A heroic rush up the 'Stairwell'

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 12, 2006 | by Column by Susan Young

- "Miracle of Stairwell B"

8 p.m. Monday on The History Channel

ON THE morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a Cub Scout leaders' meeting was taking place at the home of Fire Chief John "Jay" Jonas. Of the three women there, one was Jonas' wife and another was the wife of John McLoughlin, a Port Authority police officer.

Both men were caught in the collapse of the World Trade Center. And both survived to tell the tale.

Oliver Stone's new film, "World Trade Center," about McLoughlin and fellow Port Authority cop Will Jimeno, has been getting big headlines. Meanwhile, the story of Jonas and those who survived the collapse of Stairwell B gets a small, rather dismal documentary on The History Channel.

With no disrespect meant to the two men featured in Stone's film, the drama inherent in the story of Stairwell B seems to scream "big screen."

"We haven't been approached by a mogul or anything like that to do a full-length, two-hour motion picture," said Jonas in an interview a few weeks ago. "Ironically, the Oliver Stone movie is about my friend John McLoughlin, who was one of the last people to move in. It's kind of an ironic twist that two wives were together during a day when very few people (at the World Trade Center) lived through the day."

While Stone's movie concentrates on McLoughlin and Jimeno, "Stairwell B" recounts how 12 firefighters, an office worker and a Port Authority cop lived through the collapse of the North Tower.

The group survived for hours under half a million tons of debris after the stairwell collapsed on them as the Ladder Six crew scrambled up the stairs, against the tide of people fleeing the building.

Jonas commanded one of the first responding units at the World Trade Center. In simple terms, the men of his company talk on film about arriving there, knowing they were facing overwhelming odds. People were plunging to their deaths rather than being caught in the flames.

"It was the most unbelievable sight I ever saw," Jonas said. "But every fireman I know who was there that day, they stopped, and they looked up, and they took a deep breath. There wasn't one guy that I know that just kind of chugged their way into the World Trade Center and ran up the stairs.

"Everybody looked at what they were going into, took a deep breath and then they went in. So they knew what they were getting into when they went in."

In the documentary, we learn how Jonas and his crew began going up the stairs until they heard the other tower collapsing. Then, they knew, it was time to make tracks back down. On their way, they picked up an office worker who was no longer able to walk on her own.

Above them, they could hear the slap-slap-slap of the floors of the building collapsing one right after another, knocking them off their feet with the force of it all.

Suddenly, the stairwell gave way and they were plunged down several stories. It took a while to discover that a few of them had survived. Then, for the next four hours, they pondered how to escape.

"We kept looking for clues on how to get out of there," Jonas said. "We really had no idea what it looked like on the outside. We knew we had experienced a catastrophic event."

Jonas considered repelling down an open elevator shaft they found, finding a subcellar in the World Trade Center and then finding a path to the train station.

"(I thought we could) walk to Hoboken, N.J., underneath the Hudson River. I thought it was a decent plan, but one of the guys said, 'Hey, Cap, what if we can't find the path of the train subway tunnels? How are we going to get back up?'" Jonas said. "I said, 'You've got a point.' So we put that on the back burner for a time when we were a little more desperate."

After almost four hours, the smoke and dust cleared well enough so a ray of sunshine hit the stairway.

"All of a sudden, we realized that maybe we can get out of here," Jonas said. "We were kind of thinking we might be trapped for two or three days, but once we saw that ray of sunshine, we realized that we are going home today."

Coming up on the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, Jonas said he hopes there is a renewed interest in the events of that fateful day.

"You know, right after September 11th, there were bumper stickers all over the place, and people had banners, 'Never forget,' 'Remember September 11th,' and people are forgetting," Jonas said. "They are forgetting what a horrible day that was and how everybody felt on that day and how vulnerable they felt. It's the one signature event in all of our lifetimes that everybody in this room, everybody in the United States, in the world, experienced in real time, you saw the events unfold on 9/11 as they happened.

"I'm happy that there are some films coming out. There are documentaries coming out about September 11th, and just to remind people of one of the worst days in our history."

The charming Matthew Perry stars in the inspiring "The Ron Clark Story" at 8 tonight on TNT.

Based on the real experiences of Clark, Perry plays an idealistic teacher who leaves North Carolina to make an impact on inner-city school kids in New York City. After some tough times trying to get through to the sixth-graders, he is able to turn the lowest test scorers in the school into some of the highest.