'What about building 7'?

[Miragememories]

It's also worth noting they were not heading straight to the OEM. This sounds like they headed somewhere near WFC first (past Verizon building) and doubled back.

"Captain Nahmod and I started heading down Vesey Street towards where we thought the command post would be. At that time we had received a page per Chief Peruggia to go into OEM at No. 7 World Trade and activate our post in OEM."

Your issues with reading comprehension are shameful.

"Driving over the speed limit" makes me laugh. Apart from the remains of commuter traffic, every fire crew, ambulance and cop in NY and beyond was heading that way (check the videos) and the very roads were heaving with people. Drury/Zarillo (can't remember which) commented on the chaos on Broadway.

From the street level videos I've viewed, regular traffic was quickly diverted from the area except for emergency vehicles.

Many people were of course walking away from the WTC, but not so packed that emergency responders were unable to walk or run unimpeded up the streets and sidewalks toward the WTC complex.

FDNY, NYPD, and other emergency agencies were by no means flooding the surrounding streets with vehicles. Many people were walking on the streets.

I saw no serious impediment to emergency responders running up Vesey St. to 7 WTC.

Certainly the people evacuating the area looked extremely distressed and many were constantly looking back at the burning towers.

That, and they found the stairway full of smoke when they went down to the 6th floor.

Smoke that was caused by the fire in the generators due to the collapse of WTC2, as Catalano reports.

And everything went dark when WTC1 collapsed, as Catalano reports, matching what Hess reports.

Mr. Hess's story was not as consistent as that of Mr. Jennings. Shortly after his rescue on 9/11, Mr. Hess said this in an interview with Channel 9 News;

"Yes I was. I was up in the Emergency Management Center on the 23rd floor..and when all the power went out in the building..ahh..another gentlemen and I walked down to the 8th floor [later corrected as meaning the 6th floor] where there was an explosion..and we'd been trapped on the 8th floor with smoke, thick smoke all around us for about an hour and a half. But the New York Fire Dept., as terrific as they are just came and got us out."

While he was on the 23rd floor, how Mr. Hess could possibly know what the power status was for the whole building is unknown.

Even the NIST never made such an extreme claim, while Mr. Jennings made no mention of the NIST lights flickering, let alone a full building power failure.

Several years later with surprisingly improved recall, Mr. Hess decided to sing a different tune for the BBC.

For some unexplained reason, the BBC chose not to include any part of Mr. Hess's interview in their documentary on 7 WTC but did use Mr. Jennings extensively.

The BBC do provide an edited version of Mr. Hess's interview on their web page, where the producer attempts to defend himself against accusations of falsely recounting the 7 WTC story.

"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.

But in prefacing that statement, Mr. Hess said, the lights went out, the stairwell filled with smoke, dirt and soot, the sprinklers came on, the building began to shake, and the stairwell was blocked.

The interesting thing here is that he claimed all those things occurred at the same instant.

Like you would expect from an explosion..except maybe for the 5 to 10 seconds of building shake.

"We got down two flights and we got exactly to 6, all of a sudden, at the same instant, 5 different things happened."

An explosion makes sense and that is what Mr. Hess said happened on 9/11 when the event was still fresh in his mind.

Now, several years later and very cognizant of the 9/11 conspiracy theories vs. the official NIST-sponsored story, Mr. Hess has a different, but politically expedient story to tell.

"My position, and I'm quite firm on it. There were no explosions. Did I feel the building shake? Absolutely!.

And I recollect that. And I know now that was caused by the northern half of number one falling on the southern half of our building, and we were in the northern half of our building, so luckily we weren’t crushed."

What Mr. Hess is now asking a gullible public to believe, if we accept everything he has to say in his years later interview with the BBC, is a tidy match with what the NIST is claiming in their final report.

Only the NIST claim the lights only flickered.

Oddly, Mr. Hess made no mention of any building shake when 2 WTC was supposedly collapsing while he and Mr. Jennings were on the 23rd floor of 7 WTC.

As I pointed out before, Mr. Jennings claimed he was in such a hurry to evacuate from the 23rd floor, that he was leaping stairwells.

Yet if if you accept the NIST and Hess version of what happened, it took 30 minutes for Mr. Jennings to make a descent that others have easily completed in under 10 minutes.

