A survivor of the September 11 attacks is speaking out about what he remembers from that day.
Twenty-one years ago, David Paventi worked for a large bank at the time that was based out of North Carolina. He was sitting in a meeting on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower when he felt the room shake.
Paventi told Fox News Digital that he assumed it was an earthquake “because the building shifted one way and then back the other, and then it started to shake.”
“I started to go under the table because I didn’t want the light to fall on me, but everyone rapidly started exiting the room,” he said.
Paventi said he remembers hearing someone yell, “A plane hit the building!” as people were going to the stairs.
“In the stairwell, there were not a lot of people coming from upstairs. Tells you what was going on a few flights up,” he said.
Paventi said that as he got down to the 70th floor, the narrow stairwell was congested and he remembers how “eerily quiet” the atmospehere was, as not many people were talking.
Then on his two-way pager, Paventi got the news that a plane had hit the Tower and shortly after he was also told that a second plane had hit the South Tower in an apparent terrorist attack.
“A couple of times we’d sit there, and we’d look at each other thinking, should we try another stairwell,” Paventi said about devising a plan to escape the building with his co-worker.
Paventi explained that they decided to stay at the stairwell when they saw that it was moving.
“There was one point when everyone got over so the firemen could run up. Here we were all trying to get out and all these guys coming up in full gear, carrying hoses. I couldn’t imagine running up to this fire, running upstairs and knowing you still have 40-50 flights to go,” he said.
Paventi said when he finally was able to reach the lobby, all the lights were out which caused the emergency lights to come on and there was also water on the floor.
“Looking outside, it looked like a scene from ‘Die Hard.’ Windows were blown out, there was glass everywhere,” he explained.
As he exited to the courtyard he heard people yelling to him, “Don’t look, just run.”
“We started running uptown, and I remember looking up and watched as the first tower just dropped in on itself. My co-worker had just gotten a hold of his wife and the last thing she heard from him was, ‘Holy s–t’, before the phone cut out,” he said.
Paventi and his co-worker were able to make it out safely. He then decided to hitchhike to his co-worker’s brother’s home on Long Island. Paventi was also able to get a rental car to return to North Carolina the next day.
Twenty-one years later, there has been an effort made to make sure that future generations don’t forget that historic day.
Frank Siller lost his brother Steven, a New York City firefighter, in the Twin Tower attacks on 9/11 and is now the CEO of Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
Siller told “Fox & Friends” that the first mission at the Tunnel to Towers foundation and why they started is to make sure that we never forget what happened that day and to honor the heroes.
He announced that the foundation now has a “9/11 Institute” where they created a curriculum which will be avaliable in all 50 states to make sure that our next generation will be taught what happened that day.
