Erik Ronningen was on the 71st floor of the South World Trade Center Tower when the building was struck by a plane, and was the last person who left alive on Sept. 11, 2001.
The annual 9/11 Memorial Remembrance Ceremony was held on Thursday in Clovis, honoring the lives of the nearly 3,000 lives lost including Otis Tolbert, a former Fresno State football player.
Ronningen’s day started with a cup of coffee and a two-year project he had been working on.
His vivid recollection of that day moved people in the crowd, some to tears.
Ronningen said that he took cover under his chair to protect his head when he knew the towers were coming down, but made himself stand up and watch.
At that moment, he said to himself, “Stand up, and die like a man.”
Ronningen watched fire falling through the window directly in front of him.
“I stood up facing south [and] huge, red, orange and yellow fireballs whooshing, sizzling and exploding right outside the windows, not 10 feet from where I was standing,” Ronningen said. “That all took place within the first 10 seconds.”
Ronningen recounts how the tower was tilting back and forth.
“I thought I was going to slingshot out the window down over 700 feet,” Ronningen said.
During his journey through pockets of smoke and debris of the building, he recalls seeing multiple bodies and thousands of people panicking through a window.
“When you got into those pockets, you could not breathe,” Ronningen said. “So you just held your breath and prayed that you’d make it through.”
He remembers a man named Sue, who he was walking with, and then at the last five feet before leaving, the sound of a shotgun went off. He decided to go another route.
“I know I was not exceeding those towers,” Ronningen said.
Walking through the lobby, he said the sight was indescribable, a completely dark building with signs swinging and the elevator doors blown out.
Once he walked through what once was a revolving door, he remembers seeing water coming down.
“There was water pouring like Niagara, soaking everybody who had went through there,” Ronningen said.
After walking down over 1400 stairs and down 71 floors, his body was starting to feel the effects.
Ronningen acknowledged the courage and resilience of the first responders who saved him that day, saying his prayers were answered.
He acknowledged that 2,754 people died in the World Trade Center. Twenty-three of those were police officers of the New York City Police Department, 37 were police officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and 343 were firefighters, mostly from the New York City Fire Department.
“Prayers are efficacious, and they mean more than we’ll ever know,” Ronningen said.
Over one hundred people were in attendance, and Ronningen thanked and said goodbye to the crowd with a salute.
