I recently read about a few people who survived the September 11 attacks, thanks to God’s intervention.
Stanley Praimnath, an assistant vice president for Fuji Bank worked on the 81st floor of the South Tower.
You can read more details in various places, but you likely won’t read what could be the whole reason he survived…
For instance, you will read on WIKI:
“When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower, Praimnath started to evacuate from his 81st floor office in the South Tower, but he returned when the building’s security guards said the South Tower was secure, and workers should return to their offices.[2] Soon after he reentered his office, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the building. The left wing sliced through his office and became lodged in a door 20 feet (6 m) from him.[3] Praimnath was bruised and exhausted, and covered in debris after the crash, which left him stuck and unable to escape on his own.[4]”1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Praimnath
But you won’t read the vital bits from his own testimony:
“I’d seen huge chunks of fireballs falling from the North Tower. I took an elevator to the 78th floor of my building to switch to an express elevator, to leave. The security guard said, “Your building is safe, is secure. Go back to your office.”
I stepped back into the elevator, went back into my office, and the phone was ringing, so I answered it. I’m standing up with a phone in my hand, and I see something gray, a plane, small at first, then larger and larger. I’m mesmerized, not realizing a plane is coming toward me.
The plane starts to tilt, and it looks like time just stopped, and it’s happening in flashes of a minuscule second. I can hear the revving sound of the engine, and the plane is coming closer, closer, closer.
I dropped the phone and I screamed, and I dove under the desk. All I remember saying at that time was, “Lord, I can’t do this. You take over.”
The bottom wing took out most of the floor I was on. It looked like a demolition crew came and ripped the entire office apart. Every piece of furniture was mangled.
The only desk that stood firm was the desk I was hiding under. My Bible was on top of that desk. That’s the only reason I can attribute to why I was saved.
The ceiling above me collapsed, and the sprinkler system came on. I was screaming for somebody to help me: “Please don’t leave me to die.” Somebody on the floor heard me, and the person had a flashlight.” (Emphasis added).
This person was Brian Clarke, from the 83rd Floor. A long string of decisions and occurrences led him to being able to find Stanley:
I got down to the 81st-floor landing and was confronted by a heavyset woman coming up the stairs with one of her coworkers. She said, “Stop. You can’t go down. We have just come off a floor in flames.” She blocked us. And the people I was with, this chain of seven or eight coworkers behind me, all went bump, bump, bump. Now we’re all standing on this rather tiny landing, and the debate began. Up or down?
About 30 seconds into this, I was distracted by a banging noise, a muffled cry. I dropped out of the debate and concentrated on what I was hearing. I made out this male voice calling for help.
I went in on the 81st. It was dark on this floor, no electricity and some black smoke. The stranger’s voice was, I’m guessing, 20 yards away. My flashlight beam was like a high-beam headlight on a country road at night in the fog. You just saw the particles but nothing else.
The flashlight caught him and went down into his eyeballs. He said to me, “One thing I got to know. Do you know Jesus Christ?”
I said, “I go to church every Sunday. Come on, we’ve got work to do here. Let’s move here.”
Together, they made many decisions and worked to get out of the tower. Two of only 18 people from the impact zone or above who survived. All of Clarke’s coworkers who went up the stairs died. I see this as clear evidence of God’s guidance rescuing two humans from within a terrible situation…
Then there is Will Jimeno, a rookie Port Authority Police officer who had responded from his post in midtown Manhattan.
He was on the concourse level of the World Trade Center:
I heard a humongous boom. I saw a fireball the size of my house, and I’m just standing there looking up — everything’s shaking like an earthquake. At that point I just got picked up and slammed. I was thrown onto my back. A wall fell on my whole left side.
I don’t know how to describe it except that it seemed like a million freight trains coming down on us. Then, all of a sudden, everything went silent. And I found myself in a pitch-black cavern, and I couldn’t move. I was there with Sergeant John McLoughlin, who was pinned under debris, and Officer Dominick Pezzulo, who had some room to maneuver. Dominick started trying to get this concrete off me. He really couldn’t. He tried pulling it off me for 15 minutes, 20 minutes.
That’s when we heard another boom. And it was now the other tower coming down on us. And at that point I figured we were going to die. I look over to Dominick, and something had hit him and sat him down, literally like a rag doll. I could see red coming out of my fellow officer’s mouth. At that point he just said, “Willie, I’m hurt bad.” He goes, “I’m dying, bro. Don’t let anybody forget that I died trying to save you guys.” And I said, “Dominick, I would never let anybody ever forget what you did.”
COURTESY WILL JIMENOI was just really distraught. Sergeant McLoughlin and I kept fighting on for several more hours. I remember thinking, I’m done. I just wanted the pain to stop. I said, “God, thank you for 33 great years. Thank you for my beautiful wife, Allison. Thank you for my four years with my daughter, Bianca. And thank you for letting me be a police officer. I came here as an immigrant from Colombia, and I thank you for bringing me to the greatest country on earth.”
Then I saw something. You could call it a vision, you could call it a dream — whatever you want to call it. I see a person walking toward me, a glowing white robe, no face, brown hair. In the distance is a pond with trees, real tranquil. I snapped out of the dream with this renewed sense of fighting. I said, I’m going to give it everything I’ve got to try to survive. If I don’t, I’m going to die in peace, knowing that I gave everything and didn’t give up.
All I can say is that the next several hours were horrific. Around 8 that night, I heard voices above us in the distance: “United States Marine Corps, can anybody hear us? If you can hear us, yell or tap.” And I started yelling at the top of my lungs. We were literally in the epicenter. We actually had both buildings fall on us.
So these two brave Marine reservists and a civilian broke through the lines when they weren’t supposed to. They found us. They were shining a flashlight down on my hand, but they couldn’t see me because we looked like concrete. When I waved my hand, he said, “I got you.”
They brought me out of the hole, and that’s the first time I cried that day. Because I couldn’t see the buildings. And I said, “Where is everything?” And the firefighter said, “It’s all gone, kid.” I later found out that Sergeant McLoughlin and I were the only two people to survive from underneath the World Trade Center. 2https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2021/911-anniversary.htm l
Again, the way God orchestrated things is mind blowing. To think that anyone could survive under a 4 story building collapsing on them is crazy, but from the World Trade Towers?
450 million kilograms each 3https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/EricChen.shtml, over 400m high of steel, concrete and glass. And of course the two 767 Boeing jets (over 150,000kg each) and how many photocopiers? Amazing.
The truth is, this is nothing to the God who spoke and the universe was created! But here’s a thought:
If God can guide you during a terror attack, surely He can right now, with what you are going through?
Lord, help us to turn to You *before* the roof collapses, before we are forced to. Help us to come to You as the loving, caring, intimate Father that You are. Help us deal with whatever issues we have that under that process.
Footnotes:
- 1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Praimnath
- 2https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2021/911-anniversary.htm l
- 3https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/EricChen.shtml