herald-Sun

Durham native trapped in doomed World Trade Center By BEN EVANS : The Herald-Sun bde@herald-sun.com Oct 6, 2001 : 6:49 pm ET

DURHAM -- From beginning to end, from airplane crashes to rubble, the destruction of the World Trade Center lasted 97 minutes.

For all but the precious final few of those minutes, as America watched television in horror, Durham native Chris Young was trapped alone in an elevator in the last tower to fall.

Frightened and confused, he felt the attacks unfold. He heard sirens and faint voices, smelled smoke and breathed thick dust. But for more than an hour and a half, he had no idea what was happening.

An actor, Young tried to stay calm by reciting the lines of characters he’d played in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" and "Man of La Mancha." His pager buzzed incessantly -- family and friends trying to find out if he was OK.

When he finally was able to pry the elevator doors open just minutes before the building collapsed, he saw a wrecked, barren lobby. He had been on the first floor all along.

He may have been the last person to walk out alive.

A Jordan High School alumnus, Young, 33, received a degree in theater from Wake Forest University before moving to Chicago and later New York to become a professional actor. He has lived in New York about 2 1/2 years.

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, he was working his day job as a temporary employee for Marsh & McLennan, an insurance company with offices in midtown Manhattan and at the north World Trade Center tower, the first to be hit and the last to fall.

Young’s boss had a meeting on the 99th floor of the tower, and Young had gone there instead of his midtown office, to deliver some documents for the meeting. He arrived about 8:35 a.m., checking in at the security desk and getting the temporary photo identification pass required to enter the building.

He rode the elevator to the 99th floor.

When he began unpacking the materials for the meeting, he realized that another set of materials that was supposed to have been sent from the midtown office had not arrived. After wavering a bit, his boss decided to send him back to the midtown office to get them.

He got on the elevator going down, switching to the express elevator at the 78th floor. He had the elevator to himself because most people were coming to work, going up.

As Young’s elevator approached the ground, he heard and felt a violent crash, quickly followed by a powerful gust of wind.

It was 8:51 a.m. The first plane had hit the north tower.

"I could feel the elevator go up and down and sideways, screeching against the walls," he said. "My initial thought was ‘bomb.’ Right then, the one thing I was scared about was, ‘Is there any smoke?’ "

Dust and water began seeping into the elevator.

"I was sort of paralyzed about it for a minute, but no smoke ever came."

Young reached for the emergency call system. A computerized voice told him that his call had been received. Shortly afterward, a human voice came over the system, saying only that there was an emergency and that he should remain calm.

The doors, on two sides of the elevator, wouldn’t budge.

Another five minutes passed, and he heard another crash and felt a smaller shake. It was 9:06 a.m. The second plane had hit the south tower.

Young was then left to his imagination. He hummed songs, recited dialogues and breathed -- all through his dress shirt, which he had taken off to use as an air filter.

He had only one more brief contact with the security office, a blurred exchange in which someone told him that emergency officials would get to him soon.

"I really had no choice but to sit there and wait," he said. "I did pound on the door and yell for a bit."

At 10 a.m., a massive rumbling shook the elevator violently and filled it with a thicker cloud of dust. The south tower had collapsed.

"I just sort of balled up onto the floor and tried to cover my mouth as much as I could," he said.

He yelled. He tried ringing the emergency alarm -- three beeps, then one, then three -- S.O.S.

The power went out. Emergency lights came on.

* * *

In Durham, Chris’s father, Bill, an ophthalmologist, believed his son was safe.

"I wasn’t really concerned, because I knew where his office was in midtown Manhattan and how far away that was," the father said.

But Chris’s mother, Anne, had a strong intuition that their son was in trouble.

"I looked at the tower on television, and in my mind a voice just said Chris was in that tower," she said Friday at the family’s Hope Valley home, struggling to hold back her emotions. "I don’t know why I had that feeling, but I had it, and I was right."

"She was in tears," Bill Young said. "She said mothers have an intuition when their children are in trouble."