Continuing with Mr. Hess's latest retelling, when he and Mr. Jennings arrived at the 6th floor stairwell landing, debris from the collapsing 1 WTC, penetrated deep down to the 6th floor east side stairwell landing creating a physical blockage and caused an immediate smoke and soot producing fire.

Sorry, but I find him seriously lacking in credibility.

 

[DGM]

​

Your issues with reading comprehension are shameful.

What part don't you understand?

Captain Nahmod and I started heading down Vesey Street towards where we thought the command post would be. At that time we had received a page per Chief Peruggia to go into OEM at No. 7 World Trade and activate our post in OEM.
Captain Nahmod and I were running down Vesey Street
stepping over airplane pieces, several bodies and whatnot.

Let me guess. You think they were originally going there and felt the need to mention they were later told to do so? Did you ignore the descriptions of the conditions they were walking through? From where they parked, to see this they had to go the wrong way to get to WTC7.

That peg is getting bigger by the second.

How's it going shoe-horning that time-line? Tell us, what time did Jennings get to the OEM for the first time?

 

[DGM]

From the street level videos I've viewed, regular traffic was quickly diverted from the area except for emergency vehicles.

Many people were of course walking away from the WTC, but not so packed that emergency responders were unable to walk or run unimpeded up the streets and sidewalks toward the WTC complex.

FDNY, NYPD, and other emergency agencies were by no means flooding the surrounding streets with vehicles. Many people were walking on the streets.

I saw no serious impediment to emergency responders running up Vesey St. to 7 WTC.

Certainly the people evacuating the area looked extremely distressed and many were constantly looking back at the burning towers.

So you're saying this was all done before the second tower was attacked? Show proof or retract this obvious piece of fiction.

You really have no concept of what was going on. Until the second attack, people were going toward the towers to see what was going on. It wasn't until the second did the **** hit the fan. A small plane had an accident, no one thought we were under attack.

 

[NoahFence]

Clock's ticking, MM.

What's your whole theory regarding 9/11?

How does Shanksville and the Pentagon fit in with a scheme to destroy an irrelevant structure in Lower Manhattan?

Why is a 110 story building landing on a 47 story building not enough to destroy it?

Hush-a-boom explosives - Before, after, or During the time between impact and collapse?

Why did the building not collapse for 7 hours after the initial charges went off?


Why are you and your kind so scared of those answers?

 

[GlennB]

Duane Gish would be proud.

 

[NoahFence]

Bummer.
I was really hoping they'd kill this meaningless section.

 

[DGM]

Bummer.
I was really hoping they'd kill this meaningless section.

You could just ignore it.............

 

[Norseman]

I realise you're being as generous as possible with the timeline here, but in fact rush-hour traffic in the area typically averages no more than a brisk jogging pace.

Their road route from the middle of the bridge to the chapel I measured as ~1600 m on Google Earth. 1 mile. At 8mph that's ~7 minutes. Put them on the bridge at 9:05 (generously early) and they're at the chapel at 9:12. Then 2.5 blocks to make on foot facing panicking evacuating people headed away from WTC along Vesey. 10 minutes if they're lucky? That's 9:22 at the foot of the building and about 9:27 at the OEM. Given no allowance for unusual traffic snarlups caused by the mass of first-responder vehicles flooding the area, this timeline pretty much fits in with the witness testimony.

There's no reason to doubt the quoted evacuation time for the OEM.

Sources for this post are the interviews with:
* EMT Richard Zarrillo
* Assistant Commissioner James Drury
* PARAMEDIC DANIEL RIVERA
* FIREFIGHTER PETE GUIDETTI
* LIEUTENANT RICHARD SMIOUSKAS

I thought I was maybe on the generous side, but I took into account the possibility that lanes could have been closed off for emergency use on the bridge at that stage, something I had read about in other accounts in relation to tunnels and bridges crossing over to Manhattan. To get some more hard facts on this, I did a search for accounts with Brooklyn Bridge among the first responder interviews.

It turns that it was possible to cross over from the Brooklyn side and be in front of the towers well before the second hit. In the account of Paramedic Daniel Rivera they responded from two blocks away from the bridge, and were in front of WTC 2 treating patients before the second attack. I also found that several of the of the persons who responded from 9 Metrotech also were at the towers before the second attack.

