email500.xml

email500.xml

born-digital

email

unknown

yes

2002-08-20

Hello,

Thanks so much for getting in touch with me and
offering me support, well wishes, and deep concern. I
would like to express my deep gratitude at your
consideration. Please rest assured that I am fine -
save your prayers and attention and thoughts for the
injured and for the relatives of rescue workers,
civilians, and government officials who are injured or
who might have perished. I personally do not know of
any injured or missing people, but many people I have
spoken with do, and it is heart-wrenching to hear
their tales.

I have not returned to Lower Manhattan since my
evacuation around 9:35am on Tuesday morning, but I
have a doctor friend who has assisted some people near
'ground zero', and another friend who was near the
towers when they collapsed, and I understand that it
is a horrific sight. Our usually intrusive,
propagandistic media is sparing (at least Americans)
the worst scenes.

Secondly, I apologize if I was unable to write back a
personal e-mail to you. I have received several
hundred e-mails and several dozen phone calls from
wellwishers and spent much of Tuesday and Wednesday on
the phone and on e-mail with supporters. It is very
inspiring to receive support not just from my
immediate friends and family. At the same time, it is
hard to write a unique, detailed response to everyone
at an appropriate level of detail. I hope you
understand.

Along with everybody else in my firm, an Internet
software company called TripleHop Technologies, I
survived without injury. Much of that was due to luck
and an organized evacuation effort. I was in my office
on the south side of the 53rd floor of WTC 1 (the
first tower to be hit and the second tower to
collapse) when the first plane hit. I was the only
one in my office when the plane hit around 8:50am -
many of my co-workers usually arrive around 9-9:15am,
thank God.

I was checking my e-mail when the first explosion hit
my building, although I was unsure whether it was my
building or the other tower at the time. There was
swaying for about ten seconds - during the first
couple of sways I was convinced we'd topple in the
Hudson River far below - and then I looked out the
window and saw documents and papers floating down from
the sky. I collected my wallet and Sharp organizer and
keys and went outside. Some other people in the
corridor initially thought there was a bomb in a
freight elevator so we all took the stairwell located
away from the freight elevator doors.

It took about 30-35 minutes to walk down the 53
flights of stairs in that stairwell. There were a lot
of people walking down with me but noone was
panicking. The Port Authority did a superb job of
organizing a well-executed evacuation that saved
thousands of lives, mine included.

Some people were making cell phone calls to people
outside the building and found out that a plane had
crashed into our building, but then other people said
a plane had crashed into the other building, so we
were confused which building had been hit - only after
exiting the towers did I look up and see that both
towers had been hit. In the stairwell, we assumed it
was a small plane, perhaps a Cessna. You could see
that everyone was frightened and wanted to get out but
noone lost control of themselves. A couple of times in
the stairwell, we had to move to the right to let burn
victims walk down quicker for treatment, or let
firefighters with their heavy equipment trudge up.

The mood definitely improved as we descended - on the
53rd floor, there was a strong smell of what seemed
like kerosene as well as some smoke, but as we
descended the smell and the smoke disappeared. The
sight of the three or four groups of firefighters
around the 30th or 40th floors certainly reassured
everybody as well. It was a bit hot so I took off my
dress shirt and was in a T-shirt and khakis. The woman
behind me, whom I recognized as an employee from the
Bank of China (their office is next to ours on the
53rd floor) - was clutching pictures of her kids and
her husband, I guess it crossed my mind at that point
that she had thought ahead of me to remove valuables
but I still figured I could return later and pick up
some important office equipment and documents, as well
as my favorite CDs and some concert tickets for a
group called Coldplay who will be in New York this
Sunday. Of course I don't care about retrieving that
stuff now.

People passed paper napkins around to help prevent
smoke inhalation, although the smoke was not that bad
especially in the lower floors. I helped a couple of
ladies down the stairs. One was a woman whose 30th
birthday is tomorrow (Friday) and she was worried she
wouldn't be able to celebrate her birthday. I helped
her calm down by hugging her and holding her as we
walked down the final 13 stories. The lights were on
in the stairwell the entire way until the final 5
stories. The sprinkler system was on the last five
stories, creating a waterfall down the stairs and a
river in the concourse level of the WTC and in the
shopping mall underneath that was the final leg of the
evacuation. It was strange to see the Gap, Banana
Republic, and America's Best Coffee dark and locked.

I saw several shocking scenes, but nothing comparable
to the current horror, since I left the scene before
either tower collapsed. The three or four burn victims
whom I saw descending the stairwell had bad burns to
their faces and arms, one or two of them had clothing
burned off, but they were able to walk down
unassisted. I pray that they are doing fine right now.
I caught a brief glimpse of the courtyard / fountain
area between the two towers and I was shocked at the
significant amount of burning wreckage I saw. I was
also aghast at the number of windows that had been
shattered or punctured with debris, leaving
bullet-like marks. I did not see any body parts or
people jumping. If we had known that was happening
while we were trapped in the stairwell, I don't know
what we evacuees' moods' would have been like.

