you're here for a reason.
Speaker 1: I always say, don't. I don't need that pressure. Don't
Speaker 1: put that pressure on me, you know. But I got
Speaker 1: to see my daughter be born. I got to see
Speaker 1: my son's third birthday plan. You know. I was very
Speaker 1: lucky that that's the only way I could look at it.
Speaker 1: People make a left instead of a right. You know,
Speaker 1: two seconds later I'm not where I'm where I am.
Speaker 1: Second later that thing crushes me. Two seconds later, I'm
Speaker 1: behind me. Maybe I don't I never get out, So
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's always a double edged sword. Survivor's
Speaker 1: guilt but you have to just go on. I mean again,
Speaker 1: the alternative is what. I'm not going to jump off
Speaker 1: a bridge. I'm not to me. You know, people with
Speaker 1: mental problems that think of suicide, I've never thought of that.
Speaker 1: That to me, that from personally, that's my coward's way out,
Speaker 1: Like why would I do that to my family? A
Speaker 1: stigmatism for my kids, like growing up all your farmer killed,
Speaker 1: Like I would never do that to other people in
Speaker 1: my family. I just couldn't, you know. And then to
Speaker 1: this day, my biggest fear is I slip and I
Speaker 1: bang my head on the toilet and I die. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I got out of nine to eleven and
Speaker 1: here I am, say, find me my pants down on
Speaker 1: a bandom floor. You know, like the indignity of that,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's that's the kind of thoughts that
Speaker 1: run through your mind at this point.
Speaker 4: You know, how long did how long did it take
Speaker 4: you to go into a like into a a building again,
Speaker 4: like did.
Speaker 2: You wake in a building like a store?
Speaker 1: Resident? Yeah? I went In fact, working for the moving
Speaker 1: company that I was, I worked right across the street.
Speaker 1: The buildings or the floors were propped up by two
Speaker 1: by fours. There was no electricity in it. There were
Speaker 1: body parts in it, but we were contracted to go
Speaker 1: in and remove people's laptops, so we had to go
Speaker 1: through the building taking laptops off desks because everybody thought
Speaker 1: they'd be back to work the next day, you know.
Speaker 1: So I got to see the side. I got to
Speaker 1: see what was here and smell it, and to this day,
Speaker 1: I have no fear of buildings. I fly all the
Speaker 1: time with the group I'm a part of, you know.
Speaker 1: I've been to Manchester for their memorial service. I've been
Speaker 1: to London. I've been to you know, Oklahoma City for
Speaker 1: the past twenty five years. Almost we go every year.
Speaker 1: So this wasn't my time. That's the only thing, the
Speaker 1: only way I could deal with it like that, I think,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say it made me stronger here,
Speaker 1: but it made me think about things other than worrying
Speaker 1: about dying. Like I don't wear a wristwatch. My watch
Speaker 1: hangs in the museum. It stopped a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: after the plane hit. I must have banged it somewhere
Speaker 1: and it was covered in blood, you know, and concrete powder,
Speaker 1: and it's for years. The second hand would take the
Speaker 1: twelve and then go back and then finally, you know,
Speaker 1: the battery died and it hangs in the museum. I
Speaker 1: have not worn a wristwatch since that day. You know,
Speaker 1: if I need time, I got it on my phone.
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like, why am I in a
Speaker 1: rush to do anything anymore? Like this is to me,
Speaker 1: this is gravy. This is the cherry on the Sunday
Speaker 1: for me, I'm like, I'm here. You know what am
Speaker 1: I going to ask for? I've hit the lottery? You know,
Speaker 1: one in a million. I went to work like a
Speaker 1: billion people do across this planet. Every day. They get
Speaker 1: up and go to work. By the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I'm one of nineteen people on the planet that experienced something.
Speaker 1: They were only nineteen of us that so by being
Speaker 1: buried under it, like, how do you go from being
Speaker 1: one in a billion to one of nineteen in the
Speaker 1: history of the world. You know, it's kind of overwhelming
Speaker 1: if you think about it that way. But again, you
Speaker 1: just put your head down, you go on. You try
Speaker 1: to help people that need help. That's the only thing
Speaker 1: I can think of.
Speaker 2: You know, do you still have nightmares? Do you still
Speaker 2: have flashbacks?
Speaker 1: It was never a nightmare. It was sort of like
Speaker 1: a movie that plays over in your head, Okay, every night,
Speaker 1: over and over, and the question comes up, why didn't
Speaker 1: you leave right away? You should have known better. Why
Speaker 1: didn't you go in that first stairway. Why didn't you?
Speaker 1: Why didn't you do this? Why did you do this?
Speaker 1: Why didn't you? So that's what I went through for
Speaker 1: years and years. There's not a day that doesn't go
Speaker 1: by that I don't think of this place. Because right
Speaker 1: now i'm actually doing this interview. I'm on the plaza
Speaker 1: right next to the pool where my building stood. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's not a day that goes by because I'm going
Speaker 1: to see a plane flying about my head every day.
