Port Authority Police Officer David Lim felt the building shake at 8:46 a.m. “It was like a jolt and lasted about five seconds,” he said.

Sitting in his basement office (B-1 level) in Two World Trade Center (South Tower), Lim said he knew something was wrong. Within seconds a transmission crackled over his high-frequency radio – a report of an explosion on the upper levels of One World Trade Center (North Tower).

Since 6 a.m. Lim and canine partner Sirius, a specially trained bomb dog, had been doing what they did every day — checking for explosives in trucks entering the WTC basement.

“My first thought was that something had gotten through on one of the trucks,” he said. “At the time it seemed like the end of the world to me. I looked at Sirius and said, ‘Buddy, I think we missed one.’”

Unknown to Lim and 50,000 WTC office workers, American Airlines Flight 11, hijacked from Boston’s Logan Airport, had slammed into 1 WTC, crashing through floors 93 to 99.

“A jet fuel fireball erupted upon impact and shot down at least one bank of elevators,” according to The 9/11 Commission Report. “The fireball exploded onto numerous lower floors, including the 77th and 22nd, the West Street lobby level, and the B-4 level, four stories below ground. The burning jet fuel immediately created thick, black smoke that enveloped the upper floors and roof of the North Tower. The roof of the South Tower was also engulfed in smoke because of the prevailing light winds from the northwest.” 1 Hundreds died immediately; hundreds more were trapped alive.

Lim, a second-generation Chinese-American and 22-year veteran cop, was embarking on the longest, most arduous, and most heart-breaking day of his life.

I’ll Be Back

He locked Sirius, his yellow, four-year-old Labrador, in the kennel of his office. “He’s a bomb dog, not a search and rescue dog,” Lim said. “I thought he’d be safe in the building, in the basement. I said to him, ‘I’m going to help the people [in the other building]. I’ll be back for you.’”

Running north through the basement to 1 WTC, he saw others racing in the same direction. “The basement was an underground city,” he said. “You didn’t have to cross over anything to get to other buildings, it was all connected underneath. At that moment we were like little ants in a cavern getting to that building.”

Lim got up to the Plaza level and noticed people exiting the A staircase. “A lot of women were hurrying down from above, carrying their shoes,” he said. “People were also trying to get down the escalator to the next level on West Street. I asked a New York City cop to turn off the ‘up’ escalator; we didn’t need an ‘up’ escalator. It would help people get down more quickly.”

Then someone screamed. Turning around, Lim could see that someone had fallen onto the Plaza outside the building from a great height. “I ran over and could see the body had landed on the outdoor stage, the Summertime Stage, where live music was performed during lunch time.”

Things Are Not Good Upstairs

He was calling his Command Desk to report the incident when a second body fell right in front of him. “That’s when I realized things are not good and I better get upstairs,” he said. “I mean, helping people on the Plaza is not a bad thing and no one would have faulted me for it. But I figured they needed my help upstairs if they’re jumping out of the building from 70 or 80.”

Lim avoided the elevators and headed for the staircase. On the crowded stairs he wound his way through office workers heading for the lobby and the concourse. Some people seemed annoyed and wanted to know why they had to go down when a cop was going up. “You keep going down,” Lim said, reassuringly. “Down is good; it’s a good thing.”

He grabbed a man’s flashlight. “You’re not going to need this,” he told him. “You’ll have plenty of light down there.”

Lim exited the A staircase at the 27nd floor. “I remember there was a guy in a wheelchair and he was waiting with a friend. I thought ‘I’ve got to help this guy.’ But he said, ‘No, no, we’re waiting for the other people to go down so we don’t get in the way.’

By now, Lim said, people had realized the situation was serious. They knew something bad had happened and many wanted to get out of the building. Still, others didn’t know what happened. They waited, even remaining at their desks for official instructions. Until then, Lim only knew there had been an explosion on an upper floor of 1 WTC.

“Then I heard my radio go off and they confirmed a plane had hit,” he said. “I lowered the radio so people wouldn’t hear. I thought at first that a small plane had hit, which is bad, but these buildings were rated for a plane crash. I was concerned but not concerned of possible, imminent collapse.”

Lim met up with firefighters on the 27nd floor who had come up the B staircase. “I told them I had to get this guy in the wheelchair down. They said they’d take care of him. So I took their staircase, the B staircase. It didn’t seem very important to me at the time.” But it proved to be a fateful decision.

A Second Plane Hits

“I was working my way up the staircase, and I heard [over the radio] a second plane had hit [2 WTC]. The first plane I thought was an accident, but the second I thought we’re under attack.”

Hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into 2 WTC at 9:03 a.m., demolishing floors 77 through 85. “[T]he largest and most complicated rescue operation in city history instantly doubled in magnitude.” 4

Lim got to the 44th-floor sky lobby and directed people to take the staircase, not the express elevator. “Never take an elevator in an emergency,” he said. There was a utility closet on the floor that held firefighting equipment. Lim gave the closet key to some nearby firefighters.

