For as long as she could, Genelle Guzman-McMillan followed orders to stay put.
Guzman-McMillan worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Its office was on the 64th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. When terrorists smashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the tower on September 11, 2001, Guzman initially thought it was an earthquake.
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While the stunned workers hovered together, a public address announcement advised them not to go anywhere. Some, like Guzman-McMillan, stayed where they were; others left. After terrorists rammed a second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, into the South Tower and it toppled less than an hour, Guzman-McMillan and her co-workers couldn’t wait any longer.
They had to get out of that disabled tower.
“The building shook again,” Guzman-McMillan told an audience at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, in 2021. “It swayed, and that’s when… the other building collapsed. I thought, ‘Oh, no. We’re going down. … We’re not getting out of here.”
That’s when Guzman-McMillan and about 15 co-workers began descending the stairs. (The elevators were not an option, because they no longer worked.) She and her friend, Rosa Gonzalez, held hands with every step. They made it to the 13th floor when Guzman-McMillan stopped to take off her high-heeled boots.
As she did, the North Tower collapsed.
“This Is Not a Dream”
Guzman-McMillan was trapped, beginning an ordeal that stretched to 27 hours before rescuers found her. The last survivor pulled out of the rubble at Ground Zero, Guzman-McMillan was under so much debris at first that she could only move her left arm.
Pieces of the collapsed tower trapped the rest of her body, and two pillars prevented her head from moving. Guzman-McMillan solved that issue by wrenching her neck, pulling out some hair in the process.
Still, Guzman-McMillan, her head bleeding, was all alone. Accompanied by only darkness and silence, she had no idea where Gonzalez or anyone else was.
Guzman-McMillan didn’t know whether any rescue workers would ever find her.
“I keep being alert,” Guzman-McMillan said at Fort McCoy. “I keep hearing the radios. I keep hearing the firetrucks. I keep hearing the walkie-talkies and the communication going on. And for some reason, I just couldn’t speak. I wanted to, but my voice just couldn’t open up to say, ‘Help.’”
Guzman-McMillan thought she was going to die, she recalled in a video interview with Guideposts, a Christian nonprofit organization. Before 9/11, Guzman-McMillan—who was born in Trinidad and Tobago and immigrated to New York in the 1990s—was not a deeply religious person. Uncertain of whether she would be reunited with her boyfriend and daughter, however, she prayed for a positive outcome.
Then she believes a guardian angel arrived to comfort her.
Her Prayers Were Answered
Guzman-McMillan called the guardian angel Paul. She said he grabbed her hand and told her everything was going to be OK. That support arrived in Guzman-McMillan’s most vulnerable moments.
Soon thereafter, Guzman-McMillan said she heard voices and sirens. A Canadian police dog named Trakr, along with his handler and two volunteers, located Guzman-McMillan.
“I was so joyful at that time, knowing that the guys came in,” Guzman-McMillan recalled to Guideposts. “Finally, I’m getting out.”
Rescue workers carefully extricated Guzman-McMillan from the debris that engulfed her. Once they did that, they got her to the nearest ambulance. She was not in good shape. Doctors thought Guzman-McMillan might lose her right leg or never walk again. She underwent four surgeries and endured months of physical rehabilitation.
Guzman-McMillan spent six weeks in the hospital. Except for a barely discernible limp, she made a complete recovery. When she finally received her discharge papers, one of the first things she did was marry her fiancé, Roger.
They have since had two children together.
Emerging from the Rubble
Guzman-McMillan still works for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, according to her LinkedIn profile. She is a supervising office administrator. Besides her main job, Guzman-McMillan accepts public speaking assignments to discuss her ordeal during 9/11.
Besides the attacks at the World Trade Center, terrorists also flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. Passengers also fought with terrorists on board United Airlines Flight 93, causing it to crash into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Terrorists claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and injured thousands more. Guzman-McMillan somehow survived, making her an anomaly among those in the World Trade Center on that horrific day.
Guzman-McMillan, who wrote a memoir in 2011 titled “Angel in the Rubble,” admits that 9/11 changed her—for the better. It caused her to reassess her values and strive to live a better life.
“What if I hadn’t been buried in debris, the ground falling out beneath me at the 13th floor as I was racing to get out of the building?” Guzman-McMillan asked in a self-written article for Guideposts. “What if I hadn’t been stuck under rubble for 27 hours before rescuers finally found me? I would have been grateful, but I wouldn’t have looked any deeper at my life.”
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