It also turns out that a lane was closed off for emergency use well before the second attack according to Guidetti:

We exit the garage. We go over the Brooklyn Bridge. One lane was open and cleared for us. The other two lanes to the right of me were just bumper to bumper cars. I had this one clear shot over the Brooklyn Bridge with no interference of traffic.

Some minutes behind Gudetti came Smiouskas, also responding from Metrotech:

I went, lights and sirens, over the
Brooklyn Bridge. Just as I was reaching the end
of the bridge, there was a loud explosion and I
saw a fireball come across the sky, realizing
that the south tower --
Q. Did you actually see the south tower?
A. Yes. I could see it from the bridge.
I saw an explosion and fireball and thick black
smoke just going across the sky. Then I realized
we were being attacked. I didn't know if it was
missiles coming in or another plane.

I got to the base the Brooklyn Bridge.
I made the turn that goes around I think Centre
Street right by City Hall, and I took that to
Broadway. I had to be very careful there because
there were thousands of people in the street
running across the street, streaming across the
Brooklyn Bridge. There was terror on their
faces. There was some people I noticed that were
covered with black smoke. They were probably
maybe in the building.

As I'm coming down Broadway, there were
people running across the street. I almost hit a
few people, by the way. I parked the car just
south of Vesey Street on Broadway.

So even if Drury with Zarrillo and Nahmod in his car could get quickly across the bridge, it looks quiet clear that the last part around the town hall and then south on Broadway would go at a much slower pace. But that increases the driving time in my estimate. And we are still looking at a timeline for Zarrillo pointing to an evacuation after 9:30.

But I think that MM is more than happy with spending time on the timeline of Zarrillo, instead of addressing more problematic questions; like why no one else did not notice the explosion he believes occurred well before the collapse of WTC 2.

 

[jaydeehess]

I cannot recall MM having ever addressed the fact that no one other than Jennings and Hess made note of an explosion in WTC7 despite the fact that there were people in and around that building at the time.

 

[GlennB]

You could just ignore it.............

Yeah. It's like an insect bite you can't stop scratching.

 

[carlitos]

the original small plane crash into 1 WTC

What the ****? Small plane crash?

[colo
Mr Drury, who was driving, with his emergency lights flashing, and at a speed it seems reasonable to assume was above the limit, .

Driving "above the limit" in New York's financial district at 9 in the morning on a weekday after a *********** plane crashed into the World Trade Center? Are you *********** high?

 

[DGM]

The problem is with people like yourself who do not like the answer.

Honestly, put yourself in 7 WTC on 9/11 and out of sight of the WTC twin towers. All you know about what is happening outside the building is that you were called to the 23rd floor OEM because a small private plane crashed into 1 WTC.

You are inferring this, it's not actually a fact. Mr Jennings himself seems unsure of this detail.

I was called shortly after the first plane hit. I got there, uh, I had to be inside on the 23rd floor when the second plane hit.

All other accounts of calls to report to the OEM come after the second tower was attacked. This bit of confusion (I think ) is crucial to Mr Jennings time-line mistake.

 

[Norseman]

While he was on the 23rd floor, how Mr. Hess could possibly know what the power status was for the whole building is unknown.

It is implicit in his statement that the reason why he and Jennings walked down the stairs from the 23rd floor was because of the power loss. In other words he is telling us that the elevators were no longer working because of the power loss. He could also infer this from the stairwell only being lit with emergency lighting.

This is a very strong indication that Hess and Jennings were on the 23rd floor when WTC 2 collapsed. And it is quiet reasonable to assume that they from their secluded position at the time of the collapse of WTC 2, did not hear or feel it. I am going to return that point in a later post.

As for the 30 minutes to descend to the 6th floor, that may be explained in the following way. After coming up to the 23rd floor on their second attempt, they still find that the EOC is empty. They walk back to the elevator to go back down to the lobby to find out what is going on. When they attempt to get into the elevator, WTC 2 collapses and the power goes out staling the elevators.

Since Jennings and Hess does not know what is going on outside from their position, it is doubtful that they feel any sense of urgency. So they would likely spend some time in front of the elevator in the hope that it would become operational again. And for the prospect of walking down 23 floors, I doubt it would be a very tempting prospect for them, especially for the clearly overweight Jennings. How fit Hess was I do not know, but he was 60 at the time (but I know of very fit persons in their 60's who would have no problems with the stairs).

