Jim Gartenberg Made Several 9/11 Phone Calls — And One Was Aired On Live TV
9/11 Living MemorialJim Gartenberg made multiple 9/11 phone calls, including one to a TV station.
For Jim Gartenberg, September 11, 2001 was supposed to be a day of transitions. He’d gone to his former office on the 86th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center to clean out his desk before he started a new job. But then, at 8:46 a.m., Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.
Gartenberg first tried calling his wife, Jill, but he was initially unable to reach her, so he called his friend Adam Goldman next.
“Adam, there’s a fire on the floor,” Gartenberg told Goldman, who could see the smoking North Tower on live television. “I’m trapped and can’t get out.”
Gartenberg also called the Midtown office of his company and reached Margaret Luberda, the senior vice president for human resources. He told her he was having difficulty escaping the North Tower office due to the amount of debris on his floor. Luberda contacted the fire department, and someone on the other line assured her that help was on the way.
YouTubeJim Gartenberg made multiple phone calls, including to a local TV station in hopes of alerting first responders.
At some point, Gartenberg also called in to a local television station, where the reporters were eager to know where he was.
“It’s not was,” Gartenberg said. “I am here and I’m stuck right now… I have no idea where the plane hit. It’s my understanding that it’s a plane.” He explained: “The first thing that I want to make clear is that I’m stuck on the 86th floor. A fire door has trapped us. Debris has fallen around us and part of the core of the building is blown out.”
Apparently concerned about scaring people on the ground, he said, “If I’m on air, I want to tell anybody that has a family member that may be in the building that the situation is under control for the moment and the danger has not increased. So please all family members, take it easy.”
Eventually, he finally got in touch with his wife, Jill, who could see plumes of smoke from the 9/11 attacks from outside her office on the Upper East Side. According to The Washington Post, she thought: “No one could survive that.”
During the heartbreaking phone call, Gartenberg told his wife how much she and their two-year-old daughter Nicole meant to him as he crouched beneath his desk. They exchanged “I love yous” and said goodbye. And at 10:28 a.m., the North Tower collapsed with Gartenberg still trapped inside.
“The building collapsed,” Jill Gartenberg recalled to The Washington Post, “and then I knew he wasn’t calling back.”
