A Canadian and an American 9/11 survivor tell their stories

0:00This week on Two Blocks from the White House From trade wars to the war in Iran, it's been anything but a quiet summer in Washington. And this fall shows no signs of letting up. And so this week we're asking what moments defined American politics this summer and what can we expect this fall? Find and follow Two Blocks from the White House wherever you get your podcasts. And watch us on YouTube, new episodes drop every Wednesday. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. The sky was a beautiful, perfect blue. The sun shone, the air was crisp and clear. And then one jet plane and then another flew into the iconic towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. 25 years ago today, the city and the world changed in a matter of minutes. The towers billowed with smoke and then eventually crumbled to the ground.

1:00In the end, around 2700 people died in the 9-11 attacks on New York. Civilians and first responders, hundreds more died that day in an attack on the Pentagon and on a hijacked plane in Pennsylvania. Today's ceremonies will be held in all of those sites to commemorate 25 years since those terrorist attacks. Joining me are two people who were working in the World Trade Center Towers that day. Ron DeFrancisco is a Canadian who is working in the South Tower and has been described as the last man to make it out of that tower alive. And Wendy Lansky was working in the North Tower. 25 years ago can seem like a lifetime and also a blink of an eye. And I want to thank you both for for being willing to talk about your experiences on that day. Ron, how difficult is it to think back on what happened 25 years ago for you? I think a lot of people think after 25 years that it's gone. But for me, it's still, I live it all the time when I speak about it.

2:02And when I think about my colleagues, I keep in touch with some of their spouses. So it's ever present to me. What about for you, Wendy? I completely agree. It becomes a little bit less raw than it was 25 years ago. And even on some days, that's not even true. But it is ever present in everything I do, every interaction. There's not a day go by that I don't think about it. About the people we lost, about my experiences, about what I saw and about the world in the last 25 years. Wendy, we'll hear more of your story just a few minutes. But I want to start with you, Ron. You were working in the South Tower, which was the second tower to be hit on that morning. When did you realize in that morning that something was happening? I arrived early. I was a money market broker. So I used to trade US dollar in European currency. I was on the 84th floor. And we were at our desks.

3:04And then back to the right, there was a loud explosion. And we saw a huge fireball sucking in on itself. And then tons of paper just floating up in the air. We ran over to see what had happened. And we saw a huge gate being hole in the side of the building. I didn't realize at that point it was a terrorist attack. I just thought, and then media was saying that a light aircraft had gone off course and crashed into the building. It wasn't until I saw people frantically just during in the windows there. And then saw the horrific thing of people jumping. So I went back to my desk, called my wife Mary, and told her that there was an accident in Tower 1. But they kept saying that Tower 2 was secure.

4:05Please go back to your office. So I continued calling my clients and talking to people on the phone. And then I got a call from a friend here in Toronto. And he was yelling at me to get out of the building. And that's when I started to make my way. And then the second plane hits and it hits very close to you, right? Yeah, so like I said, I was on the 84th floor. It went from 78 to 85 and it's starboard wing cut right through our trading room. I was just leaving. I was on my way to the elevator banks when the plane hit. What did you do in that moment? Well, I got knocked over and the ceiling tiles and some of the drywall collapsed in on us. I was with another colleague of mine and we got ourselves up and cleaned ourselves up a bit.

5:11And then we went towards the stairwell and went into the stairwell at that point. And what happened then in terms of trying to get out of that building? So we went down a few flights and we met a woman coming up. She was being carried by two men. She told us that you couldn't go down below. There was too much smoke and fire. I was with another colleague as well and we heard some cries for help. So we were helping this man. And I was overcome with the smoke and started to climb up. I was with some colleagues and we got to about the 91st floor and I realized that we couldn't get out onto the floors just because they were locked from the inside for security reasons. So at that point, true panic started to set in and I started to line back down with some of my other colleagues. I guess we got to about the 82nd floor when the smoke overtook us.

6:15And I told some of the people I was with to light in and try to get beneath the hot choking smoke. And we were starting to drift off and then I got this call. Someone called me and said come this way. I heard the people say, where they're faithful and I count myself among you by the way. I love little trouble understanding who that was and the more secular. I may think it was my adrenaline, fuel synapses. But I got up and made my way through the smoke and in a last effort for air, I pushed against it. And I saw the staircase down below. So I slid down a piece of drywall and I ran down three flights of stairs that were on fire. And then I got beneath the impact zone and the sprinklers were working.

