The Woman Who Saved Me on 9/11

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1:00It's everything your business needs in one place, saving you time, headaches and serious money. Stop paying for missing pieces, go to od.com. That's od.com to learn more. The documentary, home of the best documentaries from the BBC World Service. It was nobody. It was just eerie silence. Everything was gray with dust all over it. We were just sort of following instinct to get to West Street, head north and then try to head to the river. I look back and I saw the top of the tower actually starting to come down. At that point, people just the firemen of the emergency work started yelling, grung. Because the north tower we had just exited was starting to come down. Paul Carrus was one of the last survivors to walk out of the north tower of the World

2:04Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, just moments before it completely collapsed. Let's look at the north tower quickly. Quickly coming down. Oh my god. The second tower. The second tower. The second tower. Oh my god. It's hard to put it into words. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Column Flynn and in this episode of Heart and Soul, which explores personal approaches to spirituality from around the world. I'm in the USA, marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. And almost 3,000 people died in New York at the Pentagon in Virginia and near Shanksville in Pennsylvania. For this program, I've traveled to New Jersey to meet survivor Paul Carrus. His is an extraordinary story of survival and how a split second decision to help a complete

3:05stranger not only saved her life, but Paul believes ultimately saved his as well. In the morning, some people may find the content in this program distressing. Inside Corpus Christi Church in the town of Hasbroke Heights, New Jersey, Paul Carrus is standing on the altar. Today, he serves as a deacon in the Catholic Church, and this morning, he is proclaiming the gospel. Even so, on the outside, you are here righteous, but inside, you are filled with hypocrisy and evil. Thanks a lot, guys. You got what you're doing? He's a great guy. There's many players. What did they give Pazaro? Thank you. I'm really glad to meet you. After Mass, Paul is talking to parishioners outside. Then he and I leave the group and walk over to the parish house when the sound of a low-flying jet passes overhead.

4:07We hear the planes overhead. What chair-port is that coming from, Paul? It's Tito-Berry Airport. It's basically right next to Hasbroke Heights. For a few couple of years after 9-11, if there were a low-flying plane with a loud engine roar, it would send chills to me. There was a roar when the plane did jet hit the train center that you just never forget. I learned about PTSD. It's an unconscious thing. Your body actually reacts before your mind catches up to what happened. So that took a couple of years before that feeling went away. Let's go back in time to 2001. Paul was working in New York City and his office was on the 71st floor of the World Trade Center. I work for the poor authority. I actually joined them in 1986 and I work for them for almost 10 years and then I left for five and a half years doing other consulting engineering jobs. My daughters were getting to the age where I was traveling a lot in the consulting field

5:07and I said, I need to be home more. So an opportunity arose to rejoin the poor authority and I joined the poor authority in a different department that I had been in six weeks before 9-11. So you were just back in the job before September 11th. You were sitting in the office was new. You were just back into the company. I was, even though I had been at the port for 10 years, I was joining a new department. I was joining the IT department. So there were no engineers in the IT department. I literally still had boxes that I had not unpacked from moving in when 9-11 came. What do you remember about the morning of September 11th and going into work and what you did that morning? It was a magnificent morning. All my typical commute, I would take the train down to Hoboken, New Jersey and then take the ferry or path train across the river. When I took the ferry, there is a little chapel sponsored by nearby St. Peter's Church right by the Marina and Battery Park City and I would go to the 8 o'clock mass there and that's what I did that morning like normal.

6:10That was done by 8.30 and I'd go up to my office because half a block away and I was literally on the phone with my new boss, around 8.45, got off the phone and then heard the roar of a jet engine and then the impact of the building and the impact of the building tilted the building. The building actually started to tilt almost at a point where you thought it was going to keep going and then it just rocked back and forth until it stabilized in place. My cubicle was on a window and all of this flames and debris from above us was just coming down outside my window. It almost seemed like a movie like this isn't real, this isn't happening. Well yeah, I mean we had no idea what the size of the jet was that hit us but there were a lot of people that had never been there during the 92 bombing so they were all just sitting around like what was that?

