First-hand Accounts of Underground Explosions In The North Tower [View All]

[hangloose]

http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029

Mike Pecoraro had gotten up from bed at 4 a.m. to make his normal 2 hour commute from his Long Island home to the World Trade Center, where he worked as a Stationary Engineer on a roving crew that serviced all of the buildings at the com plex. The 36 year-old father of two stopped and bought breakfast on the way into One World Trade Center and changed into his work clothes. At about 6:45 he went to the mechanical shop in the second subbasement, ate his breakfast and chatted with his co-workers who were also arriving for the normal 8:00 a.m. beginning of their shift. Mike's assignment that day would be to continue constructing a gantry that would be used to pull the heads from the 2,500 ton chillers, located in the 6th sub- basement level of the tower. 49,000 tons of refrigeration equipment were located in the lower level of the tower. The 2,500 ton units were the smallest in use.

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Deep below the tower, Mike Pecoraro was suddenly interrupted in his grinding task by a shake on his shoulder from his co-worker. "Did you see that?" he was asked. Mike told him that he had seen nothing. "You didn't see the lights flicker?", his co-worker asked again. "No," Mike responded, but he knew immediately that if the lights had flickered, it could spell trouble. A power surge or interruption could play havoc with the building's equipment. If all the pumps trip out or pulse meters trip, it could make for a very long day bringing the entire center's equipment back on-line

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The two decided to ascend the stairs to the C level, to a small machine shop where Vito Deleo and David Williams were supposed to be working. When the two arrived at the C level, they found the machine shop gone. "There was nothing there but rubble, "Mike said. "We're talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press ? gone!" The two began yelling for their co-workers, but there was no answer. They saw a perfect line of smoke streaming through the air. "You could stand here," he said, "and two inches over you couldn't breathe. We couldn't see through the smoke so we started screaming." But there was still no answer.

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The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it, too, was gone. "There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, and you can't see anything" he said.

They decided to ascend two more levels to the building's lobby. As they ascended to the B Level, one floor above, they were astonished to see a steel and concrete fire door that weighed about 300 pounds, wrinkled up "like a piece of aluminum foil" and lying on the floor. "They got us again," Mike told his co-worker, referring to the terrorist attack at the center in 1993. Having been through that bombing, Mike recalled seeing similar things happen to the building's structure. He was convinced a bomb had gone off in the building. Mike walked through the open doorway and found two people lying on the floor. One was a female Carpenter and the other an Elevator Operator. They were both badly burned and injured. Realizing he had to get help, Mike ascended to the Lobby Level where he met Arti DelBianco, a member of his work crew. People were now coming down the same stairway from above the lobby and Arti and Mike had to stay where they were to direct people out of the stairway door and into the building's lobby. If they didn't, people descending could walk past the lobby door and unwittingly keep descending into the sublevels of the building.

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