I thought I'd watch myself slowly die: last survivor

Ganelle Guzman had just stopped to remove her shoes when her world collapsed.

The 31-year-old was the last person to be pulled alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center and the only survivor from a group of 14 co-workers who walked down more than 50 flights of stairs together.

She and a friend held hands all the way down, pushing past firefighters who were struggling to make their way up the crowded stairway.

One minute the women were standing together and the next they were falling through darkness.

Ms Guzman, an employee of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, worked on the 64th floor of the south tower, the first to be hit just before 9 am on September 11.

She told CNN yesterday that she and co-workers spent a terrifying hour waiting in their office after a loudspeaker message urged people to stay put.

By the time the group decided to move, it was too late. They had reached only the 13th floor when the tower collapsed.

When Ms Guzman and her friend fell to the floor, "we were still together, and then she kind of moved away and I moved away and then everything started crumbling and everything was just falling."

Ms Guzman was trapped for 27 hours, her head stuck between concrete pillars and her legs crushed. She yelled for help but no one heard her that first day and she began to lose hope.

"When I saw that it was getting dark and no one came, and I'm not hearing any noises nowhere around, I thought, 'I'm not going to make it. I'm going to die here. I'm going to see myself slowly die'."

Ms Guzman prayed for a miracle. She believes it came when she heard voices above her about noon the next day.

She yelled twice before grabbing a piece of concrete and knocking it against some steel.

"Then I put my hand through a little crack in the wall and I felt a person hold my hand, the fireman hold my hand, and he said, 'I got you' and I said, 'Thank God'."

Full coverage: Terror in America

Pictures: Day 1 | Day 2 | Brooklyn Bridge live webcam

Video

The fatal flights

Emergency telephone numbers:

United Airlines: 0168 1800 932 8555

American Airlines: 0168 1800 245 0999

NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade: 0800 872 111

US Embassy in Wellington (recorded info): 04 472 2068