7:10Because the lights flickered off and came back on and the buildings stood still again but then one of the managers in my department started walking around saying everybody out. I believe the building had tilted so much that even books had fallen off your bookshelf. Yeah, books did fall off my bookshelf and it was just what everybody was like what just happened. You don't consciously understand what could have just taken place. At 846 AM the first plane struck the north tower of the World Trade Center. That's when I ran into a small group of people who were huddled around a woman who was sitting down. I just went over to stop to see if there's anything I could do and the woman was doubled over. She was very overweight and she was hyperventilating but whatever reason I just said I'll take

8:11care of her and the other's left and then I said let's go we'll get out of the building and that started a journey with my then new friend Judas Toppen. You didn't know this person. You were new in that department and you didn't know who this person was. I did not know Judas. I just saw people struggling to figure out what to do with her because she really was very overweight but she just listened to my voice and got up like I asked her to and then started walking out. What made you want to stop Paul because I think for many of us in that situation you're thinking of yourself first and getting to the stairwell and even when you looked you saw there were a group of people already around her so you think okay well she's already taken care of I can just continue on. There's no logical answer to that. I can look back on it now and realize that the Holy Spirit was probably leading me there. I have no rational reason why I stopped why I said to the others you guys can go I'll

9:11take her. When you enter the stairwell with Judas and you started that slow descent down 71 stories how are you moving down with her how are you actually helping her? Judas was probably 300 pounds and she couldn't manage to get down the stairs so I put my right arm underneath her left arm told her to take the banister on the right side with her right arm and then I was holding the banister on the left side with my other arm just so I could support her going down the stairs but unfortunately that meant we were blocking the entire stairwell so as people were piling you know forming little traffic jammed behind us literally at every landing we had to stop move to the side let the people behind us pass and then get back down so literally every landing we had to stop to get out of the way for people. And there's a landing between each floor so you're stopping like twice for every floor and were people getting agitated and angry behind you as they were being held up and where

10:15they started to panic? The thing that nobody who was not there can understand is that everybody was so cooperative everybody was so calm going down those stairs there was no sense of panic it was entirely calm given the chaos that everybody else in the world was looking at on TV outside the building. You're looking at the world trade center we understand that a plane has crashed into the world. Within minutes of the first attack new started to break on TV channels around the world. We have some remarkable pictures coming in from New York which we can go to now and they were. But this was before the time when everyone had a mobile phone or social media and so nobody inside the tower knew exactly what had happened I guess ignorance is bliss and you guys didn't know what was going on outside. Yeah we did not know what happened we just we assumed a small plane might have hit the building that was it there was a smell of jet fuel which I didn't know

11:21it smells like kerosene so that was permeating the air. At 903 AM the second plane struck the south tower of the world trade center but again in the other building the north tower they heard nothing isn't it amazing Paul when you think about it that people watching live on television in Australia had more information and knew what was going on far more than you did right there inside the tower. I mean it actually probably helped the calmness of everybody going down. After we felt that wind blast around the 25th floor then there was a noticeable change in the atmosphere of everybody there was much more urgency. At 9.59 AM the south tower the second to be hit collapsed. I think around the 25th floor that we felt this huge wind blast come up the stairwell

12:24and everybody was like what was that and again piecing together the timeline later we realized that's when the south tower collapsed. How was Judah doing how was she faring going down all those floors? I think Judas was just totally focused on listening to my voice but then she started praying she started praying out loud the sum 23 Lord is my shepherd and stupid me I wasn't even thinking of praying I was so focused on Judas and I said oh yeah I best start praying. You said actually you know what Judas that's not a bad idea yeah yeah so I started praying the hour father to myself but yeah she was going down praying the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want and obviously that him and that psalm has a huge meaning for me now. She was saying this kind of repeated as going down as she had. She saw the urgency after when we hit the 25th floor and that's when she started to panic a little bit more. At one point she was almost just like a robot throwing her leg forward and it took a

13:31lot more effort and there's where somebody else had helped me keep her up because she would have just gone down and what are you saying to her Paul at this point let's do this come on you. Well last ten floors it's like Judas move your leg we got to get down we got to get down and at that point there really wasn't very many people in the stairwell the last ten floors and it all passed you. They had all passed. Honestly there are scores of people that are literally running behind me there's debris on the on the base of the building that has continued to fall. We got out into the lobby and it was like you stepped into another world you know it would look like European cities bombed after World War 2 just debris everywhere you could see some debris that had pushed out from an elevator just like a big pile there was really nobody to direct us at that point because most of the people were gone the lobby of the World Trade Center were these huge glass panels and they were