Then they go back to the EOC to make some phone calls in an attempt to find out what is going on. In the Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas interview Jennings said that he called several individuals, until an individual gave them the necessary sense of urgency to start down the stairs. It is possible that they were told about possible more planes. Or it could be even possible that the individual who told Jennings to leave, knew that WTC 2 had collapsed, but did not tell Jennings to avoid scaring him to much, just telling him to get out. I have read about examples of this from WTC 1, where persons receiving information on phone or radio that WTC 2 had collapsed, decided to not tell their companions in the stairwell about this to avoid scaring them.

So depending on how many phone calls Jennings made, and how long they lasted, the clock could be close to 10:15 or later when they start down the stairwell. And I doubt that Jennings was skipping steps, maybe he did so for the first flights, giving him swollen knees and slowing down his pace.

And again when they came down to the 6th floor, the question is as follows:

If you look at NIST NCSTAR 1-9 you will find that the lobby was open from the first floor all the way up to the floor slab of the 5th floor. You will also find that the stairwell Jennings and Hess were descending ends at the 5th floor directly above the area Mike Cantalano took cover when WTC 2 collapsed. Why did not anyone hear and respond to the explosion you believe occurred sometime before the collapse of WTC 2, and Jennings thought occurred below him? It was only one floor slab between the stairwell and the lobby area.

 

[DGM]

Or it could be even possible that the individual who told Jennings to leave, knew that WTC 2 had collapsed, but did not tell Jennings to avoid scaring him to much, just telling him to get out.......

Good post!

A second reason would be, the person on the phone assumed he already knew. We have no idea what was discussed. If Mr Jennings just reported he was manning the OEM, why would this person think to inform him of what was going on?

 

[Norseman]

Good post!

A second reason would be, the person on the phone assumed he already knew. We have no idea what was discussed. If Mr Jennings just reported he was manning the OEM, why would this person think to inform him of what was going on?

In the BBC interview(at 10:00) Jennings says the following about the phone call he received form one of his higher ups (presumably in the NYCHA):

And he said where are you?
And I said.. ah uhm.. you know the emergency command center.
A long pause, and then he came back, and he said: "Get out of there, get out of there now!"

It gives me the impression that the caller was shocked because Jennings were inside WTC 7 at that stage. Possibly knowing of WTC 2 having collapsed, and knowing that Jennings would be in even greater danger if WTC 1 collapsed.

 

[pgimeno]

Mr. Hess's story was not as consistent as that of Mr. Jennings. Shortly after his rescue on 9/11, Mr. Hess said this in an interview with Channel 9 News;

"Yes I was. I was up in the Emergency Management Center on the 23rd floor..and when all the power went out in the building..ahh..another gentlemen and I walked down to the 8th floor [later corrected as meaning the 6th floor] where there was an explosion..and we'd been trapped on the 8th floor with smoke, thick smoke all around us for about an hour and a half. But the New York Fire Dept., as terrific as they are just came and got us out."

While he was on the 23rd floor, how Mr. Hess could possibly know what the power status was for the whole building is unknown.

He's condensing the 2-3 hours they were in the building into basically a single sentence. There's a bit of everything there.

My interpretation is that he is referring to the flickering of the lights (lights go out for a few seconds while the generator starts). Power went out for long enough as to make the elevators stop working, so he assumed the power went out in the whole building. Sounds like a reasonable assumption for a layman who doesn't know the power structure of a building.

Describing the lights out + building shake + soot increase + sprinklers + blockage + (probably) rumble as an explosion sounds like a pretty concise way to describe the experience. He says he felt like it was an explosion in the basement. Again, quite consistent with what a witness perceives in the middle of the traumatic experience.

In short, I see no inconsistency there.

But in prefacing that statement, Mr. Hess said, the lights went out, the stairwell filled with smoke, dirt and soot, the sprinklers came on, the building began to shake, and the stairwell was blocked.

The interesting thing here is that he claimed all those things occurred at the same instant.

Like you would expect from an explosion..except maybe for the 5 to 10 seconds of building shake.

Now cross-check that with Catalano's interview with the Commission (from the MFR that I posted upthread), where he basically says the power went definitely out during the collapse of WTC1, and what is the most logical explanation for all these five things?

Certainly not an explosive blast.

Only the NIST claim the lights only flickered.

