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The way out of the tower

By ALAN BURKE

Staff writer

MARBLEHEAD -- Fred Eichler, 54, has told the story again and again, how he beat the odds on Sept. 11 and escaped from the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center, escaped without a scratch, with no visible scars.

"I've told it 10,000 times," he says, "unfortunately."

He tells how he saw the first plane coming, so close he could have seen the face of the terrorist at the controls -- if he'd looked. And how it crashed above his head.

He's told journalists from USA Today, from ABC News, from all over the world. Sometimes he complains because they keep wanting him to tell it again, and when he does it makes it all the more difficult to forget and get on with his life.

But it's not just the reporters. He tells everyone. He's told the Rotary Club in his hometown of Marblehead. If it comes up, he'll tell strangers.

"Some people are very timid about asking me to go through it," Eichler says. "But I put them at ease. It doesn't bother me to tell the story."

The wing of the plane, heavy with jet fuel, hit about 50 feet above his head. The explosion rocked everything. Eichler and his companions were knocked off their feet.

By Eichler's reckoning, and he's studied this carefully, only one person above the 83rd floor survived the attack.

"It's almost a year," he says, "and listen, it's just beginning to hit me how miraculous it was that I did get out. ... The 83rd floor was a critical floor."

At that level, only the group of eight people in Eichler's office escaped unscathed, he says. Elsewhere on the 83rd floor, 10 were burned and 15 killed in the attack. His survival and that of his companions seems, indeed, to have been a miracle.

'Heroic' rescuers

With the corridor on fire, they decided to wait in the office for someone to rescue them. That might seem, looking back, like waiting for death. Rescue personnel, it's assumed, would have had to climb 83 flights of stairs to reach them -- and there wasn't enough time before the whole structure came down.

But two rescuers did reach them. Eichler was never sure where they came from or what organization they belonged to -- he thought perhaps that one was a New York City firefighter and the other a building employee.

"If they hadn't gotten there when they did," he says, "I wouldn't be here."

The pair guided the group to an exit and then headed off toward the smoke and flame to help others.

Eichler never saw them again. He doesn't know their names. He's tried desperately to find out, but no one can tell him. Nor can they say how any rescue personnel could have reached the 83rd floor.

"They must have taken an elevator," Eichler says.

In the weeks after the attack, Eichler watched with relief as the death toll at the two towers shrank, well below 3,000. "That's a tribute to the police and the fire departments," he says.

He remains protective of those who saved so many lives at the cost of their own.

"I get quite upset," he says, his voice rising, "when I read newspaper stories about there being confusion on that day between the police and the fire department. Unless you were there and saw the faces of the firefighters walking up the stairs as we were walking down -- well, that's something I will never forget.

"They were extremely heroic, very, very brave people," he says.

As he reached the bottom floor, the side of the tower began to crumble. "I've been told that I was one of the last people out of the building," he says.

'Run, run, run'

He reached the street, unaware that the other tower had already collapsed. Having called his wife while trapped in his office, Eichler borrowed a cell phone to call her again, to say he was safe.

But an alarmed Eileen Eichler, watching on television, cried into the phone, "Run, run, run."

He ran toward the river and behind him, about four minutes after his escape, the second of the Twin Towers gave way, the world turning white with dust.

His oldest daughter, watching on television from her home in Atlanta, called her sister and blurted out, "Daddy's dead."

Very much alive, Eichler concedes that the event has changed him profoundly. "What was important to me on Sept. 10 was no longer important on Sept. 11. I used to be a workaholic. I'm not sure that describes me now."

A certified public accountant who specializes in insurance work, he had been hired to close the books on a bankrupt insurance company at the World Trade Center. Since Sept. 11, he has been unemployed for the first time in his life. Family, his wife and two grown daughters, is now more precious to him. "It was really, really tough on my family."

He hunts for work in New York City. Recently, he had a difficult interview on the upper floors of the Empire State Building.

"I'd prefer not to work on high floors," he says, adding, "Unfortunately you can't get away from it, especially in New York."

He longs to come home to Marblehead, but his wife, the dean of business at Farmingdale University on Long Island, is unable to return. His hometown offers comfort and some relief, Eichler says. But even in Marblehead Sept. 11 is difficult to escape.

"That's one of the things that really offended me," he says. "That the plane that hit us was from Boston. And one of the people on the plane was from Marblehead."

Frustration and anger

He retains ties with some of his fellow survivors. Ironically, he knew only one person lost in the attack personally -- and that was a casual acquaintance.

Going back to view Ground Zero last October, he was frustrated, worried that no one would understand the enormity of the crime because no flat photo or grainy television image could capture the acres of devastation and destruction.

"It's unbelievable," he said, wondering how he had survived.

He was angry, too, angry because the United States hadn't yet taken action, hadn't hit back. He's reconsidered that now. He praises President Bush's patient but forceful response.

And he adds, "We should do whatever we need to do to protect ourselves." Meanwhile, the psychology of the terrorists, the mix of murder and religion, baffles him.

In the huge tower, with its several stairwells, not all of them reaching the bottom, Eichler is still unsure what route he followed to escape the building. It's another thing he wants desperately to know.

"I'm not sure I'm ever going to know the answer. ... I watch the shows to see if it gives me an inkling."

And as he discusses it, his voice takes on an urgency, as if he were still inside the building, as if he were still trying to get out.