7:23Who do you think called you to get you off that floor? I believe it was a higher beam. If you're a God-believing person, I believe it was God. You know, someone definitely called me to come this way and I did follow it. Wendy, tell me about that morning for you when your tower was hit. What happened? Sorry, I'm crying from the story. It's incredible. That's incredible. And I just want to say what we've never met before, but I do believe it was a higher power and thank God you got out. So for me, as you mentioned in the introduction, it was a beautiful day. To this day, I call it a 9-11 day when it's 75 and clear and beautiful. And I was working for a health insurance company at the time, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, getting ready for a normal Tuesday status meeting that we had faithfully every week,

8:27getting up to start going towards the conference room for the meeting and felt a tremendous, just, thud, a tremendous impact and then a swaying of the building. There was no bells, whistles, megaphone, sirens, nothing. We saw debris falling out the window. People began to get reports on beepers and phones that there may have been a sessna, a sightseeing plane that hit the building. I believe that that in itself saved some lives because it wasn't run for your life. It was something happened. Let's get out. But our brains didn't think terrorism back then. Several of us decided to go towards the stairwell, started going down. It was a very, very slow descent because everyone on the lower floors was doing the same thing. As I started to go down about the 10th floor down, I smelled what smelled to me like gasoline. And I didn't understand

9:32if some small craft hit so far above me, how am I smelling gasoline? It just didn't make sense. The firemen were coming up the stairs as we were coming down. And I stopped one of them. I said, what exactly hit this building? And with an incredibly haunted expression, he said, a jet, but it was very unnerving because there was a feeling of being trapped in a stairwell surrounded by these jet fumes. We started descending down and down and down. And in the beginning of the escape, there was no direction. At the bottom of the stairs, it was the opposite. There was every type of first responder. There were people screaming. There were people hurt. There were people on fire. Giant pieces of marble and glass that were the makeup of a lobby were all over. And we were being told to go towards a specific exit to either put something on top of our head or shield our

10:34head in some way if we had anything and to not look up. And the command of don't look up was so much that human nature YouTube is kind of the opposite. And when I exited the building, it was only what I could imagine if there is a hell what it would look like, including of course that the people and the sounds and the sights of people jumping. That's awful. How close were you when the first tower collapsed? I was very close because when I got out of the tower, there was a woman in the street, just a good Samaritan that was somehow put in my path. And she gathered about five of us that were just kind of looking stunned in the street and said, my apartment is right here. Why don't you come to my home? You can call your families, you know, rest for a bit. I'm often asked, like, why didn't you get away as quickly as possible? But we didn't know the towers were going down. So we went to this woman's apartment. I called some family and all of a sudden I then heard a sound that I can't

11:42describe of like a rolling thunder and a freight train accompanied by an alarm going off in this apartment we were in. And the woman said, that's the evacuation alarm run. And we flew down the four flights and her apartment out into the street. And that sound, of course, was the sound of the South Tower starting to go down. We were in the street and we couldn't see a foot in front of us. I just kind of followed the herd of people running at this point. I didn't have shoes. I didn't have belongings. I'm just running in the street. I have asthma, which started to kick in. So I yelled out into the crowd. Does anyone happen in hailer? Because I was in such a survival mode. I knew the tower was going down. I didn't know what direction was I going to be impaled. I really had a desire to try to overcome and keep going. And I didn't want to die of asthma. So I'm taking inhalers in the street. People are taking up net ties and putting it around my mouth to help me

12:48just as we're all running. And somehow I did wind up at the destination I wanted, which was battery park city. Once I got there, though, I questioned my decision because I then heard that horrible noise again, which was my tower, the North Tower collapsing. And then I felt trapped because there was nowhere to go. So what all of us did that were at the rail is we laid face down on the ground. And just you heard people praying in every language, every religion. And that is when the next tower collapsed. This week on two blocks from the White House. From trade wars to the war in Iran, it's been anything but a quiet summer in Washington. And this fall shows no signs of letting up. And so this week we're asking what moments defined American politics this summer? And what can we expect this fall? Find and follow two blocks from the White House wherever you get your podcasts. And watch us on YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

