In 2,001, television producer Dennis Wooldridge was writing a novel about a massive

terrorist attack on the United States. To research it, he traveled to New York and checked
into a hotel. It was the 22 story luxury Marriott at the foot of the Twin Towers. The date
was September 9th. Among the other guests were a cross section of tourists and
businessmen, men and women whose lives were about to be interrupted by events even
a novelist could hardly have imagined. The stories that came out of the Marriott are, I
believe, some of the most intriguing of the entire event. There was one irony after
another, one odd coincidence, if you believe in coincidence, after another. People whose
lives are linked in very strange ways by this event. What happened to the people in the
hotel is stranger than fiction. Among the guests were the only people to survive the
collapse of both towers on top of them. Many of their stories can be seen in glimpses
through photographs or film captured on the day. All their lives would change forever
from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They checked into the 911 Hotel. The
Twin Towers were a 110 stories high, dominating the New York skyline. They dwarfed the
22 story Marriott Hotel which stood beneath and between them. The location of the
hotel, at the World Trade Center, appealed to both tourists and business people. On the
morning of 9:11, 940 guests were registered at the hotel. Dennis Wooldridge from
Florida had checked in to begin work on his novel, and also to enjoy a holiday with
father. They would be amongst the last tourists to go up to the top of the South Tower.
When we got to New York, it was Sunday night and we settled in our room.

The next day, we wanted to do the typical tourist thing, so we bought day night passes
to the observation tower. The view is amazing, especially for someone that had never
been to New York. I mean, from there, you could see the Statue of Liberty in the
distance. You could see all of Manhattan, Empire State Building. And of course, you
know, right across the way was the North Tower. It was just breathtaking. Also checking
into the hotel on 911 were some holiday makers from Britain. They included the
Sweeting family from Margate. Christine and Les's 15 year marriage was in serious
trouble, but they hoped that the holiday would bring them together again. We've done
a lot of the sightseeing bits, the Empire State Building, and we went across to the Statue
of Liberty. We'd also done the helicopter trip round where we flew around the towers.
The normal absolutely tourist things. Got back in the hotel and I remember getting in
the room and actually put my feet in the sink because they were absolutely, you know,
worn to pieces. Another Marriott guest on 911 and a regular visitor to the hotel was
Frank Rosano, a heart bitten work driven lawyer from Washington. He was working late
at a New York law firm on the night of 10th preparing a court case that he was
determined to win. About 11:30 at night, we hadn't finished the next morning. They
couldn't meet until 11:30. I said, okay, that's fine with me. It gives me an opportunity to
sleep a little bit late. On his way back to the Marriott, Frank planned to take full
advantage of the hotel's rooftop facilities. What I really liked about the Marriott is they
had a wonderful gym and had a running track around it.

There was a, almost an Olympic sized swimming pool there. It had beautiful views of the
Hudson River while you were exercising and that's really the reason, that I that I stayed
at the hotel. Checking in all these guests at the Marriott was Chinese receptionist and
struggling part time actress, Amy Ting. She dreamt of fame and fortune on the silver
screen, but the events of 911 would see her play an important role on a very different
stage. As a starving actress, you have to have something to back you up. So that's how I
become a receptionist. And I would work from like 6:30 to 1:30 as a receptionist, and in
the afternoon and at night I would go for auditions, modeling, acting, you know, trying
to get myself known. On the morning of 9:11, Amy arrived at work early to prepare for
an interview with her boss about being promoted to front desk manager. She was eager
to prove herself. It was 8:15 and I was just trying to get my nerve down on how I'm
gonna answer all those questions about being a manager. You know how this all there's
always bunch of questions the boss wants to ask you. Why would you wanna become a
manager and stuff. So I was just calming my nerves down, walking around, you know, to
the front desk of the lobby, front desk of the lobby. Also heading for a business meeting
at the Marriott was Irish born architect, Ron Clifford. Ron had emigrated to the states
with his family in the eighties. I had a major interview at the Marriott Hotel, took the
ferry across, to the World Trade Center complex. I was very excited about this meeting I
was attending, at the Marriott. Earlier that morning, Ron had talked to his elder sister
Ruth, who gave him advice on what to wear for the interview.