At 9:59 a.m. 2 WTC collapsed. Although it was hit second, it fell first, in about 15 agonizing seconds. People who watched the horror on television were incredulous when the Tower disappeared.

“The sound was unbelievable,” Lim said. “The force literally blew out windows on my floor and knocked me and others to the floor and pushed us back to the other window. Once that happened, I started to grab what people were left and said to them, ‘We’re getting out of here.’ That was the moment when the reality hit me that the building I was in could possibly collapse. Up to that point, even with two planes hitting two buildings, I thought, ‘This is the World Trade Center. This is New York. Nothing could make these things collapse.’”

No Panic

Lim gathered as many people as he could and started down the B staircase. Despite the chaos, people in 1 WTC remained resolute and calm. “In general, they were quiet,” Lim said. “No one was in a chatty mood, but as far as panic, I didn’t see a lot of that at all.”

Arriving at the 27nd floor, Lim was pleased to see that the man in the wheelchair was no longer waiting at the escalator. He assumed he had made it out. Moving down to the next floor, he saw Chief James Romito, Captain Kathy Mazza and Lieutenant Robert Cirri, all of the Port Authority Police Department, making a stretcher for an injured man. “I went to the Chief and told him, ‘You know the other building collapsed.’”

Romito grabbed his pager and read the message confirming what Lim has told him. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Okay, let’s get out of here.” Romito and Cirri grabbed the injured man and started down the stairs.

“This is when it started getting bad,” Lim said. “The stairwell was losing electric power. After the explosion in ’93, they put fluorescent paint on the stairwell edges. Now lights were going off, and the strips would light up. Lights would go back on and the strips would go off. Like a light show.”

Descending through the eerie stairwell, Lim calculated his odds. “I’m thinking, ‘I’m not going to make it,’” he said. “This isn’t going to happen. It’s going to come down while I’m still in it.’”

On the fifth floor he noticed an older woman, a Port Authority employee named Josephine Harris, sitting on the side of the stairs. People were moving past her, stepping around her, to get downstairs. New York Firemen from Ladder Co. No. 6 were trying to find a chair to carry her down.

“I told them they wouldn’t find a chair on the fifth floor, only mechanical equipment,” Lim said. “So I pick her up by one arm and a fireman took the other, and we started downstairs.”

Nearing the exit of the stairwell, Mazza called up to Lim to leave the woman with the firemen and come with her. “I remember shouting to her, ‘Go ahead, boss. I’ll be right behind you. I’ve already got her.’” Never in his career did he question a senior officer’s command or request. It proved to be another fateful decision.

Like Being in a Blender

Romito, Mazza and Cirri exited the staircase and were making their way into the lobby. “I got down one more floor when I felt the building shaking, rumbling,” he said. “It sounded like someone stuck me in blender. I actually could hear the floors [above me] pancaking – boom, boom, boom! The thing I remember most is putting Josephine down on the floor and covering her with my body. I’m lying there thinking of my family and hoping it works out for everyone.”

The collapsing tower compressed gale-force winds through the stairwell. “It was like a hurricane,” Lim said. “One of the firemen behind me was lifted up and was thrown over me.”

Lim said he had a selfish thought. “I hope it’s quick,” he said. “I don’t want to be lying here for days, legs broken, dying of thirst.”

After 15 to 20 seconds the building stopped collapsing. In complete darkness, buried under dust and debris, Lim thought, “’I must be dead.’ Then I coughed. Dead men don’t cough. A weird thought, I admit.”

Captain Jonas, one of the firemen in the stairwell, called out, “Is everyone alright? Sound off!” Lim got off Josephine Harris; she was okay. All 14 had survived the largest collapse of a superstructure in history.

“I had the only cell phone,” he said, his voice barely audible. “I called my wife. It was difficult. I was happy to be alive, but I could be buried here for the rest of my life. I have 105 stories above my head. I had that thought almost instantaneously when the building stopped collapsing.”

After several hours, he received a radio transmission from the fire department asking for their location. “I told them to find the globe in the middle of the Plaza and then go about 100 yards west, and they’d run right into us,” he said.  “I remember the fireman on the other end saying, ‘What globe?’ This thing is a mini-moon, it’s enormous, but it’s gone.”

Meanwhile, others on the landing were trying to find a way out. During the collapse part of the staircase leading down had broken away, so they decided to climb up and out of the rubble.

A Salt Shaker

“The building had collapsed around us, leaving us like a salt shaker on a table,” he said. “We started digging and I saw some light. I thought the light was from the floor above us, but as we dug it turned out to be the sun. I thought, ‘How could this be?’”

Lim was feeling much better now. “I went from almost getting killed in the collapse, to being buried alive, now my only concern is getting down,” he said. They still have to descend through four stories of jagged, smoldering debris.

