LEWES, Del. — More than two decades after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Joe Dittmar still carries vivid memories of the morning he escaped from the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and became the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. 19 al-Qaida hijackers took control of four commercial airplanes that morning. Two were flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, one struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew members fought back.
Dittmar, who now lives in Lewes, was 44 years old and working for CNA Insurance in Chicago when a business meeting brought him back to the East Coast. The Delaware Valley native spent Sept. 9 attending the Philadelphia Eagles’ season opener against the St. Louis Rams at Veterans Stadium.
Lewes' Joe Dittmar was in the south tower of the WTC on Sept, 11, 2001.
Two days later, Dittmar boarded a train in Philadelphia bound for New York City. His destination was a meeting on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center’s South Tower.
It was after 8:30 a.m., Dittmar said the lights in the conference room flickered.
“We were in an interior conference room, four walls, no windows, one door,” he said.
American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The South Tower began evacuating as a precaution.
Dittmar had made it down more than 20 floors in a stairwell when Mary Wieman, the woman leading his meeting, and several other people decided to take an elevator. Dittmar chose to remain in the stairwell.
“I kind of gave her a polite little wave, never said a word to her, spun around, went back to the fire stairwell that I was already in and arguably the best decision in what's still my life because I was somewhere between 74 and 72 when the second plane plowed through our building,” Dittmar said.
At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.
“We were right below the strike zone.”
Dittmar described the force of the impact as unlike anything he had experienced.
“I've never felt anything like that in my life.”
“That fire stairwell that were inside this concrete bunker you're inside started to shake so violently back and forth at angles it shouldn't be shaking at back and forth.”
“And the handrails breaking away from the wall and the concrete spidering out.”
“The steps like waves in the ocean.”
“Undulating underneath our feet and we feel this heat ball blowing by us.”
“We smell this jet fuel.”
Dittmar and the people around him continued making their way down the stairs and eventually reached the streets outside the World Trade Center.
“There were all uniforms that you can imagine out there screaming at us to run run run they had bobcat bulldozers they're pushing back everything I mean everything it's a gruesome sight and they're screaming at us run and run run do not stop”
But amid the chaos, Dittmar said it was difficult not to look back.
“You almost had the feeling that you had to look, you had to watch.”
Dittmar recalled seeing people trapped in the North Tower.
“There were people in the North Tower that were, everybody knows about how people in the North Tower were hanging on the side of the building because they were in, they had a choice.”
“They had a choice to burn to death or to jump to death.”
“That was their choice.”
The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., less than an hour after it was struck.
Dittmar said the sound has never left him.
“It's what I hear first in the morning, last at night, every day.”
“Unmistakable sound of the twisting steel, the crumbling concrete of what was the south tower, the building that we had just been in coming to the ground.”
“Even more hauntingly the sound of tens of thousands of people all in the streets of New York, all screaming the same blood curdling scream all at the same time.”
“You just, you never not hear that.”
The North Tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. The destruction of the World Trade Center killed thousands of people, including firefighters, police officers, emergency workers, office employees, airline passengers and crew members.
Dittmar was able to catch a train back to Philadelphia later that day. He drove to his Illinois home the following day.
Now living in Lewes, Dittmar said Sept. 11 remains at the forefront of his life. One reminder is the World Trade Center building pass he carried that morning.
“The building pass from world trade center I kept that in my pocket for a long long time. And its just a good reminder to me of how... the good fortune I had that day”
