About this time five years ago I was watching the towers burn and praying that my friend Lars had gotten out safely.
If anyone could have escaped, it would have been him, we thought - he was strong-minded, reliable, and practical, exactly the kind of person you would want next to you in a crisis. He was a fire-safety expert and would have known what to do when trapped in a burning skyscraper.
But if he had been in his office at the time, he wouldn't have had a chance. He was on the 100th floor of Tower 1, facing uptown. If he had looked out of his window at the right time, he would have seen the plane hurtling directly towards him. From what I've read of the post-disaster analysis, the offices of his company were turned into an inferno. Nobody escaped from any of those upper floors.
On a normal Tuesday morning, Lars wouldn't have been in his office. He would have taken the first part of the morning off to have coffee with his wife. That was their little ritual. But this was an unusual day because their son was starting at a new school and he had gone to drop him off.
Read More