14:37all shattered so there's glass all over the floor. When you went outside and you looked around what was it like outside? Just debris everywhere nothing there was nobody it was just eerie silence everything was gray with with dust all over it we were just sort of following instinct to get to West Street head north and then try to head to the river probably the most startling image that I had was I realized we were stepping over bodies and this one body I looked at it was almost like a cartoon it was too dimensional it must have been one of the jumpers and literally flat and once I saw that body all of a sudden it's like oh wow there's more of them around my initial

15:38view is just as gray ash but then I saw that body and it was I've trying to keep Judith focused you know let's keep looking ahead because she was starting to look up starting to look at that's a Judas just keep going keep poking his head Judith and Paul were just one block away when they heard a deafening roar behind them I look back and I saw the top of the tower actually starting to come down at that point people just the firemen or the emergency workers started yelling run because the north tower we had just exited was starting to come down got to the corner as fast as we could got around the corner of the building and then this debris that was like a train shooting right past us not even curling around the building it was so much force it went straight west and we were around the corner protecting us and then we got into the lobby of that building what's that feeling like Paul

16:41when you have just made it out and you see the building you were in moments ago crumbling to the ground you know that you have just escaped death when we got into the lobby of that hotel which was on the corner it was filled with emergency workers getting medical treatment and I sat Judith down got somebody to give him was more oxygen and I walked over to a water cooler to get some water and I had these two cups and I just 15 feet walking back to Judith my hand started shaking uncontrollably and all the water fell came out of the cups and that's when again my body was responding to whatever I just went through and yeah I just I started crying hands were shaking so I guess I guess I held it together long enough to get to that lobby it's amazing what the body can do isn't it in the mind that fight or flight you had just kind of gone into autopilot to get down and get out and that that protected both of us until we got to that

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18:48you could hire the guy your neighbor recommended but i'm pretty sure that's just his cousin do we know if he's licensed or does he just don't a ladder listen to your home go with thumbtack upload a photo or voice note and we'll diagnose your project and match you with the right pro for the job thumbtack we know homes hire the right pro today this is the documentary from the BBC World Service i'm column Flynn and i'm in the USA for Horton's soul hearing the extraordinary story of Paul Carrus one of the last survivors to leave the north tower of the world trade center on september 11th 2001 just before it collapsed they went outside the hotel lobby where they were taken shelter and got into the back of an ambulance and inside there was an injured firefighter and the paramedics were just a closed the door we're getting out of here they got onto the west side highway which was jammed with cars and they

19:51literally made their own lane we were scraping up the side of the the concrete median as they were heading north and we ended up going so far north that we i thought we were going to columbia presbyterian which is 168th street and it turns out we were even farther north than that we went to an annex to columbia presbyterian hospital and we're up by the Bronx border so this ambulance is literally scraping the concrete on one side and Carrus on the other just making its way through the traffic yes yes because the firefighter was injured and they were trying to get him to a hospital somewhere when june thand pole eventually got to the hospital they were separated and because pole had no medical issues he made his way home and i didn't end up getting home until like three o'clock in the afternoon and again some close friends from my to my neighborhood were just there with her waiting for me what was it like when you came home at three o'clock in the afternoon lots of hugs lots of hugs lots of tears but a lot of happy faces

20:54i had no way of contacting june th or even really knowing who she was but about three days later she had called a bowl or of her contacts we worked with and then she found my number and called me up and i said hi Paul this is june th and i was like wow um we i don't know we have silence on the phone just like what we had gone through Paul and june developed a friendship chatting on the phone and meeting up every now and then but as the years went on and life got busy they were in touch less and less and you yourself Paul and the years that passed how were you doing were you thinking back to september 11th how did you feel when you thought of that time well we got right back to work we had temporary offices set up in journal square and and a jersey city so that was consuming us and yeah there was obviously lists of people who were missing

