'Cantor Fitzgerald miracle' credits divine intervention

LIVINGSTON, N.J. — Lying in her hospital bed, the badly burned woman couldn't help but hear the news reports on the television set suspended from the ceiling.

No one in her World Trade Center office, the bond brokerage firm of Cantor Fitzgerald, had survived the Sept. 11 attacks.

Swathed in bandages, in and out of consciousness, Virginia DiChiara whispered back: "I'm alive."

Nurses in the burn unit at St. Barnabas Medical Center reassured DiChiara. "Yes, Virginia, you're alive," they told their frightened patient. "You're a survivor."

In the halls of St. Barnabas, DiChiara is "the Cantor Fitzgerald miracle."

Of the 1,000 people employed in Cantor Fitzgerald's World Trade Center office, about 370 were not at work when the first plane hit. Of the 630 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who were in the building, almost all died.

A company spokesman, Richard Mahoney, said three others survived, but he wouldn't identify them. All are hospitalized.

DiChiara, 44, said she believes divine intervention saved her.

DiChiara struggled between gratefulness and grief as she talked about her ordeal: "I don't know why I was picked to live," she said, smiling one minute, biting her lip and wiping away tears the next.

"It's all so overwhelming. So many people. ... When your life comes down to milliseconds you realize there's got to be a higher power. Because that many things just can't go right unless someone — God — decided there was something here left for me to do."

The "things" DiChiara referred to were little mishaps that ultimately led to her survival.

On the day of the terrorist attacks, she was running late. On most mornings, DiChiara, Cantor Fitzgerald's director of audit, was out of the house by 7 a.m. and in her office on the 101st floor of the North Tower between 8 and 8:30. On that Tuesday, her golden retrievers, Remy and Sydney, had other plans. The dogs refused to come in from playing in the back yard, DiChiara said. She decided to have a second cup of coffee and go in to work a little later.

By 8:35 a.m. DiChiara was in the lobby of the North Tower waiting for the elevator. She boarded one and rode up to the 78th floor. There she got a second elevator for the 101st floor.

With her were five other people, including one woman she knew from Cantor Fitzgerald.

The elevator doors were closing when they heard a deafening explosion and the whole building seemed to rock.

In the elevator, the passengers saw the doors jam open about 8 inches. Jet fuel was pouring down the shaft, while electrical wires arced, sending sparks everywhere.

Between the passengers and the hallway was a curtain of blue flames. With everyone screaming, DiChiara decided to go through the flames.

"I wasn't staying in that elevator," she said. "I had this really bad feeling that it wasn't going to be good on that elevator."

When she came out into the hallway on the other side, she was on fire. She remembered a childhood lesson: Stop, drop and roll.

That put out the flames, but DiChiara was charred. Her face, her hands and her arms were no longer recognizable.

As she rested against a wall on the 78th floor, DiChiara saw a man she knew. The pair headed for the stairs.

Fifty-five flights down, there were so many people DiChiara couldn't get through. It took all of her concentration not to go into a frenzy, she said.

"A couple of women screamed when they saw me." The crowds parted to let DiChiara pass. She finally got outside and into the arms of emergency workers.

A few minutes after the ambulance pulled away for St. Vincent's, the first tower fell. For the second time that morning, DiChiara escaped death.

Physically, DiChiara is ready to go home — though months of occupational and physical therapy lie ahead, said Michael Marano, a burn surgeon on staff at St. Barnabas.

Emotionally, DiChiara is scarred.

She lost most of her co-workers and suffers from survivor guilt. She fears more terrorist attacks. Memories of childhood, when her 9-year-old brother died in a house fire, have come back to haunt her.

Nightmares of the people left on the elevator rob her of much-needed sleep.

"All I know is I was very, very aware that no one else followed me out of that elevator," DiChiara said. "Before I went down the stairs, I looked back at that elevator and it was an open doorway. One big black hole. I think after I got out of that elevator — maybe a second later — that elevator wasn't there anymore."