grid locking games is over. he called on congress to approve his plan. among the proposals, tax cuts and money to repair roads, bridges and schools. a river in northeastern pennsylvania has started to recede a bit after leaving devastating flood damage behind. the river at a record high almost 42 feet, 20 feet above flood stage. and an investigation is under way at fort bragg, north carolina. over 14,000 rounds of missing ammunition. on september 10, 2011, he was a hard charging, high-living ceo.

september 12, he was the only hope of the family of the families of 658 people, cantor fitzgerald made it out alive. >> i thought everyone i ever imagined working with ever had been killed. he tells us how he rebuild his business and his life over the dust of ground zero. and a woman whose life went up in flames on that terrible day. >> out of the elevator shaft blew a wall of fire that enveloped me. >> she had an 8% chance of living through it. this is a special edition of "piers morgan tonight." good evening, tonight new york city is a city on edge. we hear more about the terror alerts from 9/11. communications from a known al qaeda operative in pakistan

discussing plans for washington or new york with a car bomb. the operative's information has been accurate in the past, that's why officials are taking this threat very seriously. it comes as new york remembers its worst day ever. it's changed completely on 9/11. not a single person who was a at work that morning at candor fitzgerald made it out alive. how he rebuilt his business. he joins us now. a bittersweet day in many ways to you hearing of the latest threat now coming from an al qaeda plot possibly to car bomb new york or washington. when you heard about this, what kind of emotion did you go through? >> well, you know, i -- i've always been surprised that these kinds of threats were not more often, you know, the bombing in the subway in london and madrid. you know new york and washington are targets.

so it doesn't surprise me and, you know, what makes me feel more comfortable is i lookout side of my window and right outside of this studio, the new york city police are stopping every single truck or van on the street and checking them. so makes you feel a whole lot better to know the new york city police department is out there working their tails off more. >> it does. the security level is extraordinary there at the moment. does it feel though, to you, the battle with al qaeda, which caused the devastating event ten years ago, that it's just ongoing. you're going to see a time when it will end in your lifetime? >> i can hope it will end. the ideals of western society, of freedom, of democracy, our lives that we live are going to make people who believe differently jealous. they're going to attack our philosophy. >> let me take you back if i may

to september 10, 2001. you were running a large company. you were one tough, some would say ruthless businessman. what kind of man do you think you were? looking back on it then, what kind of character that you were. and how do you think you've changed since what happen ce what happened? >> cantor fitzgerald september 10, 2001 was a winning organization. we had all of the tools necessary for us to be successful. we didn't look for partners. we didn't need help from anybody. we were in a nice spot. and we were going forward. and we were a partnership. we had had certain ideals, for instance, after the 1993 attack, we had made the decision that we're the only ones to work for people that we like. we have somebody called

encouraged nepotism. we wanted to hire your friends, your relatives, that was fine. as long as they could do the job well, we wanted them to be there. we were an independent place but a tightly knit place. but then september 11 made us really, really focus on the human aspect of things. i didn't want to go to work. god knows i didn't want to work for money. the reason we went back to work and the reason cantor fitzgerald survived, because all of our employees decided that we were going to rebuild this company one reason and one reason only. that was to take care of our friends and families who we lost. we needed to be there for them. and that's what we set out to do. >> total freak of chance, you happen to be not at work that day. you normally would have been. a fabled story, your son, kyle, was on his way to the first day of kindergarten, that's why you weren't there. what was the precise moment you heard there was something going down at the tower? >> they took a picture of my

son, the classic wet behind the ears, the backpack picture at 8:45, i have the picture. it has the time on it. 8:45 or 8:46. we went upstairs to his classroom. my cell phone kept ringing. i picked it up, no one is there. why are they bothering me at work. i'm just dropping my son off at the first day of school. then the administrator came down, so it was probably like five or six minutes later. so maybe just before 9:00 and said a plane hit the building, mr. ludnick. i ran down the stairs and got in my car. i thought it was a small cessna, a piper, a crazy person or a horrible pilot had missed the building and i hasn't seen the picture of this giant airliner driving into the building. so i didn't realize that until i got down fifth avenue.

because i went fifth avenue so i could see the building right away. and, you know, we saw flames flowing out of the top of the building with all of my floors, we were from the 101st to the 105th floors. it was so horrible-looking. i knew i had to get there because i was praying that my guys had been able to get out. that they didn't look -- it didn't look good. >> your brother was there, your closest friends were there. 658 employees were there. it must have been the ultimate nightmare for you? >> it's impossible for it to happen. they couldn't all be in a place where they would all be in risk. two or three people can be in a car. only could be in a plane. it's not possible to lose 658 people. not possible to lose all of my friends, all of my co-workers.

