When you woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001, what kind of day did you expect?
I was at work, and I expected a routine day. Several strong storms had come through New York City the night before. By morning, the skies had cleared, so I anticipated it being an uneventful day.
Where exactly were you when you first realized that something extraordinary had happened at the World Trade Center?
I was at our firehouse in Chinatown. I was the Captain of Ladder 6 at the time, and the World Trade Center would be my last response as Captain of that company. I was sitting in the firehouse kitchen having breakfast when we heard the jet go across the sky, followed by a loud explosion. I ran to the front of the firehouse and could see a plume of black smoke going across the sky. We realized that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center.
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Was it immediately clear that you had to act right away?
Yes. I knew from our alarm box assignments that we were predetermined to go to the World Trade Center if there was any serious fire there. And this was about as serious as it gets.
What was the first thing you saw when you arrived — and what was the first thought that went through your mind?
As we were responding, I was sitting in the front of the fire truck and could see the North Tower with a large, airplane-shaped hole in it and a tremendous amount of fire and smoke coming out. That was the first thing I saw. When we arrived at the World Trade Center, we started gathering the equipment we would need for a normal high-rise fire. Then pieces of the building started coming loose and striking our fire trucks, so we had to seek shelter beneath a pedestrian bridge. Once no more debris was coming down, we gathered our tools and ran to the front of the building. That was when we saw what kind of day it was going to be. We saw two badly burned people right at the front door. They had been trapped in the elevators when the plane hit; jet fuel came down the elevator shafts and ignited while they were still inside. We went to the command post in the lobby. Every high-rise building in New York City has a command post where the Fire Department can set up its command structure. I got in line with the officers waiting to receive their orders. The chief in charge was Pete Hayden. As firefighters came in, they were talking about what they had seen while responding. I was standing near firefighters from Rescue 1, a specialized FDNY unit, and a lieutenant. All of a sudden, we heard a loud explosion. Outside, I saw a large black shadow move across the ground and flaming debris falling down. We really did not know what had happened until a man came running in from outside and said, “A second plane has just hit the South Tower.”
We saw two badly burned people right at the front door. They had been trapped in the elevators when the plane hit; jet fuel came down the elevator shafts and ignited while they were still inside.
At that moment, was it immediately clear to you that this was a terrorist attack — not a normal fire or an accident?
Yes. At that point, we knew this was not an accident. Somebody was trying to kill us. Then it was my turn to receive orders from Deputy Chief Peter Hayden. I went to him and said, “A second plane just hit the South Tower.” He just shook his head and said, “I know. I know.” Then he said, “Take your men upstairs in this building and do the best you can.” So I walked over to where my firefighters were standing and said, “All right, guys, here’s the deal. It’s a raw deal, but this is what we have to do. We’ve been given orders for search and rescue in this building. We can’t use the elevators because they’ve been exposed to fire.” One of the last things I told them was, “They’re trying to kill us, boys. Let’s go.” And to their credit, every one of them said, “All right, Cap, we’re with you.” We proceeded to Stairwell B, which was in the geographic center of the North Tower, and started climbing. People have asked me why I chose that stairway. It was simple: that was the closest stairway.
At that moment, were you aware that perhaps not all of your colleagues would survive the day?
You can’t really think about that in a situation like that. I knew we were in grave danger, but we just had to do the best we could, keep our awareness of the situation paramount, and keep climbing. We took it ten floors at a time: climb ten floors, catch our breath, get a sip of water, then climb another ten. I felt that way we would still have enough strength and stamina to fight the fire once we reached the 90th floor. So we had a long way to climb — and a lot of work waiting for us once we got there.
What did you see in the faces of the people coming down the stairwell toward you?
