Talk - 9/11 - Last Man Out

William Rodriguez arrived for work half an hour later than normal on the morning of September 11th 2001. He was one of the janitors of the World Trade Centre in New York. “I had been working there for twenty years,” he tells me, over the phone, from Oxford. “If I hadn’t been late, I would have been having breakfast further up in the building when the first plane crashed. I would have been killed.”

As it was, when he realised something was amiss that day, Rodriguez was in the maintenance office, in the highest of six sub-level basement floors of the North Tower. “I heard an explosion,” he says. “It came from below me. I thought a generator had exploded.” Pretty soon he heard another explosion, this time from many floors above. He was later told this was the impact of the first aeroplane hitting the 90th floor. He then heard further explosions on floors above him.

Rodriguez’ subsequent actions led to him being awarded a National Hero Award, in person, from George Bush. “He said my actions in saving so many people had been wonderful,” he remembers. “He said I was a national hero.” He saved two people from drowning in the basement, and then, holding the master key to the stairwells he cleaned for a living, led a group of firemen up the building and helped rescue a number of workers. “I held the only master key that day,” he says. They reached the 39th floor, at which point he was told by the firemen to return down again. “I was the last person to leave the building alive,” says Rodriguez. He dived under a fire truck, which was immediately covered in rubble. He was pulled out an hour later and treated for his injuries. Then he went to work trying to dig bodies out of the rubble.