"We felt this shuddering, and the whole building shook"

I was in my office like any ordinary day. Then we started watching what was happening at the World Trade Center. Suddenly, we felt this shuddering, and the whole building shook-like an earthquake. I assumed it was part of whatever was going on in New York. My office was in the path of the aircraft, but it was in A Ring, so it stopped short.

Immediately, there were orders to evacuate, but I'm a physician so I went to see if I could be of help. I only had to turn the corner. There was thick smoke and people emerging from it and they were saying, "There's more people in there." So we took paper towels, wet them, put them around our faces and went in, looking for people and guiding them out of the building to safety.

I was having trouble breathing, so I stepped into the open breezeway between C and B rings to get some fresh air. I saw these two holes where the aircraft had come through. You could see an aircraft tire that had come through three rings of the Pentagon, and there were charts and other stuff that was obviously from the aircraft.

You could hear voices in there, and so a few of us grabbed fire extinguishers and went in. Even though we were spraying the extinguishers, it was getting hotter. I came across two people helping two others out of there, and they told me there was another guy farther in, trapped or something.

We went inside. By this time, your uniform was melting in the heat-the ceiling itself was melting and dripping on you. It was apocalyptic. Sparks were flying, the heat was getting worse, and you had to crawl to see and breathe-to get below this cloud of pure black, jet-fuel smoke.

I saw Dave Thomas in this cave pulling at something. Then I saw Jerry Henson. It was clear to me he had head injuries and was having trouble breathing. It was like a blast furnace in there, and people outside were yelling at us, "Everybody out! It's going to go!"

I said to Jerry, almost out of frustration, "Let's go, man!" But he said, "I can't move." I didn't really want to go in there. I wanted him to come to me. But he wasn't going anywhere without help. So I crawled in.

When I got to him, I couldn't see how he'd lasted this long. I could barely breathe and I'd only been in there a few seconds-he'd been in 20 minutes. The desk had turned over on him, pinning him down, and the whole cubicle was on top of that, and there were bookcases and part of the roof on top of that-and all of that stuff was on fire. I didn't know how I was going to lift all the rubble. In desperation, I lay on my back and started pushing with my legs. I used to be on the Stanford University crew team, and we did exercises like that; maybe that's how I got the inspiration.

Anyway, it moved the pile a little and while I was doing this, he grabbed my neck and arm, and I grabbed him and pulled him over me and Dave Thomas pulled him out. On the way out, I asked him if there were others. He thought there might be, so I held it a little longer and yelled, "Anybody in there?" I heard nothing. I couldn't hold it anymore, so I rolled over and let it down. Then I crawled out.

Thirty seconds later, the whole roof collapsed and that whole part of the building erupted in flames. So we got him out just in time. It was a miracle that we all ended up in the same place.