Guy Carpenter Employee Escapes Disaster
Amidst myriad reports of loss and disaster, there are also uplifting accounts of triumph. One such story was related by Sean Mooney, senior vice president, research director and economist for Guy Carpenter & Company in New York.
The company formerly occupied floors 50-54 of World Trade Center Building 2, now demolished in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Sept. 11. Mr. Mooney made his escape from the smoking, swaying building along with co-worker Ruthie Rohler.
Mr. Mooney, who also writes the monthly "Financial Insights" column for National Underwriter, said he had arrived at the office around 8:15 a.m. and was settling in for a typical day. He was busy opening e-mails, he said, when he heard "an enormous bang. I looked out the window and saw debris falling–it was gently floating down like snow. Some of my colleagues saw bodies falling, but I didnt."
The loud sound he had heard was the first hijacked airplane which rammed into WTC Building 1 at about 8:45 a.m. At that point, Mr. Mooney said coworkers urged him to exit the building.
"There are 11 in my [immediate] department, but luckily there were only two of us there at that time," he reported, "since a lot of our principals were in Monte Carlo [at the annual Reinsurance Rendezvous]." At that time he said he saw Ms. Rohler leave and was "glad to know there was no one left in the department."
Remembering "what they tell you when you have fire drills" the two joined others in the fire escape rather than attempting to take the elevators, he said.
Descending the stairs was "fairly slow progress," even though the crowd was optimistic and viewed the exit almost as routine. The stairs, he described, were only wide enough for two abreast, and they were also jammed with people trying to exit the building. "There were a lot of people, so the line would stop every floor or so," he said.
Mr. Mooney, who said he has been training to run a marathon, reported that he was in good enough shape to help a coworker who has a bad leg, as well as volunteer to carry computers and bags for several others who were having difficulties descending the stairs.
The group was in good spirits until "we got to floor 38, when the plane went into our building, thats when the panic struck," he said. "We didnt see anything because we were in the interior staircase, but thats when the building shook from side to side.
He explained that the building often swayed slightly "when you get a big wind, but this was way beyond anything like that." Even more difficult was the fact that those making their way down had no idea what had happened. "Thank God we were below" where the airplane struck, he exclaimed.
Descending to ground level seemed to take forever, he said, but "once we were down we had cops and emergency people leading us through the concourse and out through Building Number 5 and away from the building."
Once outside, Mr. Mooney said he walked up Broadway, finally looking back. "I saw both buildings on fire, but I still didnt see the gaping hole, just blackness and smoke," he said. "My thought was that the planes had bounced off the building. It was hard to believe that the planes could go through."
Mr. Mooney explained that the windows inside the WTC were narrow and deeply set with columns every three to four feet. "My assumption was that anything that hit the building would have fallen off," he said.
With both buildings burning behind him, Mr. Mooney simply walked up Broadway and took the subway to his home in Greenwich Village. "I was home within an hour," he said. "I guess if somebody had said the buildings were going to fall down I might have hung around to see it- and then been hurt, because the plume of debris went right across Broadway."
The aftermath, he said, is that, "I lost everything. Its funny how you find yourself technologically dependent on the Palm Pilot, cell phone and computer. They were all in the office. My assumption was we were going to be back and the only thing I checked was whether I had coffee money."
Important data, he said, was not lost because it is routinely stored in the organizations mainframe system. Mr. Mooney said he is currently working out of Marshs Sixth Avenue office.
He added that his coworker, Ms. Rohler, "had an interesting end to her story." Ms. Rohler, who lives in New Jersey with her husband, a fisherman, found that she couldnt get out of Manhattan. "So her husband picked her up in his fishing boat at the West Side piers and took her home."
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, September 21, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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