My sister, Ruth, had told me that morning to wear a bright tie so I'd be noticed. And I I
thought that was that was cute and I I did wear my my bright yellow tie. This
conversation with Ruth about the yellow tie was the last Ron would ever have with his
sister. She too was about to be caught up in the events of 911. When I walked into the
Marriott, I still had a lot of time left, so I took a left and I walked over to the lobby of the
World Trade Center and looked around in awe at the lobby and was always very
wondrous about just the size of it. And then looked at my watch and walked back
towards the Marriott. It was 8:45 AM. Oh, shit. The hijacked passenger jet hitting the
North Tower has become a defining image of 911. It marked the beginning of a
catastrophic sequence of events. Oh, shit. But when it actually happened, it was unclear
what was going on. In the Marriott Hotel, there was no immediate cause for alarm. Many
guests just carried on with what they were doing. On the 19th floor, lawyer Frank
Rizzano continued his morning ritual of a shave and a shower before starting work. I
looked outside and I saw papers fluttering down into the street. So I said, you know,
must have been a big wind blew up off of the harbor, and blew a window out in the
building and now the papers are fluttering into the street. The plane had entered the
North Tower on the opposite side to the Marriott. The gaping hole was 70 stories above
the hotel so the scale of the disaster was not visible to those inside. In the lobby,
receptionist Amy Ting heard the impact but had no idea what it was.

It sounds like a piano because we have piano on the second floor, mezzanine. So we
thought somebody will, you know, drop the piano somehow. It just how that's how it
sounds like. So I'm like, who is this person dropping the whole piano? In their room on
the 15th floor, the Sweeting family's plans for a last day sightseeing were interrupted
when Christine suddenly felt and heard something strange. I thought, my god. She said,
no. It's Quaker. What is it? And I looked to my husband and I said, what the hell was
that? You know, what's the noise? And he was looking at the window. At that point, the
alarms started going. My husband was tying up his trainer boot, what he was doing, and
he just said, you know, just just get out. I'll follow you. Don't hang about for me, I'll
follow you. In the lobby of the North Tower, Ron Clifford heard a loud explosion and felt
the building shutter. People outside were showered with burning jet fuel. I went back
into the lobby of the Marriott to see what had happened, and I saw this woman, in in
panic. She couldn't see where she was going, and she obviously had been burnt. Her her
hair was smoldering. Her clothes had been totally burnt, her shoes were burnt. In the
lobby of the Marriott, Ron comforted the badly burned woman, Jenny Ann and together
they waited for an ambulance. I knew that I had to get her out of there. I knew that you
you you don't leave a dying person. I knew that whatever it took to get her out was
what it took. And even though a few times I stood up in panic and wanted to run out of
there myself, I knew that I had to take her with me.

Outside, the morning rush hour was at a standstill. People were looking up at something
the hotel guests couldn't see. On the 10th floor, Dennis Wooldridge, the man who was
writing a novel on a terrorist attack on New York surveyed the street below. What really
got my attention was the reaction of the people on the street. Everyone was either
moving away from the trade center or they were stopped with their mouths agape. And
I and I realized something strange is going on. I still didn't know what it was. The thing
that made me a little nervous is they were looking at me and I realized we were
probably not in a very good place. As news about the disaster spread, fears for the
safety of those caught up in the events was growing. At the Marriott, the phones didn't
stop ringing and Amy Ting did her best to deal with incoming calls. I was answering all
the phone calls that was coming in because a lot of people were calling in saying, I need
to, you know, transfer me to room blah, blah, blah, transfer me to room 9, you know,
something and is everything okay? Is my husband okay? The evacuation of the Marriott
was now well underway and amongst the stream of guests leaving the hotel was Dennis
Wooldridge and his father. This was the first opportunity we had to see anything that
had happened, so we turned around and saw the North Tower for the first time. And it
was obvious that something very serious had happened. My reaction at that point was
to go back to my original conclusion that in fact something terrorist related had
happened. By now, holiday maker, Christine Sweeting, had also made it out of the
building with her daughter.