people don't really pay enough attention to how much love and respect to the people you work with. the people to your left and right, you spend as much time with them, if not more time with them than you do your family. they matter to you so, so much. then just the thought of them all being killed at the same time, it's impossible. so i would often say that this is the worst wizard of oz movie. going to wake up and say, wow, that was one heck of a dream. it can't are been real. >> what was the moment that you had? when you looked up at the towers, what was the moment that you feared that there was going to be no way out for your friends and employees? >> well, so i was in my car. i drove right down to the building. everybody is running away from the towers. i'm driving toward the doorway of one world trade center, the north tower.

i worked there for 20 years, no one called the north tower in 20 years. i was working in the one with the antenna. i'm standing at the doorway, grabbing people as they come out. asking what floor they're on. i asked everybody around to grab and ask what floor -- i knew this was only one doorway. if i found one person from one of my floors and they were streaming out of the doorways. i got to the 68th floor, the 92nd floor. and we heard a roar. i thought another plane was coming in to hit the buildings. i've never seen a picture of this. so i had no idea what's going on. number two world trade center, the other tower collapsing. i'm standing under the next building, i start running. for no reason, i run to my right. i run to my left, i get killed and run into the falling building. i look to my right. i look over my shoulder and there's a black tornado of

smoke. i'm a guy with a suit and a tie with shoes on running my tail off from this tornado. you see that movie, it doesn't work out well for the guy in the suit running from the tornado. i dive under the car. the world goes absolutely black. i couldn't see my hands, couldn't hear a sound. at first i thought i was blind and i thought i was deaf. then i thought for a while, maybe i'm dead. but i was holding my breath and, you know, don't bleed, don't bleed, don't breathe. i took a breath and i breathed this sort of thick -- i don't know what was in the air. it was thick, it was particles, it was thick. and i was suffocated and i was outside in new york. and so right then and there, i knew that the people inside, they were gone. because what air could they have? so from that moment on, it was my view that they were all gone.

and so five minutes later when the sort of the color of the sky, you know, the world changed. i could now see my hands. you know, i stood up and i realized not only wasn't i dead, but i could walk. and i started walking. from that moment on, i thought all my friends were gone. >> i mean, this is just an extraordinary moment for you. you built this company. you've hired all these people. they've become close friends. your own brother is up there. you've had this miraculous escape. there's no other way to describe this. what is this possibly going through your mind, howard, as you walk away from this devastation in what are you thinking in that moment? >> i'm thinking that -- that i'm done. that, you know, we have -- i had no company. that everybody is dead and everybody is gone. i -- you know, that i'll take my family, i'll move to, you know, montana and i'll just, you know,

change my life. i'm finished. there is no -- there is no "there" there. there's nothing left. i didn't -- i don't think i knew i had a london office. i thought everyone i ever imagined working with, ever, had been killed. and so i was just a zombie walking uptown. i walked uptown until i realized the people were clean -- remember, i was just covered in ash. i was one of those people with just the wild ash-covered body. and i walked up, i saw a line -- cell phones didn't work. there were a line of people waiting for the pay phone. and there was a woman talking on the pay phone. i walked over to her and i took the phone from her and i hung up the phone and she looked at me and she looked as if i was a ghost. and i called my wife to tell her i was alive. and the sound that she made was, you know, was one could never forget.

she knew i was in the building when she saw that tower collapse. she probably assumed i was gone. she hasn't heard from me for an hour. so i just thought i was finished, simply. >> and your wife suddenly realizes that you're still alive. i think -- didn't she take a call before the tower came down from your brother in the tower, is that right? >> my sister, she was with me at school. so her phone wasn't working. but my sister had heard from my brother. and, you know, gary called my sister instead and said, you know, she picked up the phone and heard his voice, oh, my god, gary, thank god, gary, you're not there. he said, i am there. and i am here. and he told her that he loved her and he told her he -- that he was going to -- he was probably going to die. he told her he loved her and asked her to please tell me and my children how much he loved us and he was saying good-bye.

and that's the saddest -- it's just so sad because what he did was he got up in the morning and he went to work -- living the american dream, working in the most beautiful offices high above new york with the most spectacular views in the world. and someone attacked america and chose our building. >> i want to take a break, howard. and come back and talk to you about the moment that you realized, i'm not done, i'm going to rebuild this company bigger and better than ever. and in the process of doing that, i'm going to help all of the loved ones that these people you'll never be the same. that i loved and lost.

you'll never be the same. >> how can i be the same? every person who came to work for me in new york, everyone who was in the office. every single one was there. not there anymore. you can find them, all of them. every one, every one.

