Steve Peck Reflects on Surviving 9/11

It’s not known exactly how many people were in the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11/01, but it was likely 30,000 or more. Nearly 2,700 didn’t make it out that day. The impact of those planes continues to reverberate around the world. And in the lives of those, like Steve, who were closer than most.

‘Everyone remembers where they were on 9/11. I just happened to be 300 feet below where the first plane crashed into the building’.

At 8:46 am, Steve was on the 63rd floor of World Trade Center 1 preparing for a meeting, when the room violently shook with the impact of American Airlines Flight 11.

‘There was no question that something very big and terrible had happened. I thought a bomb had gone off in the basement much like 1993 and that the building was going to collapse right there and then. All you could do was hang on to your chair. I remember thinking: ‘It’s a Tuesday morning, and I don’t want to go like this.’’

It could have been very different: the meeting room they’d planned to use was on the 90th floor and it was shifted to the 63rd floor only days before the meeting.

As the shaking subsided, Steve and his colleagues quickly made their way to the stairwell and tried to gauge how fast they could run down 63 stories. ?As he joined the crowds making their way down the stairs to safety, he eventually passed the firefighters heading in the opposite direction.

‘When I saw the first responders coming up, we were on the 20th floor. These 5 brave men were part of the elite team from FDNY Rescue One. These are the heroes that go first into the tallest buildings and save people. It was really cramped. There were only 3 staircases for a 110 story building, two people wide. So it was single file to allow them up.’

As Rescue One trudged past with their heavy equipment and reassuring words, Steve spoke to their captain, Terry Hatton, to let him know what to expect up to 63. Captain Hatton assured Steve that, aside from some water on the 7th floor and shattered glass and tile in the lobby, the path to the lobby was relatively clear.

‘We were sweating our butts off walking down the steps and they were heading up wearing 60 lbs of equipment. I was thinking ‘it’s 43 floors to get to where we were, and all this stuff happened above that, how are they even going to make that trip?’

None of them survived.

Captain Terry Hatton’s wife was one month pregnant. He didn’t even know. Eight months later his daughter, Terry, was born.

‘To this day I think about that. He looked impossibly young, incredibly determined and he was going in no matter what. And never got to meet his baby daughter. But Captain Hatton, along with all the first responders, helped make sure that we could get home to our families. That’s something we can never forget.’

Captain Hatton was one of the 343 firefighters and 71 police officers who never made it home that day from the World Trade Center. Every one of them heroes. At around 9:30am, Steve reached the lobby and was directed through the basement shopping center and eventually up the steps of the subway entrance to safety. His first instinct was to help, but there was nothing he could do.

‘Outside it was simply unbelievable: the gaping holes in the buildings, the thick plumes of smoke. It was just chaos everywhere.’

Steve and a colleague quickly made their way away from the Trade Center and were 14 blocks up Broadway when Tower 2 collapsed at 9:58am. As everyone was running north to get away from the rapidly approaching dust cloud. Steve spotted a cab for hire and jumped in. "Where to?" asked the cab driver. Steve responded with?‘see that cloud of dust? I want to go in the other direction.’

The cab dropped him at a commuter train station in Harlem. After making his way to White Plains station and securing the second to the last rental car available, Steve made his way home to Baltimore nearly 9 hours after the first plane slammed into WTC 1. That night Steve took a photograph of his family.

‘When I look at the picture we took that day of my kids, they were so small: 18 months and 3 years. Now they’re 23 and 21 and my son’s almost a head taller than me and that really puts it into perspective how much life is lived in that time. And for the nearly 3000 that didn’t make it that fateful day, there’s so much life that they didn’t get to live. It is so sad’

Steve’s admiration and respect for all first responders like the heroes from Rescue One - those who run in, while the rest of us run out- is clear.

‘Only today I saw a bunch of police officers and said ‘thanks for all you’re doing’. I’d walk across a restaurant to say ‘Hi’ to some firefighters having breakfast and say ‘thank-you’. My kids used to be mortified - ‘there goes Dad again’.

So if you’re a firefighter or police officer and a random guy comes up to shake your hand, just say ‘Hi Steve.’

This appreciation and respect for those who put themselves in danger to save others feels very relevant in this time of Covid. Key workers, whether doctors, nurses, medics firefighters or police, aren’t simply defined by what they do on one day, but every day.

As Steve says, ‘They’re not only heroes for what they did on 9/11, they’re heroes for what they did on 9/12, 9/13, 9/14…’

20 years on, as he reflects that on that day, amidst the chaos, the dust and the sirens, there was a something that clearly stood out: a sense of unity.

‘When we were coming down the stairwells, it didn’t matter whether you were a CEO, a janitor, or anyone in between, no-one gave a sh*t about that. It was people helping people and being very supportive of each other. ?When you got out the first thing you thought is ‘how can I help?’. In the backdrop of this incredible chaos, everybody - all walks of life, all nations - everybody was just concerned with how can we all stay safe and get out of this together. Nobody cared if you were Democrat or Republican, gay or straight, black or white. We were helping each other out no matter what. In the days that followed, there were no planes in the skies, and neighbors were coming out and talking and there was definitely a sense of we’re bent not broken. We come together as a community and a nation - I think some of that’s gotten lost with time.’

So maybe, as well as remembering those who didn’t make it, remembering that sense of togetherness, of barriers breaking down, is what anniversaries like this are for. Especially in a time of pandemic when standing together and helping one another is the only way to move forward. As Steve says,?‘what does ‘Never Forget’ really mean? I think many our politicians have forgotten.’ There’s no doubt that events like 9/11 change us, but it’s up to each of us to decide how. For Steve it was very clear:

?‘I couldn’t wait to get on a plane after 9/11 or attend a crowded stadium event. I wanted to say ‘we’re not going to let terrorism define how we live or where we go. No matter what we’re going to overcome it. We can’t let it dictate our lives.’

Today, as the world thinks back 20 years and we all remember where we were when we heard the news, there’s one thing that 9/11 taught Steve:

?'Every day is a gift and tomorrow is not guaranteed. So you gotta live your life to the fullest in the moment, everyday.'

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