We were evacuated onto Church Street near the Borders
bookstore. I left the woman about to celebrate her
30th birthday with some of her co-workers whom she
joyously found on the corner of Church and Fulton. I
walked one block up Fulton to Broadway and there was
greeted with an incredibly unexpected hug - from
Jason, my younger brother. Can you believe this? Out
of all the people being evacuated, he had somehow
found me. He told me later that he had seen the first
plane hit my tower while exiting his subway station on
the way to work. His work is 30 minutes walk away from
the Towers. He ran/walked all the way to the towers,
noting as he neared that some people's pants and shoes
were damp. He surmised correctly that the sprinkler
systems were automatically turned on and these people
were evacuees. he followed this train of evacuees to
the point where we all exited, and waited until I came
out. We hugged each other and couldn't believe we were
both OK. At that point I turned around and for the
first time saw those two awful burning holes in the
twin towers.

We decided to leave quickly, back to Jason's office to
make phone calls to my parents and e-mails/calls to
friends. I noticed several people who worked on my
floor milling around as we passed the Brooklyn Bridge
and nodded in sympathy.

It was impossible to use a cellular phone in the
vicinity of the towers since lines were jammed, and
pay phones had a very long wait as well. So we walked
through Chinatown and as we neared Jason's office 30
minutes after we left the evacuation scene, we turned
around in response to passers-by increased excitement
and chatter and witnessed the collapse of Tower 2.
Couldn't believe it. My first thought was of the
firefighters and rescue personnel who had been inside.
We got to his office and after a couple of jammed
lines, I got through to my mother and was on the phone
with her when the second tower (my tower) fell. I
spent the rest of the morning and most of the
afternoon sending e-mails / calling family and
friends, before returning to my apartment in Brooklyn.


I'm writing this e-mail not for my own personal
glorification, but so that everybody, especially those
located outside of New York, can get a sense that
there were a lot of people, possibly thousands of
people, who were succesfully evacuated before either
tower fell. There is hope for relatives and friends
who have not found their loved ones yet.

For another description of my 45-minute evacuation,
please go to www.google.com and type in "kenton
beerman michael luo" - you will be directed to a USA
Today article that was written by New York-based AP
reporter and my college roommate Mike Luo. Mike did a
wonderful job interviewing me and writing an
optimistic story that perhaps can restore some sort of
hope and inspiration for those following the latest
developments in this tragic chain of incidents. I'd
paste the Web link and the story in this e-mail
directly, except that my home computer does not
support the "cut and paste" command - apologies to
all.

Unexpectedly to me, Mike's article was almost
instantaneously picked up by many large newspapers -
snippets of my interview are evidently featured on
news sources from the L.A. Times and theWire.org to
the A.P., USA Today, the BBC, and AOL. Starting
Tuesday night, other media outlets started bombarding
my home phone, my two roommates, and my answering
machine with messages. It's quite interesting and
disturbing and disorienting all at once.

At last count, I have been in touch with ten media
sources about my story - in rough chronological order:

1) the AP (two reporters, Mike Luo and Chris
Sullivan);
2) the New York Times;
3) Good Morning America on ABC;
4) CNN;
5) MSNBC with Brian Williams;
6) the Ananda Lewis Show;
7) 48 hours on CBS;
8) Court TV;
9) ITN from the UK;
10)USA Today.

I rejected appearances on the Ananda Lewis Show
because I was wary of the talk show circuit, Good
Morning America because of timing (they wanted me to
appear Wed morning at 5am and I was exhausted from
Tuesday's ordeal) and on MSNBC Wed night because I was
frightened of a bomb scare in the Empire State
Building (near the NBC studio) around the time they
wanted me to speak with Mr. Williams. I taped a live
segment with Catherine Crier on Court TV this
(Thursday) afternoon, and at this moment have
scheduled tapings with both 48 Hours and ITN for
tomorrow (Friday). This afternoon, I had a long phone
interview with a USA Today reporter for a story to
appear in Monday's edition. My meeting times with CNN
and the New York Times are still unresolved.

Well, that's my story not quite in a nutshell. Thanks
so much again for all your support and concern through
these tough times. It's great to know that you are a
friend in need (indeed!) Please feel free to e-mail me
back or call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX, but if you would like
to contribute more fully to the ongoing rescue and
clean-up efforts, you might want to donate blood (O-
or O+ are the most in demand) or donate supplies to
those who are truly in need.

Love and regards and speak soon, Kenton

sent Thursday, September 13 2001, 6:48pm EST

Thanks for your support during this difficult time.