>> i remember watching larry king when you made that extraordinarily emotional experience. my heart went out to you. i didn't know you from adam and i can imagine any worse scenarios for any human being. you lost family members, 658 employees, friends, associates, everything, gone. you say, you walked away like a zombie covered in all of this stuff, you're thinking, that's it. that's pretty much my life, done. what was the moment for you when you reassessed that, when you got a feeling, it's not done, i can turn this in to a positive? >> my wife told me that one of my senior partners was alive and living in greenwich village. i thought, all right, i could just walk there.

i could walk there to his house. not realizing it was a 45-minute walk. i was walking up. i got to his apartment. i rang the bell, i opened the door. he was covered with blood, steven. i grabbed him. i said, you okay, you okay? he says, yeah. i said where did the blood come from? he said i was in the elevator of the tower. i said, are you all right? he goes, yeah. are you bleeding? no. i said whose blood is it? he said, i don't know. we were having this crazy out of body conversation and he said, you know, we should call london. the minute he said we should call london, i think it was news to me that i had 1,000 people who worked for me in london. i had thought that when everybody was gone, literally everyone who had ever worked for me had been killed. we spoke to the guys in london. they were in crisis mode. they were hard at it trying to

figure out who was alive, what to do. i said, oh, we have to shut the firm. and in london they're saying, hell no, we're not shutting this firm. and they sort of snapped me back in to back into humanity and thinking, okay, maybe we've got something that we can give it a go. i wouldn't suggest that until that day on larry king, which was on the 19th, that we were confident that we were going to make it. but we could talk about when that was. but speaking to my guys in london was the first moment i thought we could at least give it a go. >> but one of the many contentious things that you have to look at was how you were going to afford a paycheck for the people who died. you had trouble locating the

families. all of the computer records were all gone. all of the data was gone. you had no record. so an awful situation. but you took a very tough decision and you got heavily criticized at the time. you said, i can't pay the paycheck. we have no staff here in america and we have no ability to pay. we're losing i think $1 million a week. >> $1 million a day. we were losing $1 million a day. >> $1 million a day. a catastrophic crisis, never mind the loss of life, but businesswise it was devastating. but you decided to do an extraordinary thing. you said, look, i can't pay the paychecks, but what i will do -- i will dedicate, along with the partners we have left here, 25% of all of the profits of the company for the next five years and we'll cover your health care for the next ten years to all of the dependents of those who died. their immediate reaction was 25% of zero is zero.

it's no good to us. tell me about the decision, the reactions of those families which was i can imagine pretty distressing to you, pretty hurtful. and tell me about how you feel now being able to repay -- not repay, but to allocate $118 million to those families? way, way more than they would ever have expected? >> so we decided -- we had a call at 11:00 at night. i didn't know who was alive. if you work for cantor fitzgerald, call this number. i gave our employees two choices. you can shut the firm and go to our friends' funeral. imagine, 20 funerals a day for every day for 35 straight days. you couldn't -- it's unfathomable, you can't consider it. or we have to work harder than we worked ever in our lives. god knows, i didn't want to

work, i wanted to hold my family and i sure as heck didn't want to work for money. the only way to go to work was to take care of our friends' families. this was the 11th at night. i said what do you guys want to do? while the reasons were different, the core decision by everybody on the phone was unanimously, we've got to work, we've got to help our friends' family. we lined up cots in the corner. you took a piece of paper and went to sleep for four hours. when four hours passed, you got up, they laid down on the cot. your kids came to play with your at the parking lot. you went outside for 45 minutes to play. everybody worked 24 hours to see what we could establish about this company because we had made this decision we were going to take care of our friends' family.

we couldn't announce we'd get 25% of the profits and pay for their health care until the 19th because on the 19th was the first day we successfully paid for -- started to pay for all of the things we bought before september 11 and started delivering out all of the things we had sold. because on wall street, you don't want to own the stuff, you're just buying it and selling it. so we had $75 billion worth of bought-and-sold on the 10th of september that we had not yet processed. and the bank made a very simple decision with me. if any -- they would let me reopen, but on one condition. but the $75 million i had not processed every single night had to go down. if i did more business and god knows that whatever business i was going to do because cantor fitzgerald could not have been more destroyed.