But in the chaos of the evacuation, she'd lost her husband. I was so worried. I mean, I I I
still thought my husband would appear. Yeah. I'm gonna look around. He's gonna be
there. He's gonna find us. You know, we was outside the hotel. He had to come out one
door or another. Christine and her daughter joined the crowds and the confusion
beneath the Twin Towers. Everyone was sort of gazing up. Somebody said, there's been
a light plane going to the tower. Oh, my God, you know, and we looked up at it. I said to
my daughter, I said, she had a camera, and I said, take a photo, Vik. You're never gonna
see, you know, that again. We're never gonna experience that again. And as she was sort
of pointing it up to sort of snap the picture, at that point, the second plane come in. This
is the photograph Christine's daughter took. And I'm thinking, my god. What's what's
going on here? You know, this is what on earth has happened, this is something really
bad. This is the second photograph taken by Christine's daughter immediately after the
plane had crashed into the South Tower. At this moment, Ron Clifford was comforting
the badly burned Jenny Anne in the hotel lobby. She said to me, I'm going to die. I'm
going to die. And I said, no, you're not. We're gonna help you through this. And she
said, Sacred Heart to Jesus, help me. I said to her, you're you're obviously Catholic. She
said, yes. So I said, look, while we're waiting, let's say a prayer. So we said the Lord's
prayer. And as I was finishing the lord's prayer, there was another extreme explosion.
Ron had no way of knowing that what he heard was a second plane hitting the south
tower or that on that plane was his sister, Ruth, and her 4 year old daughter, Juliana.

They were flying to Disneyland in Los Angeles for a holiday. Watching the events unfold
on television in his room on the 19th floor of the Marriott, lawyer Frank Rosano
remained unconcerned. His focus was on his day ahead in court. As I'm standing there
watching the television, I'm saying to myself, look, the firemen will come into the
building, they'll put out the fire. This really has nothing to do with me. And I've got an
appointment. I've got people to meet at 11 o'clock. The thought occurred to me, I'm just
gonna go about my own about my day. By now, most of the firefighters assigned to
deal with the disaster were dispatched to the Twin Towers. But amongst the units sent to
help evacuate the Marriott Hotel was engine 74 with leading firefighter, Jeff Johnson.
We were given an assignment to search for civilians in the Marriott Hotel. My main
concern was that we just stayed together. We stayed cohesive as a unit. You know, in a
in a big operation like this, it's it's critical. So that's one of the main things I tried to
stress to the guy saying, whatever happens, we do it all together. Amy Ting had
volunteered to stay to help oversee the evacuation. As they were led out of a side
entrance on the street, guests were warned not to look up. You hear thud, thud, thud
sound. And you just thought it was just the buildings, which you know, parts of the
building was falling. But you know, it was not. When we looked out, cars was on fire.
And people were jumping down. And you know, you you see a glimpse of it, but you try
not to look at it. In the lobby of the Marriott, Ron Clifford realized that to get the badly
burned Jenny Anne to an ambulance, they would have to leave the safety of the
building.

I knew that we had to get out of the building, so I asked Jenny Anne if she could stand
up. I shouted to get somebody to help us, and somebody threw me a table cloth that I
wrapped around her. And then we headed towards towards the lobby door. A
photographer captured the moment as Ron with his yellow tie helped Jenny Anne
across the street avoiding the falling debris. I said to Jennie Ann, Jennie Ann, can you
run? And she said, I'll try. And so the the group of us just huddled together and and ran
across the street to the highway. Amidst the growing chaos on the streets, Ron and his
team of helpers safely delivered Chenyenne to a waiting ambulance. Having
accomplished his mission, Ron began his journey home to his family. Meanwhile, on the
top floor of the Marriott, a group of firefighters were searching the deserted gym area
of the hotel to check nobody was still left inside. One of them was Jeff Johnson. We felt
relatively safe because where we were, there was no we didn't see any visible fire at that
point. Tower 1 and tower 2 was the problem, which was out there. We were kind of like
an adjacent building and we no one in the wildest dreams ever thought that the
buildings were going to collapse. With the twin towers burning out of control
immediately above the Marriott, almost all the guests had evacuated the hotel. Only
then did Frank Rosano finally decide to leave his room on the 19th floor. I said to myself,
you know, I gotta pack all this stuff up and get it out of here, and find I'll probably have
to find another hotel room, tonight. And that's what I did. I began packing the stuff up
in boxes and litigation bags.