Besides a concussion and a lower-back injury, Lim said his condition was not severe. After about five hours, a fire company arrived at the staircase with ladders, ropes and an emergency basket to carry out Josephine Harris who now couldn’t move.

Lim helped fireman Mike Meldrum who had a more serious concussion. “I kept talking to him,” he said. “Don’t ask me why, but they say it’s better to keep someone with a concussion awake.”

As firemen helped them climb down through the debris, he saw bodies and body parts covered in gray, filmy dust. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I focused on shoes. There were empty women’s shoes all over the place. It took my mind away from the other things that were lying next to the shoes.”

Eventually, he got off the debris field and walked to West Street where a team of emergency medical techs (EMTs) had set up a triage station. “They started to rip my shirt off and examine me,” he said. “I told them, ‘Look, look, I’ve got to get back to my command.’”

Everyone’s So Clean

At 3:30 p.m. Lim headed north toward World Financial Center. “There was nothing left,” he said. “I looked around and seemed to be one of the only guys covered from head to toe in dust and debris. All gray. I was wondering, ‘Why does everyone look clean? Am I the only guy working today?’”

Lim said he was probably in shock at the time and didn’t realize it. “It didn’t occur to me that these guys on the sidelines were new troops, and that everyone who looked like me had already been taken away,” he said.

He worked his way back to 7 World Trade Center to get to Sirius, his dog, who he left hours ago when the world still made sense. But before he could get down the Barclay Street ramp, he was stopped by a Port Authority Police car. “Officers Demrowski and Greenstein grabbed me, threw me into the car, and took me to the command post. “We were ready to report you dead on a preliminary list,” Demrowski said.

When he walked into the command post, everyone started cheering. Lim was the only surviving Port Authority Police Officer at that time. Later, Police Officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno would be recovered alive.

Lim was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital where he was reunited with his wife and two children. “There was no one at St. Vincent’s,” Lim said. “Obviously, there were victims at hospitals closer to the World Trade Center, but not many at my hospital. It was eerie. You either made it or you didn’t. If you were down there, chances are you were dead.”

He was released from the hospital that evening, went home, and watched news coverage of the disaster into the early morning hours. His wife checked on him every couple of hours.

Lim learned later that Romito, Mazza, and Cirri died in the lobby when the building collapsed. They were assisting a man in a wheelchair.

“On September 11, the nation suffered the largest loss of life – 2,973 – on its soil as a result of hostile attack in its history,” according to The 9/11 Commission Report. “The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) suffered 343 fatalities – the largest loss of life of any emergency response agency in history. The Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) suffered 37 fatalities – the largest loss of life of any police force in history. The New York Police Department (NYPD) suffered 23 fatalities – the second largest loss of life of any police force in history, exceeded only by the number of PAPD officers lost the same day.” 5

Sirius Touched People

Sirius also died, the only K-9 lost on 9/11. Lim helped in his recovery, giving rescue workers precise directions to his office in the basement of 2 WTC. “When they brought Sirius up, they stopped everything, the machines, everything,” Lim said proudly. “A priest said a few words about ‘creatures great and small’ over his flag-draped body. He received full honors. Cops saluted the K-9.”

When they gave him the flag covering Sirius’ body, Lim remembered breaking down. “He was my partner and my friend,” he said.

Sirius was brought to the autopsy room of Bellevue Hospital. When the coroner saw the battered dog, she too broke down and wept.

In April 2002 a memorial service was held for Sirius. One hundred dog-handlers and their dogs, representing K-9 units throughout the tri-state area, attended. “It was a wonderful memorial,” Lim said. “I’ve kept the ashes in my home.”

In addition to receiving posthumously the Medal of Honor from the Port Authority Police Department, Sirius also received many touching tributes from people worldwide. Perhaps one of most memorable gestures for Lim came from school children in California. “One school in Lompoc sent Sirius boxes of dog biscuits individually wrapped with a message and a child’s signature on each one,” he said.

The recipient of numerous awards from organizations throughout the country, Lim is proudest of his Meritorious Service Medal from the Port Authority Police Department.

Eight years later Lim is still asking “what if” questions. “What if I had helped the guy in the wheelchair on the 27th floor, maybe Chief Romito, and Kathy and Cirri would have gotten out? What if I hadn’t given the fire closet keys to the firemen on the 44th floor? They went up; I went down. None of them made it.”

He returned to work part-time one and half months after 9/11. In 2005 he was promoted to Sergeant and in 2008 to Lieutenant. Today he works at all Port Authority facilities, spanning New York and New Jersey.

Asked how he wished to be remembered he said, “He lived his life well and he did the best he could to take care of his family.”

Copyright © 2009 by Vince Reardon

Endnotes

1. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report. 1st Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 2003. p. 280.

2. Ibid., p. 285

3. Ibid., p. 285

4. Ibid., p. 293

5. Ibid., p. 311

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