13:55Did you eventually get out of that area on on me because you're down by the water with where there are boats there that we're helping people get out or? Interestingly, after the the North Tower collapse, I saw in the distance boats. And I was actually rescued by New York Waterway Ferry, which is a commuter boat. So the ferries came up as close as they could. And there wasn't a dock. So they said, okay, everyone line up women and children first, in every horrible disaster movie. And the ferrymen literally just hoisted us over the rail. And I didn't even know where the boat was going. I didn't care. One of my memories that will never go away is as the boat was pulling away. And I looked at my wonderful city. And it was gone. It was just a giant smoldering pile. And knowing at that moment that although I was incredibly lucky to be

14:57on that boat, wondering who wasn't on that boat and who wasn't coming home that day. Ron, you were seriously injured and burned in your efforts to get out of the building. What was life like for you in the days and weeks and months after September the 11th? I was hospitalized, I guess, for about 12 days. I don't really remember much of that. My wife reminded me of it. I had burns on, I guess, about 60% of my body. I had broken bone in my back, sizable laceration in my head. It was a long journey. I, um, we had four young kids at home. So my wife had to navigate being in the city, helping me, and then being at home and trying to explain to the children what had happened. So it was tough. For me, it was, it was a long journey. I went home,

16:01I guess, about 12 days after. And then I recovered at home with my wife's help. And I didn't go back to work part-time until March, full-time until April. And I was just taking care of my mental health as well as my injuries. And the mental health would be something, again, the physical injuries are obvious in some ways. But having survived something like that, the mental impact of that would be tremendous as well. Yeah, I did seek a lot of help. I did get a lot of psychiatrist and psychologist helping me, but my biggest support, I think, was from home and some of my colleagues that survived. I still struggle and my mental health is good, but it did take a long while to navigate through that. Do you, if you don't buy me asking, one of the things that you said was, was that idea that something, someone got you off the ground in that smoky stairwell and got you

17:06out of that building. There are people, obviously, thousands of people who didn't make it out. And I just wondered, do you think about one of the things people often talk about is that idea of survivors killed and why I survived and why others didn't? How do you work through that run? It's still a struggle. I'm lucky. I'm fortunate. I'm blessed. But you know, questioning why I got out and why others didn't will haunt me and speaking to some of my colleagues' families, that does bother me still. I don't know why I did get out. I am happy that I'm here, but I do struggle with that still. What about for you, Wendy? How do you, how do you understand why it is that you survived? I've actually given up the quest to the trying to understand why, because I've kind of made peace with

18:09the fact that I'm not really meant to know why. One of my best friends, Abraham Zelmanowitz, who was two floors below me, but stayed with his friend and my colleague who was in a wheelchair did not make it. I struggle because I feel that Abe was such an incredible human being, lived such a beautiful life, had so many things going on. And when in my mind I compared myself to Abe, he should be alive first. And so many others, when you look at the profiles of so many people, I can't completely ever make peace with it. I just try to do what I can in the world to honor the people who aren't here and the people who have died since from 9-11 diseases and make it count, because in the beginning, particularly when I met family members, I used to think that family members must take one look at me and hate me because I'm alive and their loved one isn't. And over time,

19:12I found out in my experience, it couldn't be further from the truth. They've embraced me. I had one family member say to me, you know, my son is at peace and you have to live this every day. In the beginning, we were told by our company to seek therapy almost mandated. And it didn't work for me because there was no precedent for terrorism in our country. And I would start to tell my story, my whole story of the day and the events, and the counselors would weep. And then I would feel guilty so that I would stop talking. So my kind of therapy over the last 25 years has been going to schools, going in corporate settings, churches, synagogues, wherever anyone wants me, and telling the story, keeping the memory alive and honoring in that way. But it never, it never really goes away. The survivor's guilt. Tell me about the tattoo that you just got.

20:14I have a couple of 9-11 tattoos. Over the years, I got a red, white, and blue heart, the word survivor, some other, the trade center, the statue of Liberty, kind of all of one. But this year, for the 25th, I did an eagle that has the digital numbers under it of 846 because 846 is a defining moment where my life changed where the North Tower was hit. And I did it because I want people who don't know to say, wait, what does 846 mean? And it brings about, it's not about me or my story, but about honoring and remembering all of the people that were impacted because they died, all of their family members, their children, their lives. So that's why I did that. Ron, one of the things that people talk about in the wake of this 25 years later still is the feeling of that city, but also the country and essentially the world coming together after 9-11.