Wrong. Catalano also said the power went out during the collapse of WTC2 and then the generators started. The elevator mechanics, whose testimony was linked earlier by GlennB (thanks), also point out that the WTC2 collapse caused a power outage, causing the elevators to cease working, trapping people until they reset the elevators. Here's the link again: http://web.archive.org/web/20011222...orld.com/magazine/archive01/0112-005.html-ssi

That's quite some people telling the same story as NIST now. What's the reason for Jennings and Hess using the stairs, again?

Oddly, Mr. Hess made no mention of any building shake when 2 WTC was supposedly collapsing while he and Mr. Jennings were on the 23rd floor of 7 WTC.

Nor does Jennings at any time. That means nothing. The lights going out and then the generator starting is the same story told by Catalano. The WTC 2 collapse as the cause of the elevators ceasing to work is the same story told by Flanagan and Klaum.

Yet if if you accept the NIST and Hess version of what happened, it took 30 minutes for Mr. Jennings to make a descent that others have easily completed in under 10 minutes.

With difficulty to breathe, remember. It looks like they had to stop every three flights to take some air. There was smoke in the stairway from the generator fire after the collapse of WTC 2. Jennings probably needed to wait for Hess, despite his "leaping stairwells". Or is your conjecture that he outran Hess, leaving him alone?

Continuing with Mr. Hess's latest retelling, when he and Mr. Jennings arrived at the 6th floor stairwell landing, debris from the collapsing 1 WTC, penetrated deep down to the 6th floor east side stairwell landing creating a physical blockage and caused an immediate smoke and soot producing fire.

Sorry, but I find him seriously lacking in credibility.

It seems pretty credible to me. We don't know how many of the interior beams were affected and how, and how that affected the floor and how that broke walls and caused the stairwell to become blocked, but it's quite possible something like that happened. And the sudden impact of the WTC 1 debris stirred the air, spreading the smoke to many places. All I see is you trying to weasel out of a situation that doesn't support your belief by making up excuses.

 

[pgimeno]

What the ****? Small plane crash?

He's talking from the perspective of someone who heard that as the first report. In this case it's not nonsense.

Driving "above the limit" in New York's financial district at 9 in the morning on a weekday after a *********** plane crashed into the World Trade Center? Are you *********** high?

In this other case it probably is.

 

[DGM]

It gives me the impression that the caller was shocked because Jennings were inside WTC 7 at that stage. Possibly knowing of WTC 2 having collapsed, and knowing that Jennings would be in even greater danger if WTC 1 collapsed.

Exactly! This person would not think to quiz them about what they knew. It also fits well with what Jennings reported to know (not much).

 

[Miragememories]

But I think that MM is more than happy with spending time on the timeline of Zarrillo, instead of addressing more problematic questions; like why no one else did not notice the explosion he believes occurred well before the collapse of WTC 2.

I can leave Zarrillo on the backburner for the moment.

In my short absence I see you have been speculating to the extreme.

It is implicit in his [Mr. Hess] statement that the reason why he and Jennings walked down the stairs from the 23rd floor was because of the power loss.

"As they went to get into an elevator to go downstairs, the lights inside WTC 7 flickered as WTC 2 collapsed."

Mr. Hess said the building lost power.

Mr. Jennings made no mention of any power loss on the 23rd floor.

The NIST said the lights on the 23rd floor only flickered. Presumably, the NIST makes this claim because the emergency backup generators would have automatically kicked in when a power interruption was sensed.

"Emergency power for the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) was supplied by the three generators on the seventh floor."

"When WTC 2 collapsed at 9:59 a.m., light debris from the collapse struck the south face of WTC 7 (Section 5.5).
This collapse caused the emergency battery-powered lighting to come on inside WTC 7. In addition, the emergency AC power generators began operating."

In his statement, Mr. Jennings, after being told he must leave immediately, makes no mention of spent time loitering around the elevators.

"After I called several individuals, one individual told me that, um "to leave, and leave right away."

Mr. Hess came running back in.

He said "we're the only ones up here, we gotta get out of here."

He found the stairwell.

So we went to the stairwell and we're going down the stairs."

"...it is quiet reasonable to assume that they from their secluded position at the time of the collapse of WTC 2, did not hear or feel it [2 WTC collapsing]."

Is it really reasonable to believe that their position on the 23rd floor was so secluded that the collapsing 2 WTC was unnoticeable?

