He has told the story hundreds of times, but it never seems to fade. If anything, it only becomes more vivid. “Oh, gosh,” exclaims Stanley Praimnath, his voice cracking with an “ooooooh!” as if carrying a heavy weight. “It’s like reliving that day.”
Nearly 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC on September 11, 2001. But Praimnath and another office worker, Brian Clark, were two of only four people known to have survived from above the impact zone in either tower of the World Trade Center. The two strangers met in the smoke and fire of the 81st floor of the south tower, and walked down 1,620 steps into the rest of their lives.
Their split-second decisions that day made all the difference. Over the next 25 years, both men moved from middle age into old age and retirement. Both enjoyed family weddings and watched children and grandchildren grow. Both saw US presidents come and go as old wars ended and new wars began. They remained friends through it all.
They also told their story – countless times – in churches, schools, TV studios and elsewhere. “It could be 800, 1,200, a number like that,” Clark estimates.
Praimnath, in a separate interview, muses: “People refer to me as ‘the 9/11 guy’. It doesn’t feel repetitive. It is like unloading baggage from my shoulder, like washing my soul with tears. It is comforting to know that people out there still want to hear.”
A cry for help
Clark is now 79, living in retirement in northern New Jersey with his wife; he has 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Praimnath, a decade younger, lives in Valley Stream, Long Island; he is a pastor, grandfather and empty-nester who speaks of his survival not as luck, but as an act of God’s grace.
Their recollections of 9/11 are still as clear as the cloudless sky over Manhattan on that September morning. Clark, a Canadian who was executive vice-president at the financial brokerage firm Euro Brokers, arrived at his office on the 84th floor around 7:15am. Down on the 81st floor, the Guyanese-born Praimnath had settled into his desk at Fuji Bank, where he worked as a loan officer.
At 8:46am, the peace was shattered by a deafening double boom as the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower. Clark recalls: “The lights above me flickered and I spun around in my chair and my peripheral vision caught flames against the window. It was surreal. Two or three seconds later, the flames dissipated and the airspace was filled with singed paper.”
Having volunteered as a floor fire warden after the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing, Clark sprang into action. He retrieved an official torch marked “WTC fire safety team” from an overhead cabinet and began shepherding staff toward the building’s central corridor.
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A man stands in the rubble, calling out asking if anyone needs help, after the collapse of the first World Trade Center Tower on 9/11. Photograph: Doug Kanter/AFP/Getty Images
Co-workers crowded against the north-facing windows, gazing up nine stories at the raging “ring of fire” consuming their twin building. Thinking the emergency was confined next door, Clark phoned his wife at home and his father in Toronto, reassuring them that he was safe.
Three floors below, Praimnath was on the telephone with a colleague in Chicago who had witnessed the north tower explosion on television and begged him to evacuate. He was looking towards the Statue of Liberty when he spotted another plane – so close that he could make out the “U” on the tail of United Airlines Flight 175.
“On a given day, it was normal for a plane to zoom by a half a mile to a mile away,” he recalls. “But this plane is coming towards me. I made eye contact. I dropped the phone and screamed and said, ‘Lord, I can’t do this. You take over’. I don’t know why I said that – but thank God I said that.”
Praimnath dived under his desk in the foetal position, weeping and praying as the Boeing 767 bore down on his window. “With the most thunderous sound,””The plane came and crashed into the building,” he says. The aircraft struck diagonally at 9:03 a.m., slicing through the 77th to 85th floors. The impact flattened entire walls, cut through electrical wiring, and sent a shockwave of jet fuel and debris through Fuji Bank’s offices.
Praimnath recalls: “That big orange glow you see there—I’m stuck right in the middle of it. When it hit, it looked like a demolition crew came in with a giant wrecking ball and tore the whole office apart. Every wall is flattened. I remember a large piece of the plane broke off and got stuck in the office doorway.”
“I remember flames all around me, like someone took a giant bag of cement, threw it in the air, and I can’t breathe. The floor above me collapsed and is hanging over the desk, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die. It’s going to collapse completely and crush me, or I’ll get sucked out by the air pressure.’ You can hear the sound.”
At the memory, he clenches his teeth and blows into the phone to recreate that terrifying whoosh.