21:17And the sense of that people were helping each other out and you saw that on the ground, you saw that with the people who helped rescue you, you saw that in the days and weeks after. What do you think we can learn from that? I think, well, like I had mentioned, I wasn't really awake during that time. I did see the good in people throughout the months after that. And I think 9-11 was a defining moment in our world's history from 9-12 on. It was a better world, people united across the world and especially in the US to support each other. I think now it's a little bit challenging in the world with wars going on and divisiveness. So I just hope that things change and go back to the way it was on 9-12. And even that relationship between Canada and the US, of course there was that we know these stories of thousands of air travelers who were hosted here in Canada. And now there's that

22:23the real sense that the relationship between Canada and the United States Ron is a truck you know. It's very difficult right now. We still have family in the US and family was a big support of mine. I think we're all good people at our hearts. I just think it's a little bit challenging now that people are so divided in our world. So I just hope that people reunite and there's no difference between you and I. Hopefully we can share the good with each other rather than be so Wendy, how do you think about that 25 years later, particularly that relationship between our two countries, Canada and the United States? I'm horribly disappointed and embarrassed that America has turned on Canada in certain ways. Canada and the United States have always been you know allies in every sense of the word. And I don't think it's an issue of the people of the United States versus the people of Canada. It's political and it's wrong. And I feel the need

23:29just like I feel the need to speak out against Islamophobia. After 9-11 I feel the need to speak out against just all of the things that we do here that don't make sense because if the people talk to one another we don't have these issues. I've met people from Gander in my 25 years who you know the real-life story of the Broadway musical come from away and that's what we should be looking at and thinking about. And even now with the 25th anniversary there's issues about who's allowed to come to the ceremony and and all kinds of things and it shouldn't be. You know the world on 9-12 no one cared how much money you made who you were what you were everyone was united and unfortunately those types of things are short-lived but I think we need to kind of go back to that and understand what matters. Can I ask just finally you don't know each other but you are part of what they call that community of survivors. You have been through something this shared

24:33moment an awful extraordinary heartbreaking tragic moment that that you're both on the other side of in some ways and I just wonder Wendy if there was something that you would say to Ron 25 years later about about what you went through but also where you are now. We often talk about it as a club that no one wants to be in. I've met some wonderful people in the 9-11 community in the last 25 years and we often joke you know it's nice to know you but I wish I didn't know you and what you went through Ron physically, emotionally there's no words and even as a fellow 9-11 survivor I can't say oh I know how you feel because every one of our experiences is very unique and different but I thank you with all my heart for telling your story because everyone's story is different and as many of them can be told is how we get awareness is how we try if we can to prevent this or we stop the people and I'm sure you've encountered

25:39this as I have well-meaning people close to me oh aren't you over it by now you know it's 10 years it's 15 years it's 20 years and I used to get incredibly angry and say well you tell me the timeline when you go to work your office blows up and people die in front of you let me know get back to me and when you're going to get over that so I'm grateful that I got to hear your story I would love to if you're up you know keep in touch on social media and perhaps meet you someday if you're ever in this area but thank you for for sharing I appreciate you Wendy appreciate you telling your story and and keeping this alive I think this is a defining moment in our world's history and to let people know what it was like back then and to continue talking about it so people understand what happened to many people and I think those people that perished their families it's a very long journey but

26:40all those who survived I think it's a journey for them as well so to keep it alive and telling the story and hopefully in the to benefit people to hear your story of survival and resilience is important I'm grateful that you are both here and I'm glad to have the opportunity to speak with you about it it's some you have a remarkable story both of you and I really appreciate you taking some time and being willing I'm sure it's still hard to talk about it 25 years later but I'm glad that you would be willing to to speak with us about it thank you very much thank you take care of yourself thanks run out we're on different Chesco and Wendy Lanskies both survived the E attacks of September 11th 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York City you've been listening to the current podcast my name is Matt Galloway thanks for listening I'll talk to you soon for more CBC podcasts go to cbc.ca slash podcasts