Ironically, for one of the biggest buildings in the world, it was not a very wide stairway. You had a row of firefighters and police officers climbing on one side and a row of building occupants coming down the other. It was close enough that we were brushing shoulders as we passed each other. They were very happy to see us. They would say things like, “God bless you,” “Go get ’em, firefighters,” or “You deserve a raise.” We liked that one. On every floor there was also a refrigerated vending machine with a large glass front. The civilians were breaking the glass, taking out bottles of water, giving them to the firefighters, and pouring water over our heads to cool us off. It was pretty unique.
Firefighters like you are repeatedly confronted with extreme situations in the line of duty and risk their lives. But what were you thinking about as you climbed those stairs? Were you thinking about your wife, Judy?
My thoughts were mainly that there were people who needed our help at that very moment. I hoped we would find survivors in the building. We pretty much figured the people on the airplane were deceased. But we believed we could save people in the building.
“The South Tower just collapsed.” I knew what that meant: thousands of people had just been killed right next door to where we were standing. And I realized that our mission was no longer doable.
When the South Tower collapsed, you were still inside the North Tower. What did you feel? And did you immediately realize that the other tower was gone
Just before that, I had met a Captain who was a former firefighter of mine, Billy Burke. We had just finished saying hello when we heard the roar of the South Tower collapsing. It swayed our building back and forth so violently that it was hard to stand up. We did not know what had happened. Because our building moved so violently, we thought it was possible that part of our own building had collapsed. I told Captain Burke to check the south windows while I checked the north windows, and then we would meet back where we had been standing. I could not see anything — all I could see was white dust pressed against the glass. When Burke came back, he had a funny look on his face. I asked him, “Was that what I thought it was?” I expected him to say that part of our building had collapsed. He just looked at me and said, “The South Tower just collapsed.” I knew what that meant: thousands of people had just been killed right next door to where we were standing. And I realized that our mission was no longer doable. I looked at my guys and said, “All right, guys. If that one can go, this one can go. It’s time for us to get out of here.”
Then you headed back toward Stairwell B.
Yes. I thought I had been crystal clear in what I said to them. It turned out that my men had not understood that the South Tower had collapsed. So they were a little reluctant: we had just climbed 27 floors with heavy gear and equipment, and now I was telling them to do an about-face and head back down the stairs. But we did. We got to around the 20th floor, and there was a woman standing in a doorway, crying.
That was Josephine Harris.
Yes, that was Josephine Harris.
I’ve had people come up to me and say what a momentous decision it was to stop and rescue this woman, because it greatly slowed down our escape. But I’ve always said: that’s why we went there. We went there to save lives.
Take us back to that moment. Who was she, and what condition was she in?
She was barely able to walk. We did not know it at the time, but she had been involved in a car-versus-pedestrian accident a couple of weeks before, so she was in pain when she walked. She was just standing in the doorway, helpless. One of my firefighters, Tommy Falco, turned around and asked me, “What do you want to do with her?” I looked at her and said, “All right, bring her with us.” I had Billy Butler, one of my biggest guys, support her and put her arm around his shoulder. We would continue down the stairs, but stay together as a group. I’ve had people come up to me and say what a momentous decision it was to stop and rescue this woman, because it greatly slowed down our escape. But I’ve always said: that’s why we went there. We went there to save lives. We didn’t go there to have the “World Trade Center experience.” We went there to save lives, and she became the reason why we were there.
But every instinct must have been telling you to get out of that building as quickly as possible. Was there even a second of discussion about leaving Josephine Harris behind?
No. Not for a second. Every fiber in my being was telling me: get out of this building. Every second we waste is one second closer to us not getting out. But there was never a discussion about leaving her behind. Like I said, she became the reason why we were there. We were there to save her life.
You were trying to save Josephine Harris. But in an extraordinary twist of fate, slowing down for her may ultimately have saved all of you. When did you first understand that?
It took a while to put all those pieces together.
I believe you later called her your guardian angel.
