“Now we are brothers for life!”: The story of survivors of the September 11 terrorist attacks

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Exactly 25 years ago — on September 11, 2001, one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in world history took place. Al-Qaeda militants hijacked four passenger planes in the US. Two of them crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the third plane struck the Pentagon building, and the fourth crashed in a field before reaching Washington. Presumably, its target was the US Capitol building.

A total of 2,977 people died as a result of the attacks that day. Of these, 2,606 were victims of the attack on the Twin Towers. Most of those who died at the World Trade Center were employees working on the floors struck by the planes and in the offices above. In the North Tower, no one who was above the impact zone survived. In the South Tower, only 18 people managed to escape alive from this zone. One of the most memorable events regarding the rescue of victims that day is associated with Brian Clark and Stanley Praimnath.

Stanley worked on one of the floors of the South Tower struck by the plane. Brian, who was on a higher floor, found Stanley among the rubble and pulled him out. After that, they descended together through the only staircase that remained intact in the building and managed to get outside just minutes before the tower collapsed. On that day, Clark and Praimnath promised to consider each other blood brothers from then on. Their friendship continues to this day.

The story of Brian Clark and Stanley Praimnath has been covered in dozens of articles, TV shows, and documentaries. But even though a quarter of a century has passed, the story of how they survived still seems unbelievable.

Brian Clark and Stanley Praimnath also experienced the first terrorist attack at the World Trade Center. This happened in 1993. At that time, a truck loaded with explosives was detonated in the parking garage beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The attack killed six people and injured more than a thousand.

Both Clark and Praimnath worked in the Twin Towers at the time, but they were not yet aware of each other. They only met on September 11, 2001.

Brian Clark, a Canadian by birth, worked as a vice president at the brokerage firm Euro Brokers. The company's office was located on the 84th floor of the South Tower. On the morning of September 11, he was working in his office as usual. At 08:46, Clark heard a deafeningly loud boom. When he turned toward the window, he saw flames. At this time, the first plane had struck the North Tower, but Clark did not immediately know what had happened.

After the 1993 terrorist attack, he had joined the World Trade Center's volunteer fire safety team and was responsible for leading his colleagues out of the office in the event of an emergency. Seeing the flames outside the window, Clark thought something had exploded on the upper floors, so everyone needed to leave the building immediately. However, the televisions in the Euro Brokers office, which usually displayed financial data, simultaneously switched to breaking news reports about a plane striking the World Trade Center.

Then the Euro Brokers employees realized that the impact had hit the other building — the North Tower. The building administration announced over the loudspeakers that there was no danger in the South Tower. For this reason, Clark and about twenty of his colleagues decided to stay in the office. They thought there was no longer a need to leave the building.

However, people were in fear and anxiety. From the windows of their office, the massive fire in the North Tower was clearly visible. Even more horrific was seeing people falling to the ground from the upper floors...

Stanley Praimnath's office was located three floors below where Brian Clark worked — on the 81st floor of the South Tower. Praimnath, a native of Guyana, worked as a loan officer at Fuji Bank at the time. While checking messages on his answering machine, he saw burning debris falling past the window. After that, he went down to the lobby with his colleagues from Fuji Bank. However, they were stopped there by a security guard.

As Praimnath recalls, they had a conversation approximately like this:

— Where are you going?

— We saw the fire in the North Tower.

— That's just an accident. The South Tower is safe. Return to your offices.

Later, this advice turned into a fatal decision for most of Praimnath's colleagues.

When Praimnath went back up, he heard the phone on his desk ringing. A colleague from Chicago was calling to ask how he was. Praimnath said everything was fine, and at that moment he raised his head and looked toward the window. Flying directly toward the tower was a massive United Airlines plane. Praimnath dropped the phone receiver and cried out: "Lord, you take control. I can't do anything else." Then he dove under his desk and curled up, covering his head.

09:03 AM

The second plane strikes the South Tower. Praimnath was left right in the center of the impact zone. The plane's impact instantly engulfed nine floors — from the 77th to the 85th floor. A burning piece of the plane's wing was wedged right in front of the entrance to his department.

Photo: AFP

Clark was also in his office when the plane struck. He did not see the approaching plane, but he heard a loud boom and cracking sounds. Objects around him fell, and white dust covered everything. Clark felt the tower sway. In terror, he thought the building was about to collapse, but the structure remained standing.

After turning on his flashlight, Clark began looking for a way out. Quite by chance, he turned toward Stairwell A, and this very decision saved his life. This was one of the three stairwells in the South Tower, located furthest from the impact zone, and the only one that remained usable after the strike. Clark began to descend. Along the way, several other people joined him. On the 81st-floor landing, their small group encountered a woman and a man ascending from below.

— Stop, stop, you have to go back. There is fire and smoke everywhere below. We need to go up, — the woman said.

An argument began over what to do. At that moment, Clark heard someone screaming for help and knocking sounds. It was Stanley Praimnath. When the plane struck the tower, Praimnath was barely injured, but he was trapped among the rubble. Seeing the light of Clark's flashlight from afar, he had started screaming for help.

Photo: New York Police Department

Clark and another colleague of his began clearing a path toward Praimnath. The rest of the people in the group, listening to the advice of the woman they met on the stairs, went back up to wait for helicopters to rescue them. Later, none of them survived.

