Last man escapes collapsing Twin Towers after witnessing horrific collapse

William Rodriguez, forty years old at the time, became the final human to flee the World Trade Center as the second tower crumbled on September 11. He now shares a story that is both shocking and profoundly moving about saving many lives while relying on miracles for his own survival.

I was working in the basement, two floors underground, when the first plane struck the Twin Towers. My role involved cleaning stairwells, and I spoke with my supervisor just as the floor erupted beneath us. The false ceiling crashed down, sprinklers sprayed water everywhere, and twelve people in our office began screaming.

At first, I assumed a generator or some other machine had exploded since there were no windows to show what happened above. Seven seconds later, a louder blast rocked the tower so violently that walls started cracking. The building was built to sway like a tree against wind, yet it twisted with such force that we heard concrete and metal tearing apart over our screams.

A man staggered into the room with arms extended, yelling about an explosion. His clothes hung from his fingertips as if he had not finished removing shoulder-length gloves. I realized in horror that the fabric was actually skin because burns had peeled raw flesh down both arms.

He turned his head and loose skin exposed bone along one side while people shrieked and backed away from him. The blood soaked his shirt and ran everywhere, triggering a fear many New Yorkers still held regarding AIDS just two decades prior. Despite this phobia, my instincts compelled me to help the injured stranger named Felipe David from Honduras who filled vending machines for work.

I grabbed boxes of paper towels while the basement shuddered under our feet because we feared being buried alive at every moment. Most temporary staff knew nothing about escaping through that warren of tunnels so I wrapped Felipe's arms and asked my friend Kenny Johannemann to lift him onto my back. We moved toward loading docks for delivery trucks while a voice crackled on security radio confirming another plane hit the building outside where debris fell from a massive hole in the smoke.

I found out later that the people jumping from the flames were my neighbors. If the plane had struck on any other day, I would have been dead. That September morning in New York City was so beautiful, with clear blue skies, that I took a chance and called in sick. My supervisor yelled at me till I agreed to go in.

I arrived about 30 minutes late for my shift. Each morning I started by taking the elevator to the employees' kitchen at the Windows Of The World restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors, where I could have a free breakfast. Then I'd work my way down more than 100 flights of steep stairs, cleaning as I went. Everyone in the restaurant lost their lives after American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into floors 93 up to 99. If I'd been on time, I would have had no chance of survival. Probably many of the people I helped to save, including Felipe David, would also have died.

We lived because I came in late, something that almost never happened. I'd been working at the Twin Towers as a cleaner for 20 years. I'd survived the previous terrorist attack in 1993, when a truck bomb exploded in the underground garage, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 more. I was trapped in an elevator that day and the terror of it had haunted me ever since. The thought that people I knew were trapped now in the North Tower was overwhelming.

I ran back into the building, and one man told me he could hear screams from the freight elevator shaft in the basement. I put my ear to the doors and I could hear two people, yelling for help. 'We are going to drown!' one was shouting. That made no sense to me. But I found a metal pole, and prised the doors apart, and then I understood – all the water from the sprinklers on every floor was gushing down the shaft. The elevator, with a mesh roof, was trapped at the bottom, with the water already waist deep.

All my life I had been an atheist. But at that moment I began praying desperately: 'Please God, help me save those people.' There were ladders in one of the storerooms, so that's where I ran, though I knew they were always chained up. Incredibly, one of them wasn't – and it was the longest one. Somehow I managed to drag that ladder to the shaft, climb down to the elevator, prise the mesh open, reach down and lift both of those people out. I will never know where I found the physical strength.

After I got them outside, the police tried to stop me from re-entering the building. I started yelling in Spanish, which confused the cops so much they let me through. Inside, one of the Port Authority officers recognised me, and hailed me: 'Willie, do you have the key?' I realised what he was saying. On every level of the stairwells, there were doors into the offices, but these were kept locked. Now people were trapped on those floors, because the elevators were not working, and they couldn't get out into the stairwells. And I had one of the only master keys.

The reason I had it was miraculous in itself: five years earlier, I fell down a flight of steps while cleaning and broke several bones. Nobody heard my shouts, because nobody ever used the stairs. All the doors were locked, and I had to drag myself up several flights to reach help. After that, I insisted on having a key. It was as though my accident that day was preparing me for September 11. The officer took me to the lobby, where the New York firefighters were arriving in all their kit, which weighed close to 100lb. They had the gear to break down those doors.