21:57and they were trying to find out where these people were i did start having episodes of anger then an oer is coming from um i learned a difference between anger and rage because i crossed a line into rage several times unfortunately my family witnessed all of that realized i was a mess went to my church this was emotionally you couldn't control your emotions after 9-11 yeah the anger had just and i don't know what i was angry at it just came i didn't even know enough to think what i was angry at it was just this rage was coming up from inside so i stopped in the church and i was just crying my eyes out saying god what's going on with me one of my parish priests came in to close up the church that night we know each other so he came over and said Paul how you doing and i'm wiping my eyes trying to pretend nothing's going on and then i said i'm a mess and he said all right why don't you meet with me and when i didn't meet with him he said

22:59i don't know what you're going through but i'm probably not qualified to help you and he gave me the name of a Franciscan priest who ran a psychology practice in a neighboring town i got introduced to father Jim Kelly that way and he helped me with about nine months of therapy Paul started attending weekly therapy sessions with this priest and he says it forced him to look at how deep his faith actually was up to that point in my life you know you got your church life where you know everybody sees you go into church i'm a lector i'm in the choir and then there's a social life and the work life which is a different breed and that caused some issues in my marriage at one point Judith had written the story about me who did everything right and internally not consciously recognizing it i'm looking at this picture Judith painted and not living my life the

23:59best way i could have at that point as a catholic or a Christian Judith had described you as an angel angels walk among us and you were reading this thinking i'm not an angel yeah it's just it's flew in the face of my past life even though on the surface that was this great guy going to church all the time but it wasn't always the case and it's funny and they're mass today at the gospel when you were reading it you were talking about the hypocrites the Pharisees and the preachers yeah everybody looks good on the outside they follow the church's rules and laws and but inside they're hypocrites and they do all sorts of things to take care of themselves when Judith published that book describing you as an angel was part of the anger that you felt like a fraud like a phony yeah to an extent yeah she painted this hero and with the things that I've done in my life I didn't feel like I was a hero so that dichotomy of how I was living up to that point and this angel

25:05that Judith described my pastor invited me to this retreat called chrissio which is a three-day retreat run by layman it's a short course in Christianity but the weekend woke me up to what being Catholic really is it's not about just following the rules and going to mass it's about having a relationship with Christ and I didn't know that I was 46 years old I didn't know that after all that time at the end of that weekend we get all the candidates get to share something and I said you know before 9-11 I didn't think there was anything wrong with my life I didn't kill anybody I was doing good after 9-11 I had that rage developed because something was missing and after that chrissio weekend I realized what was missing is really having a relationship with Jesus how did that relationship with Christ then that had developed how did that change your life well chrissio was the opening door it led me to

26:07doing weird things like I would stop in a religious bookstore which I'd never done in my life and led me to certain books that became very important to me I one of St. Teresa of Avola's books I read and it was just like the words were jumping off the page at me Paul wanted to live a deeper life of faith and 10 years after the attack in May 2011 he was ordained a permanent Eacon for the Archdiocese of New York and Judith was there to see it she she showed up from Brooklyn she came to Newark for the ordination she had surgery and had lost about 150 pounds so she was barely recognizable to me it made me realize when other people would say oh you saved Judith now God put Judith in my life to save me being ordained the Deacon was so not the culmination of that but the start of a ministry that I was called to that I had no idea I

27:12was being called to so you really believed that that it wasn't you who saved Judith but it was Judith who saved you as well God saved both of us I really it took a little while for me to actually come to appreciate that you got a phone call then one day poor Judith passed away yeah I had a voicemail on my phone and she said I really started to let you know that you know Judith passed and she got me in time where I was able to get to the funeral service out in Brooklyn I saw Judith as this frail sickly person and what I saw at her funeral was that she was the rock of her family you know from Trinidad and Tobago to Brooklyn to Canada she was like the matriarch everybody turned to her when they were in trouble or needed advice and she was a strong one for all of them so hearing that gave me a totally different perspective of understanding Judith

28:14it's incredible to think Paul isn't it that even from the darkest of times light can shine through sometimes it's a beautiful thing God does amazing things with the tragedy uh if we're lucky enough to be able to look through or pass the tragedy we see those things given everything that happened and the timing of everything should I be here probably not but boy he got my attention to take me on a path that uh yeah 9-11 almost feels like a different lifetime ago my ministry has really come to define who I am now at this point you've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service this episode of Heart and Soul was produced and presented by me Column Flame and the series producer is Rajiv Kaptaan

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