In his revised recollection years later, Mr. Hess claimed in a BBC interview, that when he was in the stairwell at the 6th floor, during the time of the explosion which blocked their further descent, 7 WTC shook for from 5 to 10 seconds.

"The building [7 WTC] 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."

Yet on the 23rd floor when 2 WTC was collapsing...nada.

Might Mr. Hess have exaggerated or embellished somewhat?

Well others in 7 WTC certainly experienced the building shaking from events other than 1 WTC collapsing.

"When the first aircraft hit WTC 1 at 8:46 a.m., occupants throughout WTC 7 reported hearing a loud explosion outside the building...Another building employee, upon seeing the lights flicker, assumed someone had detonated a truck bomb near the building, perhaps recalling the 1993 bomb incident at the WTC complex. Several occupants reported hearing an explosion and/or feeling the building shake."

Yet you eagerly embrace the notion that 2 WTC was collapsing while Mr. Jennings and Mr. Hess were on the 23rd floor and they didn't hear or feel a thing worth mentioning at that time.

In spite of Mr. Jenning's superior telling him to leave, and leave immediately, you believe they idled away precious time waiting for an elevator that would never come.

Neither of them said they waited for an elevator and the NIST disagrees with Mr. Hess over the power outage.

"Since Jennings and Hess does not know what is going on outside from their position, it is doubtful that they feel any sense of urgency.

So they would likely spend some time in front of the elevator in the hope that it would become operational again.

And for the prospect of walking down 23 floors, I doubt it would be a very tempting prospect for them, especially for the clearly overweight Jennings."

No sense of urgency?

"After I called several individuals, one individual told me that, um "to leave, and leave right away.

Mr. Hess came running back in.

He said "we're the only ones up here, we gotta get out of here."

He found the stairwell."

"At that time I received a phone call from one of my higher ups.

And ah..he said "where are you?"

And I said uhm..you know, the Emergency Command Center.

A long pause.

And then he came back and he said; "Get out of there. Get out of there now."

I wanted to get out of that building in a hurry.

So I started. Instead of taking one step at a time, I'm jumping landings.

No sense of urgency?

You noted this interview in your followup post and your spin was absolutely absurd.

""It gives me the impression that the caller was shocked because Jennings were inside WTC 7 at that stage.

Possibly knowing of WTC 2 having collapsed, and knowing that Jennings would be in even greater danger if WTC 1 collapsed.

Your speculations continued with how much time they spent descending to the 6th floor, in spite of Mr. Jennings emphasizing his hurried state.

"And for the prospect of walking down 23 floors, I doubt it would be a very tempting prospect for them, especially for the clearly overweight Jennings."

He was around 45 at the time and other than the swollen knees he likely got later when the 6th floor landing was blown out from under him, there was nothing to indicate he had such a weight problem that the descent was a concern for him.

And now you take your speculation to the point pure misrepresentation. You imply that they have been coming and going, anything to convey the idea that much time was passing.

You know you have a serious problem accounting for the 30 minutes that passed between the two WTC tower collapses.

"Then they go back to the EOC to make some phone calls in an attempt to find out what is going on.

In the Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas interview Jennings said that he called several individuals, until an individual gave them the necessary sense of urgency to start down the stairs.

It is possible that they were told about possible more planes.

Or it could be even possible that the individual who told Jennings to leave, knew that WTC 2 had collapsed, but did not tell Jennings to avoid scaring him to much, just telling him to get out.

I have read about examples of this from WTC 1, where persons receiving information on phone or radio that WTC 2 had collapsed, decided to not tell their companions in the stairwell about this to avoid scaring them.

So depending on how many phone calls Jennings made, and how long they lasted, the clock could be close to 10:15 or later when they start down the stairwell.

And I doubt that Jennings was skipping steps, maybe he did so for the first flights, giving him swollen knees and slowing down his pace."

Gee Norseman, maybe they played a few hands of cards as well?

And regarding the length of time necessary to descend from the 23rd floor to the 6th floor.

Full disclosure: I've made similar descents in just over two minutes, under optimal conditions.

 

[TJM]

And regarding the length of time necessary to descend from the 23rd floor to the 6th floor.

Full disclosure: I've made similar descents in just over two minutes, under optimal conditions.

Yep, sure have. I'm neither overweight or elderly, had full lighting, climate control, breathable air and running shoes, etc. Jennings and Hess, on the other hand, may have been significantly slowed down by certain factors.