Gentlemen, listen, we know the buildings failed. There was a lot of expert testimony here. We
know what we saw. We saw the buildings come down. The question is, was it an honest
mistake on how they were made or was it criminal? And that's the question that has to be
asked. Thank you.
Dr. Hill: Thank you.
William Rodriguez?
William Rodriquez: Hi, I'm William Rodriguez. I'm not with the FDNY. Actually I’m the last
survivor pulled from the rubble.
I worked in the building for 20 years. I'm kind of here to pull NIST ears a little bit ‘cause I was
with you guys in Congress. I was here when you came the second time. And I was never called.
I was never called for my testimony. In a sense, I’ve been the expert for the media, for the
actual media, on everything related to 9/11 and the last moments of the people that were there.
I worked in the building for 20 years. And I have one of the few master keys that were available
on 9/11. And I was being followed by the fire department and the police – the Port Authority
department on that day. I was opening the doors. And I know for a fact that you haven't called
people that worked for structural employees.
If you go, obviously, to the supervisors, and you go to the company, they’re going to try to keep
this information. You should go directly to the employees that worked there for so many years.
And get their experience. For example, I still have the pictures that I offered the NIST in
Congress, on the hearings, of the stairs in the building. I still have them here. And I’ve never
been called. I’ve got them all here.
Transcript of NIST Public Meeting in New York City – February 12, 2004
Also, we told – ask the people from the asbestos removal business, because it was going on
constantly. And that was one of the problems that I had with the – I was the person that cleaned
the stairs in the building on the North Tower. And cleaning the stairs in the building gave me a
personal look at what was going on. And I'm not an expert, but it made me an expert of what
was happening that was wrong with the Port Authority. I remember on the 21st floor, on the 13th
floor, there was structural damage on the staircases. I told this personally to Gene Morragio (ph)
and Ed Strauss (ph) who are dead now, building operation managers of the Port Authority. And
nothing was done with the structural damages. The stairs were cracking. The sheet rock, when I
went up opening the doors, was falling on top of me and on top of the firemen constantly. And
the swaying of the building made it easier for that to come off.
I remember listening to the fluorescent lights, the emergency lights that were in the building,
cracking up in line; pop, pop, pop, pop, pop all the way to the bottom because of the swiveling.
And one of the things, I mean, the sound of fear of the people on the floors was a constant
reminder of what the fire department was trying to do that day, and the problems that we were
experiencing. Not all the sprinkler systems worked. Not all the warble alarms on every floor
worked.
The fire, the ball of fire, for example, I was in the basement when the first plane hit the building.
And at that moment, I thought it was an electrical generator that blew up at that moment. A
person comes running into the office saying explosion, explosion, explosion. When I look at this
guy; has all his skin pulled off of his body. Hanging from the top of his fingertips like it was a
glove. And I said, what happened? He said the elevators. What happened was the ball of fire
went down with such a force down the elevator shaft on the 58th – freight elevator, the biggest
freight elevator that we have in the North Tower, it went out with such a force that it broke the
cables. It went down, I think seven flights. The person survived because he was pulled from the
B3 level. But this person, being in front of the doors waiting for the elevator, practically got his
skin vaporized.
And so what I'm telling you this is, as I went up – from that moment, I got this guy out. I went up,
I went back inside the building through the basement. And there was people stuck on the lower
elevators, the lower freight elevators that were in the other basements. And I saved two guys
from there, they are alive right now, and they haven't been called to testify what they went
through either. The problems they have when they went into the elevators, how they stopped
working and things like that.
The fire escapes, as being the person in charge of cleaning them, I had constant problems with
the Port Authority, constant problems because they didn’t enforce, for example, the no-smoking
law inside the stairs. I would have people in groups of five smoking on the stairs with trashcans
inside the staircases, trashcans from the floors on a constant basis. And I will tell them, “You got
to get out.” They’d say, you're not a cop. Only on two occasions, because I took pictures, and
that’s the reason I have the pictures on the stairs because I didn't want to get – I was getting
warnings from my cleaning company, constantly. You didn’t clean these areas. Yes, I did. Yes, I
did. But they will go back and they will do it. They will leave and they will do all these problems
over there.
Dr. Hill: William, we obviously need to talk to you. You have some very valuable information. I
have a note here that we attempted to contact you and weren't successful. Could you stay
around afterwards so we could talk to you a little bit?
W. Rodriguez: Sure. I would be glad to. Okay, thank you very much.
Transcript of NIST Public Meeting in New York City – February 12, 2004
72
Dr. Hill: Thank you.
http://wtc.nist.gov/media/Public%20Transcript%20021204%20Final1_withlinks.pdf
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