Yes. Because if we had been a little slower in our stairway, we would not have made it. And if we had been faster, we would have had to be far enough away from the building to survive. We probably would not have survived if we had been faster either. This was a 110-story building, one of the biggest buildings in the world, and where we were, we found a void. There were not many voids in the rubble once they started going through it. It was almost like she knew: this is the spot. If we have to be anywhere, this is the spot. And that’s where we were when the building collapsed.
if we had been a little slower in our stairway, we would not have made it. And if we had been faster, we would have had to be far enough away from the building to survive. It was almost like she knew: this is the spot. If we have to be anywhere, this is the spot. And that’s where we were when the building collapsed.
Has that experience changed your understanding of fate — the idea that one decision, one stranger, one minute can determine whether we live or die?
You can’t really think about that as it’s happening and say, “Well, that was fate.” But if you examine our situation afterward, one thing is clear: Josephine lived because we stopped to save her. If we had not stopped, she would not have moved from where she was, and she would have perished. At the same time, when she got to the fourth floor, she fell to the floor and started yelling at us, “Leave me alone! Get away from me! Don’t touch me!” But we were not going to leave her behind. I broke into the fourth floor to look for a sturdy chair that we could put her on and carry her down the stairs a little faster. Looking back on it now, that was fate too.
You were on the fourth floor in Stairwell B when the North Tower began to collapse around you. What does a 110-story skyscraper collapsing around you actually sound like from the inside — and what was that moment like?
The amazing thing is that the entire building was down in about 13 seconds. It came down so quickly. It was a series of different noises. The building collapsed from the top down, in what we call a pancake fashion. As one floor hit another floor, there was a loud boom and tremendous vibration. And you could hear the sound of twisting steel all around us.
Did you think in that moment that you were about to die?
Yes. I thought, “This is it. This is where it ends for me.” And I was disappointed that we did not get out. The firefighters under my command were my responsibility, and I had not gotten them out. Then the collapse abruptly stopped. We were in complete darkness, coughing and gagging, with debris flying around all over the place. We had to pull dirt and debris out of our mouths, ears, and noses. I called out a roll call because I could hear people moving around. All my guys were accounted for — and so was Josephine.
You were alive.
We were alive.
What is the first thing you remember after the collapse stopped?
Then we had another problem to solve: how do we get out of here? We explored different ways to get out. At first, we thought we could simply continue down the stairs, but that area was blocked. The stairway was twisted and filled with rubble; there was no way through. So we kept looking for a way out. Shortly after the collapse, we heard a Mayday message — a firefighter calling for help. It was Lieutenant Mike Warchola, a man I knew and whom we had passed in the stairway. He said he was trapped in Stairwell B on the 12th floor and badly hurt. I responded to his call for help and got as far as the sixth floor. There, the debris became too heavy to move out of the way. I could not get any higher. That was very difficult for me: here was a man, a friend of mine, who needed help, and I could not help him. At the same time, we had to go into survival mode ourselves and figure out how to get out.
How long did it take before you were rescued?
About four hours. I was talking to other firefighters on the radio, and they were encouraging us, telling us they were going to find us. At the same time, they were saying, “It’s really bad out here.” We had no idea what it looked like outside our void. At one point, an explosion rocked the stairway and caused a secondary collapse. One of my firefighters, Mike Meldrum, put his body on top of Josephine’s to shield her from the falling debris. Sal D’Agostino took off his fireman’s coat, put it around her, and said, “Nothing’s going to happen to you as long as we’re here.” I was very proud of my men. Nobody had ordered them to do that. Under their own self-imposed discipline, they did exactly the right thing. Josephine started crying and said she was scared. I just said, “Look, we’re all a little scared. Just hang in there.” And she did. That was pretty brave of her, because we firefighters were used to working under adverse conditions. She wasn’t.
On that day, 343 New York City firefighters were killed. You knew many of them; some were your friends. Do you still see their faces 25 years later?
I think about them often. A lot of those guys I saw that day while we were operating. I did not know they were only minutes away from their deaths. This was the biggest search-and-rescue effort in the history of this country. And the terrible downside was that most of the guys who participated in that search-and-rescue mission were killed in the effort. We were among the few who survived it.