And when I had gotten all of the stuff packed, I stood there thinking to myself, I wonder
if I can get a bellman to come up and get me. Suddenly, one of the firefighter came
running through the revolving doors. He he yelled run. The building's coming down. We
didn't run 2 steps because it the building came down so quick. The impact blew us from
the middle of the lobby to the end of the lobby. Within that split 2 stopped. Still in his
suite on the 19th floor, lawyer Frank Rezzano saw a curtain of concrete and debris
crashing past his window. Only now did he realize the depth of his predicament. I
honestly thought that these were the last few moments of my life. One of the things I
thought about at that moment was have I led the kind of a life, you know, that my
parents, could have been proud of. And then the other thought I had, my my daughter
had just gotten engaged. And I thought I'd never live to see, you know, see her get
married. I I said a prayer. Out in the street only 2 blocks away from the collapsing South
Tower, British tourists, Christine Sweeting and her daughter were overwhelmed by
clouds of dust and debris. With husband Les still missing, Christine was at a loss what to
do. I still kept thinking, you know, he should be here with us, he should be looking after
us, it's his role to look after us, instead of that I've gotta be strong looking after my
daughter. But I I felt angry he wasn't with me. You know, I was worried. Where the hell
was he? As everyone fled in panic around them, Christine took decisive action. All I
could see on the floor was there was ladies handbags, there was shoes, there was cell
phones just where people discarded them.

On that point, I see this rope, which I've still got now to this day, which was on the floor.
It's just an average nylon rope. Where it come from I don't know, but I actually tied this
to my right wrist, to my daughter's left wrist knowing with the nylon, it was so tight
around us that we would not be parted, you know, nobody was gonna sort of sever this
rope. Only hours earlier, Dennis Wooldridge was imagining the scene of a terrorist
attack on New York for his novel. Now, he and his elderly father found themselves right
at the heart of 1. I saw this enormous billowing white cloud of debris coming at us. I
grabbed my father's arm and I'd said something like, you know, hold on or something
like that, and that cloud hit us. And you literally could not see your hand in front of your
face for what felt like an eternity. Things had taken on a very unusual look. It was
surrealistic. Everything was yellow. You could see everything, but it was in this yellow
light. It was a little like being in a snowstorm from hell. It was like walking among
specters. You know, we were all covered from head to foot in this whitest ash. As the
dust began to settle, survivors were dazed and confused as to what exactly was
happening. The Marriott had been almost sliced in half by the collapse of the South
Tower. On the ground floor, Amy Ting found herself in pitch darkness. When everything
stopped collapsing in the pitch black, you can't see anything. I heard a fireman on the
right hand side getting up and then getting up. So I don't know who is it. I just grab
onto his clothing and said, I'm here.

Please help me. Amy had survived, but her ordeal was far from over. To the collapse of
the south tower, firefighters in the vicinity immediately responded to calls for help. But
with communication systems down, there was nothing they could do to help survivors
trapped beneath the rubble in the Marriott Hotel lobby. One of them was receptionist
Amy Tin. There was not a lot of space for us to go. You know, it was like around this area
that we were just trying to find our way out and it was very it's not high because we can
feel that, you know, things was on top of us and we were just trying to find a way out of
there, but everything was blocked. For those caught up in the danger zone, it was
difficult to make sense of what was going on. I don't know. Something fell. What what
do you see? It was pretty clear at one point and then, there's a whole bunch of smoke
and glass. One of the things that's very unusual about it was, while the rest of the
country was watching TV and hearing reports about what was happening, we were in a
virtual news blackout. All we had to go by was rumors. Even though we had front row
seats, we had no clue really what was going on other than it was a terrorist attack.
Firefighter Jeff Johnson and his unit miraculously survived on what remained of the 21st
floor of the Marriott. A few feet either way and they would have been crushed. But Jeff's
main concern was that one of his unit was missing, his close friend and colleague
Reuben. There were a couple of little voids where we thought there was a passageway,
and basically, we just started yelling and screaming Ruben's name.

Really just basically yelling at a wall of debris and hoping for some something, a moan, a
a yell, anything. On the 19th floor, lawyer Frank Rosanna was amazed to still be alive.
When I opened the door, I called out to see if anyone was there, and I heard a voice not
10 feet from me, and I saw a flashlight. And I know now that that was Geoff Johnson, a
fireman, saying come this way. But how did this part of the building manage to
withstand the collapse of the South Tower? Dennis Wooldridge thinks he knows the
answer. When the south tower collapsed, it collapsed directly onto the Marriott. And
you look at that, and you wonder why is the entire south end of the building standing?
Ironically, that was standing because of something that had happened in reaction to the
93 terrorist attack. When the bomb went off in the parking garage in 1993, it didn't go
off under the North Tower, it went off underneath the hotel, underneath the ballroom.
And the hotel was severely damaged structurally. Southern end of the building was
reinforced using large steel I beams. It was being in this part of the hotel on 911 that
saved Frank So I'm happier. I'm happy as as you could. I'm happy as a lark to think I
survived. Frank joined firefighter Jeff Johnson and his unit going down the emergency
staircase. But the firefighters were not trying to get out. They were backtracking to cross
the wall of debris separating them from their missing colleague Reuben. They had no
idea they were trying to get to a part of the hotel which had now completely
disappeared. We were trying to get north. We were just trying to find the one hallway
that would have gone through so we could go back up on the other side of this,
hopefully, this little area of not little area, large area of debris and come up the other
side and try to find them on the other side, but that didn't happen.