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The point of impact where a plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City on 9/11. Photograph: Jeff Christensen/Reuters
Three floors higher, Clark was standing on the west side of the 84th floor when the aircraft sliced into the building’s eastern trading floor. “Our room exploded,” he says. “Everything came out of the ceiling—air conditioning ducts, lighting, the whole works. For five seconds, the building swayed to the west, then it swayed back to vertical. For those ten seconds, I was terrified, thinking the building was going to tip over. But it didn’t.”
When the tower steadied, Clark gathered a group of six or seven colleagues and led them toward the central core. The impact had destroyed stairwells B and C, but stairwell A, tucked furthest away on the northwest side, somehow remained open.
The group began descending stairwell A. On the 81st floor landing, they were stopped by a man and a woman coming up the stairs. “She insisted we not go down,” Clark says. “‘No, no, no. You can’t go down,’ she said, and because she stopped us, I was able to hear a call for help from within the 81st floor—a muffled cry: ‘Help, I’m buried. I can’t breathe.'”
Brothers for life
Clark squeezed through an opening where the door frame had been torn from the drywall and stepped into the dark 81st floor, guided by Praimnath’s desperate shouts.
Inside the office, Praimnath prayed for rescue. “I can still remember the flames closing in, and I’m screaming, ‘Lord, send somebody, I don’t want to die.’ I’m crawling away from the flames, dodging all the cables hanging from the ceiling, short-circuiting because the sprinkler system had come on,” he recalls.
“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die.’ Someone had a flashlight on the other end of the floor. That person was saying, ‘I’ll wait for you,’ but I couldn’t hear because I’d gone temporarily deaf when the plane hit the building. As I’m crawling away, the flames are getting closer, licking up the office space.”
“I reached the wall. The person was saying, ‘Bang on the wall, I know where you are.’ I hit the wall, and the person said, ‘Climb over there.’ It had a hollow ceiling, a ten-foot sheetrock wall, a drywall. I remember that so vividly.”
Clark’s flashlight had spotted a hand sticking out of a hole in the ten-foot sheetrock wall. He grabbed Praimnath’s hands and pulled him over the partition. The desk beneath Clark gave way, and both men crashed to the floor in a heap.
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New York City firefighters wear face masks as they prepare to join other firefighters in battling blazes and helping injured people after the World Trade Center buildings collapse on 9/11. Photograph: Anthony Correia/Reuters
Clark recalls: “We fell, and he gave me a big kiss. I said, ‘What’s going on, what are you doing?’ I stuck out my hand and said, ‘I’m Brian Clark.’ He says, ‘I’m Stanley Praimnath; we’ll
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the story of the two strangers who met in the Twin Towers and escaped on 911
General Background Questions
1 Who are the two strangers in this story
They are Brian Clark and Stanley Praimnath Brian was an executive on the 84th floor of the South Tower and Stanley was a banker on the 81st floor of the same tower
2 How did they meet
When the South Tower was hit by the second plane Stanley was trapped in his office Brian heard his cries for help through the debris and rubble found him and helped free him from his office
3 Why were they in the Twin Towers that day
Both were there for work Brian worked for a financial firm called Euro Brokers and Stanley worked for the Fuji Bank
4 Did they both survive because they were together
Yes They helped each other navigate down the stairs through smoke and debris They were among the last group of people to escape the South Tower before it collapsed
The Aftermath Their Connection
5 Did they stay in touch after escaping the building
Initially they went their separate ways after escaping They were both in shock and trying to find their families They didnt see each other again for a long time
6 How did they reconnect
Brian saw Stanley being interviewed on television a few months later Brian recognized him and reached out to him They then met in person for the first time since their escape
7 Did they become friends
Yes they developed a very strong lifelong bond They often refer to each other as brothers They speak at events together visit schools and have supported each other through the trauma of that day
8 What happened to them in the years that followed
Both men continued to work and raise their families They struggled with survivors guilt PTSD and the emotional weight of that day but they leaned on each other to cope They have dedicated much of their time to sharing their story of hope and survival
9 Did they ever go back to Ground Zero together
Yes they have visited the 911 Memorial and Museum together They have also participated in the annual reading of the names on the anniversary of the attacks
Deeper Questions Lessons