While you were fighting to survive inside the North Tower, your wife Judy did not know whether her husband was alive or dead. Have you ever talked in detail about what those hours were like for her?
Yes. It’s actually a pretty incredible story. She was having a Cub Scout leaders’ meeting at our house that morning. One of the other women there was Donna McLaughlin. Her husband, John, was a Port Authority police officer. All day long, the women were consoling Judy because they knew I was at the World Trade Center. Right around the time they began getting phone calls saying that I was alive, they found out that Donna’s husband, John, was trapped. The tables turned completely, just like that.
When were you able to call Judy for the first time afterward?
One of the guys had a cell phone. I did not own a cell phone on September 11. We were eventually able to get a call out, and I spoke to her very briefly — maybe ten seconds. Later that day, once I got back to the firehouse, I had a landline and was able to talk to her again.
So on that first call, you could basically only tell her, “I’m alive. I’ll call you later.”
Right, pretty much. They had been watching television, so in a way they had a better view of what was happening to me than I did. I was inside the building. They saw the entire tower coming down from the outside. That was pretty scary.
What was that first moment like when you saw Judy again, came home, and your family was there?
I was still coming to grips with what I had just survived. When I came home, they met me in front of the house in our driveway, and they all gave me a hug. My eyes were damaged, my corneas were scratched, and I was in a lot of pain. Neighbors, friends, and family were there, and everybody wanted to know what had happened. I could really only tell them what I had gone through. I did not fully appreciate how dramatic that day had been until after I got home.
Jay, you are a father of three. How did you later explain to your children what had happened to their dad? And did 9/11 change you as a father?
It did not fundamentally make me a different father. I was already a very attentive father before 9/11. Afterward, I just made it an even higher priority. My kids were at three very different ages: one was just starting high school, one was in middle school, and my youngest was just starting kindergarten. My oldest daughter hovered around all day, taking in what was being said by all our friends, neighbors, and family. My son kept seeing the television footage of the buildings coming down, but he did not understand my connection to it at first. At one point, he came in, gave me a hug, and went back into the living room. I looked at Judy and said, “What was that for?” She said, “He just realized that you were in the building when it collapsed.” Until then, he had thought I was outside the building and had run in to save people. My youngest daughter, who was in kindergarten, was nervous for a while whenever I went to work. She would cry and ask, “You’re not going into those buildings anymore, are you?” I said, “No. Those buildings are gone. I can’t go into them anymore.” They were all at different ages, and each of them processed the events differently.
I was watching all these luminaries getting their awards and thinking, “Geez, I’m just a fireman. What are they going to do with me?” Paul McCartney received an award just before I did. They were playing Beatles videos, and he got up and gave a great speech. Then the screens behind the stage started showing images of September 11, and they called me onstage. Mikhail Gorbachev and Paul McCartney were standing there.
Only a few weeks after 9/11, Mikhail Gorbachev and I invited you to Vienna. At the Imperial Hofburg Palace, you were honored with the World Award on behalf of all New York City firefighters for their courage. What was your first thought when you heard about the invitation? I remember you telling me at the time that you had never flown overseas before — and I believe you did not even have a passport.
That’s correct. I wasn’t a big traveler, and I actually did not have a passport. So I had to get one. The trip was a little bit of a leap of faith. It was somewhat daunting when we first started doing it.
Then you were in Vienna, standing on the same stage as Richard Branson, Ted Turner, Luciano Pavarotti, and Alain Delon. Paul McCartney delivered the tribute to you. What was that moment like?