Every floor we hit, it was more and more debris. On the 3rd floor, the emergency
staircase was completely blocked by debris. But through a hole in the wall, they could
see outside. Jeff couldn't tell what exactly had happened but could see that it was very
serious. He knew that finding a way out would be dangerous but he had to persuade
Frank to follow him. I remember him saying, look, nobody is coming to get us. Anybody
that was out in the street is dead. People that are in the buildings are either trapped or
they're dead. If we're gonna get out of here, we gotta get out of here on our own. This is
the only way out. The group of survivors trapped in the hotel lobby were also trying to
find a way out. A firefighter was leading the way for receptionist Amy Ting and the rest
of the group. All you can think of is get out, get out, get out. And we were looking down
and it was beams, you know, crisscrossed. And you try not to look up because it was so
uneven, but in front of us, it's like a ghost town. Nobody was there. But but then, okay,
my focus. And it was sharp objects everywhere and you don't know if you're gonna step
on something, you know, bodies or whatever. It is like a world that you never can
imagine. Still inside what remained of the second floor of the hotel, lawyer Frank
Rezzano was following behind firefighter Jeff Johnson trying to find a way out of the
building. I heard what I can only describe as a freight train coming at me out of the sky.
And then debris started to fall down on top of us, and I said to myself, my God, this
can't be happening to me twice in one day.

Jeff Johnson thought this time it was the end. I I just said, please don't let me go like
this. I got so close. It I didn't have a good feeling about this one, and I was really mad at
myself that I I hadn't figured out a way to get out of there. I was hoping I was gonna
have a lot of pleasant memories in the future. And the thought of not seeing my family
again was very heart wrenching to me. As people scattered in all directions trying to
escape another wave of dust and debris clouds, Amy Ting was running for her life. When
we see that smoke coming behind us, we just ran ran ran to the ferry. We were so
shocked that we survived from the collapse that we were just, you know, amazed at how
we survived and then that we came out on time before the second one came down. The
collapse of the north tower raised the Marriott to the ground, but on the reinforced
southern end of the building, a small section about 3 stories high was still standing. It
was in this part of the hotel that 14 people survived. One of the really interesting things
about these 14 people who survived is that they were in the right place at the right time,
miraculously. They were in the stairwell that survived because of that reinforcement that
had been done in 1993, 94. But it goes further than that because they were able to make
their way down and be in that very small zone of, again, what I call the shoebox, that
survived both collapses. They were low enough that they were able to be inside the
survived directly being involved in both collapses. And to my knowledge, they're the
only 14 people that survived directly being involved in both collapses.

Amongst the survivors inside this miraculous zone were firefighter Jeff Johnson and
lawyer Frank Rosano. Jeff was now more determined than ever to get out and to lead
Frank to safety with him. We were still a little high up and I looked outside and there
was a steel beam against this, wall that was bill directly below me. And it was leaning
against it, and it looked like it might be doable to get down that steel beam. And there
was no the the that was it. There was no other way. To get out, the survivors had to
crawl through a hole in the wall. Holding onto a piece of curtain, they then had to lower
themselves onto a beam 15 feet below in the debris field. They were nearly there, but
even then they weren't completely safe. We got down into the debris field. What you
saw was a scene of absolute devastation. There was, 5 feet of debris. In some places,
there were 10 and 15 feet of debris. There were still things falling to the ground. And I
remember thinking to myself, now I'm out in the street, I gotta get I gotta get across this
debris pile, the stuff falling from the sky. Something's gonna hit me in the head, that's
how I'm gonna die. Christine Sweeting was still searching for her husband and had just
arrived at something that looked like a police station. I said, can you tell us if this is the
police station? I mean, there was these hundreds of policemen there and they went, yes,
ma'am. You know, we'll get you inside. And they said, how can we help you? Well, we're
lost. We've got nowhere to go. We've we've come from the towers. And they didn't
quite know what to do with us, you know, because there was still all this chaos outside
and they sort of come with this big plate of doughnuts and said, you know, keep eating
the doughnuts.

