The resilience of a 9/11 survivor: remembering is my therapy

The story of his descent from these 105 floors, which he keeps 20 years later with a photographic memory, looks like a tragic epic. The father of four, who was attending an insurance brokerage meeting in a windowless room in the South Tower that day, owes his survival to the decisions he made in seconds.

When the first plane hijacked by jihadists crashed into the north tower, all 54 participants saw only the light flicker. On the 90th floor, after hearing several evacuation calls, they saw the drama in the North Tower through a window.

“It was the worst 30-40 seconds of my life. We saw furniture, papers, people rushing into the void, terrifying, terrible things. I was so scared, ”he says.

Originally from Philadelphia, then living in Chicago, he couldn’t help but think, “Every time I come to this city, something happens!

He returned to the stairs and met a colleague, a former “giant” footballer, Ludwig Picarro, who wanted to go to the bathroom. He did not survive September 11

On the 78th floor, a colleague shouted at her to take the express elevator with her, to get down faster.

But Joseph Dittmar was able to avoid the elevator in the event of a fire. And he rushed down the ladder, “the best decision of my life”.

“At some point between the 74th and the 75th floor” the stairwell “starts to swing violently, the handrails come loose from the wall, the steps undulate under our feet like waves in an ocean, we feel a wall of heat, you can smell the fuel ”, remember.

Another plane had just crashed into their tower, just above them, between floors 77 and 82.

With tears, Dittmar recalls the “real heroes” he met on the ladder in this 50-minute descent, starting with the firefighters and rescuers on the 31st floor, who climbed against the tide to save those trapped .

“Their gaze revealed that there was no hope, they knew they would not come back,” he said. How can we be so brave, so strong? He asks himself.

Joseph Dittmar 11-S

Photo: AFP

On the 15th floor he heard a security guard singing into the megaphone “God bless America“(God bless America), while urging to vacate the building with humor.

He sang “horrible” but “he tried to soften the spirits like the captain of the Titanic who played his musicians as people boarded the relief boats, “Dittmar likens this tragedy to that of 9/11.

Upon reaching the ground floor, Dittmar and a colleague walked through the underground WTC mall and surfaced.

Suddenly they felt a crash behind them. It was the collapse of the south tower. And they heard the “cry” of tens of thousands of people.

This noise, these cries, Dittmar still hears them “every day”.

This 9/11 survivor has told his story hundreds of times to school children across the United States.

“This is my therapy,” he says. “I knew early enough that to survive I had to keep saying it“.

With the date “911” tattooed on his wrist, a twin pin on the collar of his jacket and a stone he is still stroking in his pocket, September 11 accompanies him “like a shadow”.

Dittmar, who continues to work in insurance but has moved to Delaware, says he admires New Yorkers very much. “They’re incredibly tough, they’re not afraid of anything. I’ve grown to love them.”