The Youngs tried in vain to reach their son. In the elevator, their pages came through. But Chris Young had no way of returning them.

* * *

Although he had given up on prying open the elevator doors, something prompted Young to try again after the south tower collapsed.

"I don’t know what possessed me to do it. I guess I got a little more panicked," he said.

This time, the doors opened, because power for the motor holding them shut had been knocked out by the south tower’s collapse.

The first set of doors opened to a steel wall; the other set to an unrecognizable lobby.

When he stepped out of the elevator, Young spotted two firemen standing outside a large, blown-out window near the perimeter of the building. Young was the only person inside, and they motioned at him to get out.

"They did seem to be a bit mystified as to where I’d come from," he said. "I just stood there frozen because I didn’t know where to go."

He ran to the firemen. One of them grabbed him by the arm and they began running away. He paused for a moment to look back at the building, seeing the north tower enveloped with smoke and the rubble of the collapsed south tower. The firemen yelled at him to run.

About a half block away, he heard a tremendous roar. It was 10:28 a.m. The building where he had been trapped just a few minute before was coming down, expelling a monstrous cloud of dust and debris.

"I just kept running," he said, his voice cracking more. "I have no memory at all of the sound of it as I ran away. I’ve blocked it out. By the time I turned around all I could see was a large cloud coming at me.

"I just kept running until I got the farthest I could, at the water."

Recognizing that Young was in shock, rescue workers approached him. He began hyperventilating.

After he calmed down, they instructed him to walk north.

"I didn’t really know where I was going to go," he said. "The only thing I could think to do was go to the midtown office where I worked."

So he began a 70-block walk, which he described as a surreal journey through crowds of fellow survivors, emergency workers and bystanders who had gathered on the streets to view the scene. Overhearing conversations along the way, he pieced together what had happened. Still in shock, he didn’t talk to anyone.

Young walked into his regular office building around noon and, inexplicably, rode the elevator to his office on the 42nd floor. Recognizing his state of shock, co-workers led him to the company nurse.

Later, he would learn that his boss and other colleagues at the morning meeting never made it out of the building. In all, Marsh & McLennan lost about 300 people, he said.

* * *

One of Young’s friends reached his parents in Durham by phone shortly after noon, telling them that Young was OK and that he would call them later. It wasn’t until about 2 p.m. that Young was treated and able to gather himself enough to call home.

"He was still unintelligible," Bill Young said.

For a couple of days, Chris Young couldn’t bear to close his eyes and had trouble sleeping.

On Friday, Sept. 14, his two older brothers arrived from Durham to pick him up and bring him home. He stayed for a couple of weeks, trying to take his mind off the tragedy.

On the Sunday after the attacks, his parents hosted a spontaneous Thanksgiving dinner to bring extended family together over the tragedy.

Chris Young said the support he has received, both from his family and from friends in New York, pulled him through the ordeal.

"There’s never been a worse day in my life, but there’s never been a day that I’ve felt more loved," he said.

* * *

Young returned to New York last week. He said he didn’t want to be driven out of the city by a terrorist attack.

"As hellish as what I went through was, I’m the lucky one. I got out," he said. "No one else on that floor did."

He’s jittery. He becomes anxious riding on elevators. And he broke down during a recent jog when he flashed back to the moment he was running from the tower.

But he said the experience has made him more focused and driven, including in his acting.

"In some ways I feel more empowered coming back to the city," he said. "I feel like I have a clearer sense of direction about what I want to do, what’s important and what’s not.

"I almost look at [life] with calmer eyes. I take note of the things I want to take note of. I don’t just let them escape me."

But he has no doubt that the trauma will linger throughout his life.

While home, he took the pants he was wearing on Sept. 11 to a dry cleaner. When he picked them up, the clerk told him he had left something in his pocket. The cleaner had put it in a plastic bag.

"It was that ID badge that I had gotten to get through security to get into the World Trade Center," he said. "It has a grainy black and white picture of me on it, and it says, ‘Christopher Young. One World Trade Center. September 11, 2001.’ "

-- Anonymous, October 07, 2001