It's good for shock. Just keep drinking and eating, and the sweetness will take the shock
away. A few blocks away, in the chaos and confusion of the receding dust cloud, a man
was caught on video searching for his companions. It was Christine's husband, Les. All
the way down at the end of the park. Pardon? Is your name Barry? No. My name's
Sweeting. I've lost my wife and daughter. We got in the building when it hits. Everyone's
down this way, so maybe they're down there. Yeah. The pile just come from round there.
I've walked around. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.
Getting out of Manhattan became a serious problem for thousands of evacuees from
the area around the World Trade Center. Roads were closed and subway and train
services suspended, but for those who ended up at the waterfront, there was another
way out. Boats started coming in, and I've often thought it was must have been the
same feeling that the soldiers felt at Dunkirk. Every imaginable kind of boat was coming
across that river. There were tugboats. There were taxis. There were debris vessels. There
were cargo ships. There was anything that would float was coming towards Battery Park
and the island to evacuate people. Frank Rezzano was put on a boat for Staten Island.
Still in a state of shock, he looked at the New York skyline covered in smoke. I looked
back at the city and I said to the guy driving the boat, I said, where's the World Trade
Center? And he said, buddy, they collapsed. I I said to him, I I know the tops of the
buildings fell down. I was there when the when the buildings came down. He says, not
that it wasn't the tops of the buildings that came down.

He says, those buildings collapsed down to their foundations. That's the that was the
first time that I that I realized, you know, just how bad, this really was. The mass
evacuation of lower Manhattan meant it was a very slow journey home to New Jersey
for Ron Clifford. Despite his ordeal helping to save Burns' victim, Jenny Anne, Ron was
looking forward to an important family event. In my mind, I wanted to get home for my
daughter's birthday. My daughter was born 9/11/90. She was 11 that day, so I knew I
knew I had to come home. I knew I wanted to get home. But when Ron finally arrived
home later that day, he received the news about his sister Ruth and his niece, Juliana.
Got a phone call to say that Ruth was was on the second plane that hit the World Trade
Center. And Ruth was on the plane with her 4 year old daughter. And I just I just
couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that I had been there, and had had felt and
witnessed the event that that Ruth had died in and and Julianna had died in. I've tried to
imagine Ruth's last moments. I've tried to imagine Ruth sitting next to Julianna, calming
her, knowing that there was was was terrorist activity going on in the plane, leaning over
to Julianna and maybe singing a lullaby to her and helping the people around her calm
down. Ruth was an extraordinary spirit, would roll up her sleeves in any panic situation
and, you know, not make light of it, but just make light of life. There would be more
heartbreak to come for those who'd escaped from the Marriott Hotel. But for some, 911
would also bring hope and inspiration for the future.

By the evening of September 11th, the scale of the disaster was beginning to become
apparent. The firefighters were hit hard with 343 losing their lives, around 35 of them in
and around the Marriott Hotel. Jeff Johnson was eventually reunited with his unit. All of
them had escaped from the hotel except his close friend and colleague, Reuben. I
started breaking You're in some pretty lousy situations sometimes, and, the only thing
that gets you through it is that if the proverbial shit hits the fan, the guy next to you is
gonna pick up whatever slack if you get in a jam, and you would do the same thing for
him. Not finding him and a lot of other guys, doesn't sit well with me. It bothers me. 3
days after 9:11, Christine Sweeting was still trying to find her lost husband, Les. She'd
almost given up hope. Then on Thursday evening, the phone rang. And they said to me,
Christine's waiting. I said, yes. And they said, we've got somebody here who wants to
speak to you. And then a voice come on, he says, hello love, because he's a northerner.
And he said, it's me. And I I just went absolutely speechless. Les, is that you? He went,
yeah. I said, where are you? Where the hell are you? The Sweeting family were reunited.
2 days later, they flew back to Britain. The following month, Ron Clifford was in his car
when he heard news of Jenny Anne, the woman he'd helped at the Marriott. I was
driving along the Long Island Expressway, and I found out that Jenny Anne on the radio
on the radio, I heard that Jenny Jenny Anne had died and given up the struggle after 40
days. I did visit her in the hospital.

