Mark Fiore: From within the rubble

As he so often did, Joseph DeFelice got to work at the World Trade Center early last Tuesday. The day started as it typically did for my Uncle Joe, as I know him, but ended like none other. A family man with children and grandchildren, he is among the fortunate. This is his story. This is America's story.

The September sun had only been shining on Manhattan's skyline for about an hour when Uncle Joe made it to his office in Two World Trade Center. Around 8 a.m., Uncle Joe, a senior official for Philadelphia-based Aramark, rode the tower's elevators as high as they would go, to the top-floor observation deck, one of the facilities that Aramark managed in the complex.

At its soaring height, the observation deck gave his employees, and tourists, breathtaking views of the financial capital. Just minutes before that view turned into a nightmare, and after he had checked in with his staff preparing for another day of wide-eyed visitors, Uncle Joe descended to his 15th floor office. It was just before 9 a.m.

Seated at his desk, Uncle Joe went about his business like millions of other corporate Americans. A loud whir, "like a flyover at a sporting event," disturbed the tranquility.

Financial documents, glass, steel and concrete poured from the adjoining building and past his window. One World Trade Center had been struck. Fire and smoke filled the blue sky, blinding the view from the 15th floor.

Amazed at the hurricane of debris outside his window, Uncle Joe thought that maybe a small plane or helicopter had struck the tower, as he had noticed them swooping closer to the buildings in recent months.

"I hoped that was the case," recalled my uncle, a tall man in his early fifties with graying hair and a raspy voice. "It was almost surreal, you just saw paper and debris coming down. You thought it was a movie set."

Yet in his building, still to fall victim to the second plane, all was quiet. No alarms, no announcements, no panic. Workers kept about their business, walked through the hallways, went into the bathroom.

But some were alarmed, including a Port Authority employee also on the 15th floor. "His face had fright all over it. He looked at me and he said, `Joe, let's get on the elevators.'" During the ride down, the second plane hit.

Panic had erupted on the first floor as a gaping hole ripped into the glass and steel hundreds of feet above. People were screaming, fleeing, not knowing what to do, where to go. "You weren't thinking, you were just doing."

Uncle Joe weaved himself through hallways, trying to find a way, any way, out of the burning building. Terrifying screams pierced the morning air as the towers above gasped their last breaths.

"There were a lot of people going every which way. It happened so quick, and your mind was, you're under attack. That's what it was, it was war."

Not knowing what to do, where to go, not even thinking about what to do, Uncle Joe sprinted outside among the fleeing people and falling debris, finding himself minutes later in a neighboring office building. "I don't know why I did that, but I did."

About 200 others stood expectantly with Uncle Joe when their hopes of safety were again ravaged. The Twin Towers were collapsing. Outside turned black. Inside became chaos. As heavy black smoke began billowing into the lobby, the screams began anew.

Time seemed to stop, Uncle Joe recalled. "Everybody got pretty quiet. It was total darkness. We didn't know what was going on. Were we getting bombed? Is our building going to get hit?

"Some people were choking. My eyes were burning. I was choking. The choking made me very, very nervous. I was thinking, `I made it out of one situation, now I'm facing another, and there's no getting out of this situation.'"

Nobody dared move, so they stayed in that lobby for hours. Day remained dark, people struggled through the smoke, all external communications were dead, quiet once again emerged.

Like the selflessness exhibited by so many Americans in the last seven days, Uncle Joe contemplated what had happened to his colleagues. "I was thinking about a couple of my guys. I left them on 107 and I was thinking, `Did they make it or didn't they?'

"You were worried about your fellow workers. You were thinking about all the people in the building, and did they get out, or why didn't they take this elevator, or why didn't they take the stairwell?

"And you were in disbelief. Especially when you knew it wasn't an accident."

Uncle Joe had lost sight of his friend from the Port Authority once they stepped off the elevator. That friend is still unaccounted for, as are five of his employees.

"We've exhausted every possible angle to find them," he said.

Maybe three hours had passed last Tuesday -- "I didn't even know what time it was" -- when Uncle Joe began seeing light through the darkened air, and sometime in mid-afternoon, after someone said the sky was clearing, he and others began venturing out.

Everything was soot and dust, inches thick. Uncle Joe, overwhelmed and struggling to breathe, his heart racing, and feeling like he might faint, staggered outside, between the hole left by the towers and the Hudson River.

A policeman found him and escorted him to the police boats on the river, waiting to race survivors to ad hoc triage centers. Uncle Joe was shuttled to the center set up on Liberty Island, home to the Statute of Liberty, where he was treated and later released.

Liberty, indeed.

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