Heroic Climb During 9/11 Tragedy

This is a story about one of those victims.

Amid this devastation, witnesses saw something almost

unbelievable in the North

Tower. One man appeared at a high floor window,

but instead of jumping,

he climbed out. Clinging to the exterior steel columns,

he began shimmying

his way downward. Eyewitnesses on the ground

and in neighboring buildings

watched in astonishment as this figure slowly descended the side of the

skyscraper,

attempting what seemed impossible.

Eyewitness accounts say that this mystery climber started his

descent around

9.35 a.m. from roughly the 94th floor of the North

Tower.

Unlike other victims who only managed to hang on to the facade for a few seconds,

this individual was moving downward with determination.

Using a rock climbing technique known as chimney climb, he wedged himself between

the tower's vertical exterior columns, pressing his back and hands against one

column and his feet against the opposite column, and carefully inched down.

The Twin Towers design featured closely spaced perimeter steel columns with

narrow window gaps, only 22 inches apart, forming vertical

channels. This man ingeniously turned those slim

gaps to his advantage.

By bracing himself between the columns, he created opposing pressure, a

technique rock climbers use to climb inside of chimneys or between close

walls. A tiny metal ridge barely an inch

or two deep ran along

the bottom of each window pane. That was all the foothold he had.

With his back against one column and his legs pushing in the other column,

he had

to support his entire body weight and move downward step by step.

Any slip of grip would be fatal.

Carefully, he wriggled his way down floor by floor,

straddling the columns and

using every bit of strength and skill to maintain his hold.

As the climber made his way down, he would have confronted numerous

challenges

aside from sheer exhaustion. First was the extreme heat and

exposure. At over a thousand feet up in the air,

winds can be strong, and one

can only imagine the terror he felt looking down at tiny ant-like people on

the

ground. There was also intense heat emanating from

the windows above and

debris falling from the tower. But in that moment, his focus was survival.

Witnesses later remarked on the courage and composure it must have taken, the

absolute horror and desperation he must have felt.

I can't even imagine.

But he must have also had a ton of hope, locked in and focused.

Had he somehow reached the 75th, 76th floor zone, he would have found no

regular windows to climb into, only vent grates and sealed mechanical

access

doors. Perhaps in theory, he might drop down into the louvered

opening and

find a service door, but those doors were likely locked

and required special key

cards.

In other words, the mechanical floor was an imposing barrier on his path down.

His best chance was an open window.

If the climber hoped to re-enter the building at a lower level below the impact

and

fire, he would need an open or broken window to crawl back inside.

And in that cruel twist of fate, there was indeed a broken window just a short

distance from the path he was taking down.

Photographic analysis later showed that just one column over from where he

was

climbing, a window around the 92nd floor had been

blown

out. That window might have been a portal to an

interior stairwell or a

room with breathable air, his best chance at saving himself.

But at 9.59 a.m., as the climber clung to the North Tower,

the

unthinkable happened. The South Tower began to collapse.

A monstrous rumble echoed across Manhattan as 110 stories of

steel and concrete came crashing down in a massive cloud of dust.

The shockwaves rippled through the ground and air.

In the North Tower, which was still standing, lights flickered

and the building

swayed violently from the impact of its twin's demise.

A hurricane-forced gust of wind and debris blasted upwards.

For the man in the side of the North Tower, this was a catastrophic turn.

Eyewitnesses lost sight of him around the moment the South Tower fell.

It's believed that the tremendous vibration and air pressure from the

collapse may

have thrown him off balance. The thick plume of dust and ash would have

instantly enveloped him, making it impossible to see or breathe.

No one witnessed the exact moment he fell.

There was so much chaos as people ran from the collapsing South Tower that the

climber's fate passed without any camera definitively recording it.

He never made it to the ground alive.

In the aftermath of this terroristic catastrophe, this man remained an

enigma. His identity was a mystery.

There were no obvious clues from the distance at which he was observed.

But over the years, 9-11 researchers and online communities kept

returning to the haunting tale of the man who tried to climb down the tower.

For a long time, the climbing man remained unidentified,

an anonymous

figure symbolizing desperate hope.

But recent deep-dive research and crowdsourced sleuthing have led to a

compelling theory about who he might have been.

One name has emerged, Frank Bennett Reisman.

Frank Reisman was a 41-year-old equities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald,

working in the North Tower on the morning of 9-11.

What makes Frank stand out is that he was known to be an avid mountain climber

and

outdoorsman, and perhaps the only person above the

North Tower's impact zone

with significant climbing experience.

Frank Reisman's background reads almost like a resume for someone who might

attempt

such a daring escape. When Frank Reisman was single,

mountain climbing was his

passion, wrote the New York Times.

In his youth, he had hiked the Appalachian Trail solo

from Maine down to

Pennsylvania.

He loved backcountry hiking and rock climbing.

Friends described him as adventurous and fit.

It was as well known among his colleagues and family that he could scale rock

faces and wasn't afraid of heights.

Frank's family has never publicly indicated knowledge of his final actions,

and

tragically his body was never recovered.

The identification remains unconfirmed, but in the collective 9-11 community,

the climbing man and Frank Reisman have been linked as likely one and the same.

On September 11th, cornered by unimaginable disaster,

that same

devoted dad drew on his youthful passion for climbing in one last

extraordinary effort to get home to his family.

It's heartbreaking to think how close he came only to be cut off by the collapsing

tower.

In those 15 or 20 minutes on the side of the building, one man, likely

Frank Reisman, achieved something truly extraordinary.