I brought my yellow tie to the hospital and laid it beside her. This loss, together with the
death of Ron's sister Ruth and his niece Juliana on 911 might have made him question
his faith. But instead, the tragedy gave Ron a renewed sense of moral and religious
purpose. And when you go through such a catastrophic event, there is life after. You
have to, I mean I I I lived for a reason and I hope I can go on and lead a good life. The
near death experience in the Marriott till 9 11 left Amy Ting in a state of shock for
several weeks. You have that memory, the horrifying memory of the building coming
down on you, you know, being blown away, embedded in in your brain. So sometimes I
would cry in the shower just to cry out, you know, just to make me feel better. But, so
I'm like, well, I need to be strong. I need to get on with my life, and that's how I said,
hey, let me join the military, let me become part of the medical group because I wanna
save people. I always wanted to save lives and help others. So I was like, you know, I
wish hopefully I'll get into the medical field and I was really, really glad that I got into
the medical field and assigned to 3 82nd training squadron. Overcoming her fears and
regaining her self confidence, Amy was soon heralded as one of the heroes of 911. The
aspiring actress who dreamt of fame was now courted by the American press and even
George Bush who turned her into a patriotic icon. The events of 911 didn't bring the
Sweeting family together as they'd hoped. Christine and Les split up shortly afterwards,
and Les died in 2,006.

But in spite of the horror she had encountered there, Christine felt compelled to return
to New York. I decided that I was gonna take myself back out there on my own as it
happened. People said I was mad and I thought, yeah, I must be mad to do this, but it's
something I've got to do. Every year since 9 11, Christine has gone back and retraced
her family's footsteps. It's united me very much to New York and America that I feel at
home. I feel at one, I feel at peace there. 911 was a turning point in Frank Rosano's life
too. When his daughter Catherine married 14 months after his miraculous escape from
the Marriott, there was one man he really wanted to be at the wedding. When we were
sending the invitations out for the wedding, I said to my wife, I'm only here because of
Jeff Johnson and I think that we should invite him and his wife down to come to the
wedding. And we sent them an invitation and we called them. I wrote him a personal
note and said, I really want you to come down. I'm only here because of you. It would
mean so much to me if you did come down, and he did. I have one other, person to
remember, and that's Jeff Johnson, the guy who led me out of the World Trade Center
on 9:11. He kinda, like, pumped up my ego a little bit. He had said that I had the
qualities of a good leader, and he said on that day, if it wasn't for what I did, he wouldn't
have made it out, and that he felt pretty much that he owed his life to me and that that's
that's a very profound thing for somebody to say to you.

And then then he said to me that, that he he was because of me, he was gonna be able
to walk his daughter down the aisle. I have a daughter, and that hit home to me also.
For Jeff and his wife, being special guests at the wedding was a proud moment. The chef
remained a reluctant hero. Thank you very much. No. No. I just wanna thank you for
your help. He was apologetic. I know that it that that that story made me sound like I
was Superman, And, you know, I know that I didn't do that. I didn't do that much. I said
to him, Jeff, you didn't do that much. I said, you saved my life. You got me out of that
building. It's a it's a debt I can never I can never repay. Since 911, Frank has become a
different man. I must have survived for a purpose, And the one thing I have tried to do is
to be nice to people, ever since. And, you know, when you live in large urban,
environments and you you have you're in a profession, especially my profession,
litigation, where everyone's at each other's throats. It's easy to become, indifferent to
other people, And I've made a conscious effort, in my life since then to try to be as nice
and pleasant and gentle to people as I can. Around 40 men and women lost their lives in
the Marriott Hotel, many of them firefighters. New York slowly came to terms with the
legacy of 911. It had lost its emblematic skyline with the Twin Towers, but it won a new
respect for the way it handled the horror and tragedy of the terrorist attack. You know,
I'm a Midwesterner. I grew up in the Midwest.

And my entire life, I had heard about this cold, hard city of New York, where nobody was
friendly and everybody was tough. But what my experiences on 911 taught me is the
heroes of New York, the everyday heroes that you run across. There were a lot of heroes.
Some of them were paid heroes, some of them were professional heroes, and some of
them were just there and did the right thing at the right time. After experiencing the
events of 9 11, Dennis Wooldridge has given up his plan to write a novel about a
terrorist attack. Instead, he's writing the true stories of the survivors at the Marriott
Hotel. The coincidences and twists of fate that they experienced defy belief. But above
all, the public spirit, courage and heroism that were found that day just beneath the
surface of New York were greater than any work of fiction.