Nine11

Chief John Jonas was on the 27th floor in stairwell B of the north tower when he received word that the south tower had collapsed. As a fireman, everything in him told him to continue on. His instinct told him opposite. As he and five other members of Ladder Company 6 approached the 28th floor, the chief made the decision to head back down and get out of the north tower. On about the 20th floor, they ran into Josephine Harris, a heavyset, 59-year-old bookkeeper who had worked at the Port Authority for six months. Josephine had already made it down 50 floors when her leg, injured from a previous accident, had given out. As firefighter, Billy Butler, bent over to assist Josephine, he looked up at Jonas and asked, "What do you want to do with her, Cap?" “We got to bring her with us,” he told his company. By that point, Harris could barely stand. Butler, short, barrel-chested, the company’s strongest man, put her arm over his shoulder. The company’s pace slowed to Harris’s. They had made it to the 5th floor when Harris decided she could go no further. Chief Jonas went to look for a chair to carry Harris the rest of the way down on when he ran into Port Authority officer David Lim. They could not find a chair so David Lim placed his arm around Harris to help carry her to the 4th floor. That's when they felt the wind. As the north tower began to collapse some 60 floors above them, wind began to blast downwards through the stairwell caused by each floor pancaking down on top of each other. Within 8 seconds, the tower disintegrated into a massive pile of rubble that completely surrounded a salvaged portion of stairwell B that still had 16 survivors trapped inside. Jonas recalls thinking, "I can't believe this is how I am going to die". After the pitch blackness of the dust had settled, he realized he was still alive, along with David Lim and his five firefighters, Mike Meldrum, Matt Komorowski, Billy Butler, Tom Falco and Sal D'Agostino; and of course Josephine Harris, in which they now refer to as their guardian angel.

Father God, may Your Holy Spirit continue to rest upon those who were left to carry the burden of the loss of a loved one. May they know that You are still in control and that all things that happen, good and bad, are covered by Your mercy and grace. And thank You God, for the heroes of that day, the ones that died saving lives and the ones that survived. Thank You for the men and women that serve around the world in their continuing efforts to push back and defeat the darkness of evil. In Jesus, Amen.