Clark's colleague was forced to turn back due to smoke inhalation. Clark was left alone. He pushed aside the debris and reached Praimnath. Then, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, he pulled him over a piece of drywall wall that was over two meters high. Both fell to the floor. Clark later recalled those moments like this:

"We fell, and he hugged me tightly and kissed me. 'What's happening, what are you doing?' I said. Then I put my hand out to him and said, 'I'm Brian Clark.' And he said, 'I'm Stanley Praimnath. Now we are brothers for life.' I replied, 'Great, I don't actually have any brothers or sisters.'"

Clark said he saw a cut on Praimnath's palm and held his hand with his own palm, which had been injured while clearing the debris. For Clark, this became a symbol of them becoming "blood brothers."

— Come on, buddy. Let's go home, — Clark said.

Together they began to descend via Stairwell A. The stairs were blocked with debris, and in some places, smoke and flames were visible. But there was no fire large enough to completely block their path.

On the 68th floor, they met another colleague who worked with Clark at Euro Brokers. He was going up to help someone. Clark and Praimnath tried to convince him to come down with them, but he refused. Later, he also perished.

When they reached the 44th floor, the lights were working, but communication had not yet been restored. Here, a World Trade Center security guard in a blue uniform approached them. Next to him lay a seriously injured man. The guard asked them to call for medical help as soon as they reached a phone.

Photo: AP Photo

"'We'll do everything we can,' we said, and left him there. He was an unsung, overlooked hero," Clark later recalled with regret.

After descending a few more floors, they called 911. After that, they walked calmly through the lobby of the South Tower and went out into the street. Neither of them had even imagined that the building could collapse. Even on the way down, they had walked carefully down the stairs on purpose to avoid getting injured by debris.

Firefighters were moving around the World Trade Center. From the outside, they also did not seem panicked — as if they were preparing to put out just another routine fire. Clark and Praimnath walked a few blocks and reached a church. There they met two priests. Upon seeing them, Praimnath suddenly burst into tears.

— This man saved my life, — he said, pointing to Clark.

Clark, also emotional, replied: "I think you saved my life too. It was because of you that I stopped arguing about whether to go up or down. Now I am here, alive. I managed to get out of the building because I heard your voice in the darkness."

They decided to go inside the church. But first, they turned around and looked at the burning towers of the World Trade Center.

— You know, I think they might collapse, — Praimnath said.

— No way. After all, they are built of steel structures... — Clark replied.

Before he could even finish his sentence, the South Tower began to collapse before their eyes.

This happened at 09:59 AM — 56 minutes after the plane collided with the tower and about five minutes after Praimnath and Clark had left the building. In an instant, they were engulfed by a massive wave of construction dust. Everything around turned white — as if the first snow had fallen.

Trying to get home, the survivors set off on foot across Manhattan. But in the crowded streets, Clark and Praimnath unexpectedly lost each other. Fortunately, before that, Praimnath had managed to hand his business card to Clark.

Clark boarded a ferry to New Jersey. As the ferry bypassed the southern tip of Manhattan, he saw that the Twin Towers were no longer there. The North Tower had collapsed at 10:28 AM — 29 minutes after the South Tower fell.

"Of course, at that time, we — the people on the ferry — knew nothing about the hijacked planes, the attack on the Pentagon, or the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. We didn't understand what was happening at all. But to our right was the World Trade Center, and I saw that the building where I had worked for 27 years was no longer there. Everyone was silent," Clark recalls.

Returning home that day, Clark ran into a USA Today reporter. The journalist spotted Clark, covered in dust from head to toe, waiting for a train at the Glen Rock station in New Jersey. He asked Clark if he had come out of the World Trade Center.

The next day, USA Today published an article titled "A Terrifying Descent from the 84th Floor." This was the first story of how Clark and Praimnath survived, but many more such materials would appear later.

Clark barely felt any serious psychological consequences of the intense stress he experienced. In Praimnath, however, the trauma manifested itself in the form of temporary memory loss. For a while, he could not even recognize his wife and children.

"I didn't understand why this strange woman was walking around our house with two children and why she wasn't going to her own home. I even refused to sleep because she was in the same room with me... I don't know how long this lasted. I only remember that one day I got up, looked at her, suddenly recognized her, and it was as if I came to my senses," Praimnath said.

His miraculous survival from the World Trade Center further strengthened Praimnath's faith. Five years after the terrorist attack, he became a pastor. Praimnath believes that God has protected him both on that day and in the years since. In the 25 years since the September 11 attacks, he has survived leukemia, a severe form of COVID-19, and has also undergone quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery.

Clark, on the contrary, became a pacifist over time. He condemns both US military conflicts abroad and any form of killing in general. Even the celebrations that began on the streets of US cities after the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was behind the September 11 attacks, angered him.

"To see people driving around the streets in pickup trucks, shouting 'USA!' and celebrating the death of another human being was disgusting to me. Capture him, interrogate him, put him in prison — fine. But to take a person's life and then turn it into a celebration? No. We shouldn't be like that," Clark said.

Praimnath and Clark have maintained their friendship for a quarter of a century. They have shared their story together with journalists, schoolchildren, and church congregations. They celebrated their children's weddings and the birth of their grandchildren together. Over the years, they grew up and grew old together. Now Clark is 79 years old, and Praimnath is 69.

They rarely meet now, but they talk on the phone at least once every two months.

"If I die tomorrow and someone has to speak at my funeral, I would want it to be Brian. On that day — September 11 — I found my guardian angel, and I am grateful for that. If it weren't for this man who risked his life to save me, I would have died. I owe him everything. If he needed my arm or my leg, I would give it to him without hesitation," says Praimnath.