"...we got exactly to 6, all of a sudden, at the same instant, 5 different things happened.
The first was, the lights went out. The emergency lights went out so we were in total darkness.
Second. The stairwell filled up with a tremendous amount of smoke, and dirt, and soot. Much more than it had been before.
Previously, you could breath for about three flights down, but at that point you couldn't breath..at all. So the second thing was the soot.
The third thing was..uh..the sprinklers went on, so all of a sudden we were in the dark, no emergency lights, and the water was pouring down on top of us.
At the same instant, and the last two things were the scariest. The building began to shake and it was as if you were in an earthquake. I've never really been in an earthquake but it was what it felt like. The whole building was shaking.
And the last thing was....the stairway...ran into a wall. All of a sudden, as you were going down on the 6th floor, you hit a wall.
So there I am and I'm saying, "what the heck is happening", and I said to Barry, while shaking we just stood there, and after... I don't know it was 5 seconds or 10 seconds, but the building stopped shaking.
And in my mind I assumed there had been an explosion..ah...in the basement. I don't know why that hit me that way but we couldn't go anywhere. The wall was blocking it. It was pitch dark.