I was the last one to receive an award that night. I was watching all these luminaries getting their awards and thinking, “Geez, I’m just a fireman. What are they going to do with me?” Paul McCartney received an award just before I did. They were playing Beatles videos, and he got up and gave a great speech. Then the screens behind the stage started showing images of September 11, and they called me onstage. Mikhail Gorbachev and Paul McCartney were standing there. I walked up, shook their hands, and thought, “Wow, this is unbelievable — and I’m in the middle of it.” Then I went to give my speech, but Paul McCartney pushed me away from the podium. He addressed the crowd and said that he had been in New York City on September 11 and had witnessed what was going on, and that what Jay and his men did was absolutely remarkable. Then he had the audience give us another ovation. I thought, “There’s no way I can top this.” Then I gave my speech, and it was very well received. It was special. Before I went up there, Judy had said to me, “If you have an opportunity for me to meet Paul McCartney, you better do it, or I’m going to be very angry.” My speech was the last speech of the night. When I saw the event was coming to an end, I motioned to Judy, who was sitting right in front of the stage, and said, “If you want to meet Paul McCartney, you better get onstage right now.” Paul, his girlfriend at the time, Heather, and Judy all went into a room backstage and met each other. I would not have been in good graces for a long time if Judy had not met Paul McCartney.
Did that trip to Vienna perhaps make you realize for the first time that 9/11 was not only an American tragedy, but something that had affected people all over the world — including in Europe?
Oh, yes. Judy and I ventured out of the hotel because we wanted to see Vienna. We love Vienna. We got on the train and were going around the city, and there was a woman sitting near us. She stood up and gave us a newspaper. In the newspaper was a story about me and my unit, with a photograph of me. She wanted us to have it. She was just an ordinary woman, and she wanted to let us know that she appreciated what we had done. That meant a lot to us.
Jay, you retired from the New York City Fire Department in 2022 after almost 43 years of service. Who is Jay Jonas today when he is no longer Chief Jonas?
Today, I’m Grandpa Jonas. We have three grandchildren, one of whom was born just last month. We spend a lot of time with them. Occasionally, we visit one of our other children; our youngest daughter lives in Georgia. During the winter, we like to visit friends in Florida. My life is certainly not as exciting as it was during the previous 43 years, I’ll tell you that. But I’m grateful for the career I had and the friends I made.
Be honest: after a lifetime of running toward emergencies while others ran away from danger, was it difficult to simply stop?
Yes. Very much so. I loved my job. It was exciting, challenging, and very rewarding. When that career ended, it honestly left a little bit of a hole in my daily routine. But I’m very grateful that I had the career I did.
There is now an entire generation that was born after 9/11. What do you want a 20-year-old reading this interview in 2026 to understand about that day?
They should understand what was going on: ordinary people were under attack, and ordinary people like me were going in to save them, risking our own lives to do it. The families of those who did not make it out are still suffering today. So learn as much as you can about that day, and honor it. September 11 is not just another date on the calendar. It is a very special day.
Jay, after everything you have witnessed — death, courage, friendship, extraordinary luck or fate, and almost 43 years of saving other people’s lives — what has life taught you about what really matters?
You have to appreciate your family and understand how important their attention and closeness are. And enjoy your friends and your neighbors to the utmost. That’s all you can really do in life. That’s what life is all about.
So even in the darkest moments imaginable, humanity is what matters.
Yes. We had so many friends and relatives who were willing to do extraordinary things for me. One of them was a fellow I had coached Little League with. He had just retired as a New York City police officer. He was going to go into the city just to get me out. New York was locked down, but he still had his police credentials and thought he could use them to get to me. As it turned out, I beat him to the punch. He was about to head into the city, but first he stopped at our house to see if Judy was okay — and there I was, sitting in the rocking chair in our kitchen. He looked at me and kept saying, “You’re here! You’re here! I can’t believe you’re here!” People who knew me and understood the story could not believe that I had lived through it. And even today, around September 11, a lot of people reach out to me and say they saw another documentary on television and still cannot believe I’m alive.
Jay, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your courage. And thank you for helping us remember how people helped one another — and what human beings are capable of when it matters most. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Georg.
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