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Article
Security
Guard Hailed For Selfless Devotion
by Patrick May, Knight Ridder News Service / Star-Telegram
NEW YORK - He
could have left his post. He could have fled. But security guard
Gabriel Torres stayed where he was, in the basement concourse of the
World Trade Center, watching frightened office workers and even
fellow guards swarm up the stalled escalator to safety.
For the next hour, while
the complex in which he had worked since 1998 collapsed around him,
Torres remained below to help others. As the power died and smoke
and dust filled his
| HERO
Gabriel Torres risked his life helping others to safety
after the attack on the World Trade Center, saying, "It
just wasn't part of my instinct to run away." |
underground cavern, the high school dropout from Brooklyn showed
hundreds of people the way out. He spent the next 45 minutes helping
two firefighters search four floors of pitch-dark basement, just in
case someone had been left behind. Then he led them through a
crumbling warren of underground passages that he knew like the back
of his hand.
All of this time, Torres
thought mostly of Nicholas.
"My son was about
to turn two years old," said Torres, 29, a smallish man with a
trim mustache. "He doesn't even know me; he's so little, so I
had to survive. But I also have a responsibility to help people
around me. It just wasn't part of my instinct to run away."
Today, Torres bears the scars of his heroism. Stitches crisscross a
two-inch gash in his forehead where glass from an exploding door
flew into his face. He leaned on a wooden cane because his leg was
cut open by flying debris. His $10.61-an-hour job is up in the air.
His employer, Summit Security, has not phoned him or his co-workers
since the tragedy. His stepmother is lost in the rubble. Twenty of
this co-workers are dead or missing. And he can't sleep much,
because even the sound of wind and rain brings back the horror.
But he has Nicholas. And
Nicholas still has his father.
"I feel like I did
my duty that day, and it felt great," Torrres said. "But
seeing Nicholas smile when it was all over was the happiest moment
of my life.
Many ordinary people did
extraordinary things that dark day at the World Trade Center. Many
perished in the process. Some have no explanation for why they
risked their lives for others. But they did.
For Torres, it was
simple: Duty means putting others' welfare before your own.
"You can't lose
your head," he said as he waited with dozens of fellow guards
at a Salvation Army office, hoping to get some help in paying his
household bills. "I had to focus on the job at hand, because if
I lose my head, I am no good to my friends, I am no good to my
family, I am no good to anybody." The day began as usual at
5:30 a.m., when Torres showed up for roll call at the Trade Center.
This day, he was sent to the concourse beneath Building 5 to check
the IDs of vendors.
The first boom came at
8:48 a.m. "I thought construction workers had dropped one of
those huge metal plates," he said. "Then I saw people
running in every direction."
He saw a guard, covered in dust, bleeding from the back of his head.
It was serious enough that Torres radioed for help. People were
fleeing up to the street.
Then his beeper when
off. His mother, Nidia Rodriguez, was trying to reach him from the
police station in Brooklyn where she works as a civilian
administrator. He called her back.
"We were watching
it on TV," she said last week. "I told him a plane had hit
the tower and we could see the second plane about to hit the other
one. So I told him to get out. And then the phone went dead."
The lights went out on
Torres when the second plane struck at 9:06. "I thought that
plane was coming right through the concourse," he said.
"I've never heard such a noise. I got scared and rolled up in a
ball on the floor."
Then it was quiet. He
heard a friend's voice and crawled to her. Others gathered in the
dark and joined hands. Torres and fellow guard Willaim Fields led
them out.
Field saw Torres remain
behind. "We had just helped out the last 100 people but Gabriel
went back in to see if he could get more," Field recalled.
"I passed him on my way out. He said he wanted to stay and
help."
Two firefighters with
flashlights appeared before Torres out of the darkness. They said,
"We don't know our way around here; can you help us look for
people who might be down below?" Torres led them through the
now deserted concourse and two levels down to where the commuter
trains ran.
Then the rumbling above began. Not knowing that one of the towers
was collapsing, Torres heard what sounded like a hurricane over his
head. "We all dove, and this door exploded off its hinges. A
piece of it hit my forehead." Again he balled up on the ground,
not realizing that his leg had been sliced open, too, by flying bits
of steel and glass.
Torres and the
firefighters fled for the concourse escalator, but found only
mangled metal. " We climbed and climbed for ten minutes until
we found a hole and saw daylight," Torres said. There was
debris and fire all around. They were outside, but trapped by
mountains of debris and blinded by the dust.
They screamed for help.
One of the firefighters was close to passing out from smoke
inhalation. Torres' leg was bleeding badly. Suddenly, they saw other
firefighters in the distance, telling them to go down into the
concourse again and up through a hole on the other side. They
finally emerged from an opening near the remains of the Marriott
World Trade Center Hotel.
"The Fire
Department called us at the station at 2 p.m.," said Torres'
mother. "They said my son had been trapped in the rubble for
two hours" with the firefighters. "They said my son had a
concussion and a lot of cuts, but that he was alive."
Torres' girlfriend
said she wasn't surprised by his actions that day, "He always
helps people," said Vivien Vicente. "I guess you'd call
him a gentleman." �
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