AL BAKER
The International Herald Tribune

The story of her improbable rescue was among the most enduring to emanate from the horror of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It was told and retold: how a weary woman, Josephine Harris, was coaxed and carried to safety by six New York firefighters who had rushed to the World Trade Center that morning.


It was a feat of timing, engineering and plain luck that when the rush of wind and noise came and the north tower fell away, the firefighters of Ladder Company 6 and Ms. Harris were not crushed as they were spread along the stairwell between the fourth and first floors. Rather, the building fell around them.

As Deputy Chief John A. Jonas explained, unlike the south tower, which leaned and toppled over, ''ours peeled away like a banana.''

''And we were the banana,'' he added. ''We were at the bottom.''

It was so happy a story that the only disagreement seemed to arise over who had saved whom. Had the firefighters, led by Chief Jonas - he was then a captain - survived because they paused to help Ms. Harris? Or had Ms. Harris, whose legs were weakened by fatigue, been lucky enough to live because of them?

Last Wednesday, members of the city fire department - this time, the Emergency Medical Service - again rushed to help Ms. Harris, after being summoned to her apartment in the borough of Brooklyn. Ms. Harris, 69, was unconscious when they arrived, and they had to force open the door. She was pronounced dead, apparently after a heart attack.

''I kind of had the same feeling as if a relative had died,'' Chief Jonas said. ''Right away you start thinking about all the things you'd gone through.''

He added, ''We had a very unique, shared experience that not many people on this earth can say they've had. We survived that terrible day together, and we felt close to her and tried to include her in as many things as we could.''

After Sept. 11, Ms. Harris first went to meet the firefighters about two weeks later. They gave her a jacket with the words ''Guardian Angel'' embroidered on it.

Their story was chronicled in a book and in a History Channel documentary, ''The Miracle of Stairway B.'' Ms. Harris last appeared with the firefighters in a show on the Oprah Winfrey Network last week.

Her sister, Thelma Johnson, said Ms. Harris had briefly returned to work for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey but found it difficult because of an injury suffered on Sept. 11.

Without a job, Ms. Harris, a widow, eked out a living on disability assistance and became withdrawn, from neighbors and even relatives. Some neighbors in her building, where she had lived for decades, did not even know her apartment was occupied.

''She never let you know what was going on in her world,'' Ms. Johnson said.

As on Sept. 11, when she asked the firefighters to go on without her, Ms. Harris seemed to prefer to shoulder her own burdens.

'Do the most you can for yourself, by yourself - that's how she was,'' her sister said

Copyright 2011 International Herald Tribune
All Rights Reserved
January 18, 2011


The Miracle of Stairwell B, Part 2

The Miracle of Stairwell B, Part 3

The Miracle of Stairwell B, Part 4

The Miracle of Stairwell B, Part 5

The Miracle of Stairwell B, Part 6