Ron DiFrancesco, The 9/11 Survivor Saved By Third Man Factor
In Memoriam Sept 11/FacebookRon DiFrancesco believed third man syndrome is why he was able to escape from the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Sept. 11, 2001 started as a normal day for Ron DiFrancesco. Per usual, he arrived at work at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, then made his way to his office on the 84th floor of the South Tower.
Then, at 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 — violently hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists — crashed into the North Tower.
At first, DiFrancesco stayed put. It was the other tower, not his, that had been hit, and the instructions blaring over the intercom promised that there was “no need to evacuate.” But after talking with a friend, DiFrancesco decided to leave the building anyway. Minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into floors 77 through 85 in the South Tower.
DiFrancesco managed to make it to Stairway A, the only unobstructed escape route. But as he and others made their way down, they encountered two people who told them that the smoke and flames made it impossible to descend any further. DiFrancesco and most of the others followed the other two up toward the roof. But as they climbed, DiFrancesco became increasingly nervous. Eventually, he changed his mind and decided to go down instead.
Wikimedia CommonsThe South Tower was struck just as Ron DiFrancesco decided it would be safer to evacuate than to stay put.
Stymied by smoke and a collapsed wall, DiFrancesco began to fear that he’d made the wrong choice. But then the third man phenomenon began when an unseen male voice told DiFrancesco to “Get up!”
As DiFrancesco told Geiger, he could both hear the voice and feel a physical presence (though no one was there).
“I was led to the stairs. I don’t think something grabbed my hand, but I was definitely led,” he later recalled of his miraculous escape from the South Tower. “There was still danger, so it led me to the stairwell, led me to break through, led me to run through the fire… There was obviously somebody encouraging me. That’s not where you go, you don’t go toward the fire.”
Then, once he made it through the flames and smoke to the 76th floor, the voice vanished. DiFrancesco was able to get out of the building. In fact, he was the last person to escape the South Tower before it collapsed.