Speaker 1: So when I know they're low, I'll put my head
Speaker 1: down and I'll say, I'm not gonna look. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna look. I'm not gonna look. And then I find
Speaker 1: myself looking at it and I'm like, damn. There are
Speaker 1: certain noises there. If I walk by a construction site,
Speaker 1: you get that concrete powder smell. It'll it'll jaw you back.
Speaker 1: There are certain songs that I remember hearing the days
Speaker 1: after nine to eleven that when I hear that song
Speaker 1: it becomes very like, oh, it brings me back to
Speaker 1: you know, where I was, what I was doing there.
Speaker 1: There is the one thing that I've seen that the
Speaker 1: only thing that makes me tear up really is in
Speaker 1: the super Bowl in February of two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: But wise I had a commercial. They've only played it
Speaker 1: once and it's the horses. They come to New York
Speaker 1: and they bring the wagon and they stop over in
Speaker 1: Jersey City and you see the skyline. There's no there's
Speaker 1: no towers there and the whole is bow and even
Speaker 1: now as I think about it, I'm like, but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to lose it here. But that's the only
Speaker 1: thing that Mike gets to me, you know, get chokes
Speaker 1: me up a little seeing those forces. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a weird thing. I guess, I don't know.
Speaker 2: How's how's your health now?
Speaker 1: Well? I picked up a cancer about two years ago
Speaker 1: that's related to here. It's a skin cancer. It's treatable,
Speaker 1: but it's not curable. So when I need to get
Speaker 1: something done, they cut, they get the melon baller out
Speaker 1: and they'll take out what they need to do. My
Speaker 1: lungs probably about eighty percent, which is good. But you know,
Speaker 1: I am getting older, so you know, I'll be sixty
Speaker 1: six in March, so it's like, maybe that's the natural progression,
Speaker 1: but otherwise I'm gonna go on doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Retired four years from I retired from the nine eleven
Speaker 1: memorial itself. Well, I had the privilege to work and
Speaker 1: take care of the pools, take care of the grounds.
Speaker 1: When people come here and they see the pictures, I
Speaker 1: always tell them, do you notice something about the pictures
Speaker 1: of the people? And some people get it. They're smiling.
Speaker 1: So I tell people come through the museum, you could
Speaker 1: cry all you want, because we have tissues, plenty of tissues.
Speaker 1: You can wipe your face. But when you get out
Speaker 1: of here and you go on that street, you smile,
Speaker 1: You take a deep breath, and you live your life.
Speaker 1: And when people see, like everyone knows how everyone died here,
Speaker 1: You see it on the video, you see it on TV.
Speaker 1: What you don't know till you come here is we
Speaker 1: showed you how people live their lives on those pictures.
Speaker 1: And it's much more important to be remembered how you
Speaker 1: lived than how you died. Go let people take your picture,
Speaker 1: because when you're gone, you want someone to open up
Speaker 1: a photo album and they see you dancing at your
Speaker 1: kid's wedding, or holding your child, or running a marathon,
Speaker 1: playing soccer, and they're gonna smile. It's not your name
Speaker 1: on a stone or a piece of wood, a picture
Speaker 1: of you living your life, not being buried under a stone.
Speaker 1: Much much more important to be remembered that way.
Speaker 2: That's correct.
Speaker 3: Well, I just want to I just want to say
Speaker 3: I'm so privileged to have you come on my podcast
Speaker 3: and talk and share your story with me, because, as
Speaker 3: I said, when I seen the article, and I've seen
Speaker 3: a few articles when I researched you, I wanted you
Speaker 3: on the podcast to share this story with Australia, with
Speaker 3: all my listeners, and I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 1: Tom Well, thank you, and a big shout out to
Speaker 1: Christie who did all the legwork for this.
Speaker 2: Thank you for Christy.
Speaker 1: I'm a dinosaur when it comes to all this technology stuff. Like,
Speaker 1: to me, a phone is still someone to talk to
Speaker 1: someone on. You know, I don't have the thumbs of
Speaker 1: a twelve year old to communicate all the time. Christie's
Speaker 1: the best. She's gonna help me actually write a book.
Speaker 1: It's been a you know, it's been a while. I
Speaker 1: made a lot of friends, and hopefully there is you know,
Speaker 1: a movie in the works, which was supposed to be
Speaker 1: out by the twentieth, but COVID shut everything down, hopefully
Speaker 1: by the twenty fifth, but I still hear that it's
Speaker 1: still too recent, you know, twenty five years I think
Speaker 1: is a good amount of time. Yeah, people need to
Speaker 1: know the story because it's estimated one third of the
Speaker 1: world wasn't even alive at this time, like twenty three
Speaker 1: years ago, you know, and even not just survivors, but
Speaker 1: family members who come here every year for the event.
Speaker 1: There's less and less because you know, people pass away,
Speaker 1: people move. The twenty fifth will be the next big one.
Speaker 3: I'm gratefully you came on. I had to share your story.
Speaker 3: Tom and I will keep in touch. That's one hundred
Speaker 3: percent