The key worked fast. I led the way up those stairs, opening doors as I went. By the time I reached the tenth floor, I realized the firemen were struggling. They wore heavy boots and helmets while carrying full equipment. I just had overalls on. Plus, I climbed those flights of stairs every single day.

We heard about a paraplegic man in a wheelchair stuck on the 27th floor. He needed to be carried down. When we finally got up there, the firefighters were sweating profusely under their gear. One officer asked me to get water for his team. I pointed out the vending machine but lacked the key... so he kicked the glass front open.

My reaction was totally irrational: I told him not to break it because I am Puerto Rican and he would arrest me. He said that was the last thing on his mind. But I never forgot that moment. A lot of Hispanic survivors faced a rough deal later on. That pain lingered long after the dust settled.

I kept climbing as fast as I could, unlocking doors along the way. On the 33rd floor, there stood a woman in bare feet wearing a red dress. I will never forget her face. She asked where we should go since she had only worked there two weeks. What happens to workers in an emergency? That question haunts me still.

Heading back toward the 27th floor, I volunteered to help carry Ed Beyea down to ground level. As we descended, screams echoed from inside an elevator shaft. The firefighter just looked at me and shook his head hard. There was nothing we could do for them there. Suddenly, a blast hit us so huge it felt like the building itself was imploding. That was the South Tower collapsing right above us.

Ed wore an oxygen mask while fear bulged his eyes out of their sockets. I kept talking to him, promising that we were safe and everything was fine. After this, we would get a beer. Strange things you say when your life hangs by a thread... I do not even drink alcohol normally. We got Ed down to the lobby where dust was so thick it burned my skin, eyes, and lungs alike.

The firefighter told me to prepare an ambulance. Doors were gone. Glass frontage was gone. It was all destroyed in seconds. Emergency personnel tended injured people in Liberty Park, New Jersey, later that day. The New York City skyline looked almost completely covered in smoke after the Twin Towers were hit. William is now an advocate for 9/11 survivors serving as president of the Hispanic Victims Group.

As I stepped out into the open air, police and press stood yards away behind a cordon of yellow tape. A cop yelled at me not to look back. I did look back, of course. What I saw was more horrific than anything I can describe clearly now. Bodies fell from burning floors hundreds of feet up. They scattered across the sidewalk but were barely recognisable as human remains anymore. Their bodies disintegrated on impact with the ground.

Right beside me lay the woman in the red dress. She was sliced diagonally from her neck to her hip. I can only speculate she was hit by falling glass like a guillotine blade dropped from above. I stood there stunned until people yelled Run and the earth began to shake violently beneath my feet. Looking up, the building seemed to shift sideways before me. A fire truck sat right in front of that path. I threw myself under it just as the tower collapsed completely around us.

Rubble buried the truck instantly. I was trapped in complete darkness with only a small pocket of air left. I was certain death was coming and started praying my mother would see my body looking like I died peacefully at last. When first arriving in the United States as a young man, I dreamed of becoming a professional magician. Escapology was one of my talents back then.

Harry Houdini could not have escaped that pile of debris either, but I knew how to slow my breathing and heart rate so the air lasted longer. A news crew watched me dive under the fire truck before rescuers cleared a path to where I lay buried. When their lamps blazed through the dust, I thought I was dying and saw only heaven in those lights. They gave me oxygen, and it took fifteen minutes before I realized I still lived. Someone wedged a microphone under my nose to ask how I felt while another person handed me a workman's yellow tabard because my shirt was torn into shreds. That vest made me look like one of the rescuers, so I joined in helping to dig people out of the rubble.

I found firefighter Salvatore Giambianco trapped under debris but still alive. There is a photo of me carrying him to safety on a gurney. I am very proud of that image and of the yellow vest, which now hangs framed on my wall. My life changed forever in many ways that day. I became an advocate for 9/11 survivors and served as president of the Hispanic Victims Group. Many were immigrants without papers, and I have spent twenty-five years campaigning to win them the right to remain in the US and the economic assistance they deserve.

One reporter who interviewed me was a woman named Elizabeth from a news show in Ecuador. We fell in love, got married, and are still happily together today.