but as long as we bailed out and got rid of the older stuff and less than the new stuff, we could survive. so i had a number, on the 19th of september, it was $58 billion. and when we had opened our equity business, this was unbelievable, we figured we would do one trade per client because we were afraid if you screwed it up, the banks would close us down. and what -- what happened was, our clients felt so much desire to help us, that they all did their business with us. we had the busiest day ever on the first day we reopened it. we couldn't handle it. we were killed with kindness. we told the world we were hungry. and everyone in the world stuck a piece of bread in our mouth, we're done. when i see you play that part of the interview, i don't think i

could have been a bigger mess. >> is it fair to say that until the money came in to the families, that the decision you could take that was tough was to cut off the paycheck to make you temporarily a bad figure to them? an enemy figure until the money began to come and they could see that you were going to be good to your promise? >> until i was able to send them money, and by the way, you sent them money on october 22. so what we did was obviously the firm was going to be much, much smaller. we calculated how much money we needed to survive. we had $45 million that we could get out. october 22, bang, we sent out $45 million to these families. then, the sound like a vacuum, stopped. the media had been beating on us. some family members were saying they doubted us. and then, silence. and i never went back out and never went out and gave interviews and things.

i just felt i had one job and that's to do what i said and to do what our partners were committed to doing. do what our employees were killing themselves to do, which was take care of these families. our goal was to do one thing. that was their true friend -- that was our goal and that's what we set out to do. >> and you most certainly achieved that, howard. take another break now. when we come back, i want to talk to you about where you were when you heard osama bin laden was dead.re the cereal that can help lower cholesterol and who ordered the yummy cereal? yummy. that's yours. lower cholesterol. lower cholesterol. i'm yummy. lower cholesterol. i got that wrong didn't i? [ male announcer ] want great taste? honey nut cheerios. want whole grain oats that can help lower cholesterol? honey nut cheerios. it's a win win. good? [ crunching, sipping ] be happy. be healthy.

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i got to do with a i do every day? we're going to have a big ceremony. and the terrorist will not win. >> that's new york city mayor michael bloomberg this morning on a subway. harold, where were you when you heard that navy seals had shot and killed osama bin laden? >> i was sitting at home, just watching television with my family. every phone i owned rang. my house phone is ringing, my cell phone is ringing. my wife's cell phone. first i got calls from everyone who i know in washington. they all called me and told me

and then i got calls from the local politicians and local police telling me and then it was on the news. so i heard it pretty much straight away. >> what was your emotion? was it one of euphoria, was it one of satisfaction? did you feel any kind of closure? >> well, you saw on television the crowds of the white house chanting usa! usa! that -- that's fine for other people. but but obviously for the victims ourselves, it's not the emotion that goes through it. i was glad justice was done. i was glad that he would never by his hand do this to any other family in the world. but in that matter, you know, i was glad he was done. but it doesn't really bring closure. 9/11 is a part of me. it's a part of all of us. we move forward, we move forward

with it. it didn't bring me closure. but i was glad justice was done. >> on the 10th anniversary a couple of days away from now. you've been thinking about this for a while, i imagine. how do you plan to commemorate the day? >> the national september 11 memorial museum is opening in the morning. the president is going to be there. all of the politicians. i won't be there. i'll wait until they all leave. when it's nice and quiet and the pomp & circumstance has left, i'm going to take my family and a number of other families, we're going to go down and then i'm just going to see my brother's name and my friend's names. it's an absolutely beautiful memorial and all of our cantor names are listed together. and done so people are friends with each other next to each

other. it was an incredibly difficult thing they did. and i'll head uptown and have our own memorial in central park. we'll have 3,000 or 4,000 people. clergy. sort of not having clergy downtown. we, of course, are having clergy of all faiths. whatever the political issues are, i couldn't care less about them. and our families will speak. and what's interesting is i call family members. i don't want to give them too long to think about it. i learned over the years. i asked them to speak, families always say the same thing, howard, what do you want me to say? i said, i want you to speak about your loved ones, teddy, he died. tell us about his kids. how's everybody doing. keep him alive for us. keep his memory alive. that seems so selfish, howard. isn't that selfish? i said how are the families who spoke last year? they were fantastic.

i said just do the same thing. and it's beautiful when you're speaking to people with broken hearts, you speak right to their hearts. it's beautiful. that's what we're going to do. on september 12, we'll have a global chat. we don't give away our profits. we give away all of our revenue. they give up their day's pay. so we give away all of our revenue so that 100 charities around the world. and we have celebrities come and and everybody. it's in the u.s., london, asia, around the world. we try to make the toughest day of the year something beautiful so we can help others. >> your reputation is a hard tough businessman, you do what it takes to make a great deal to

get money in the company and that comes a certain kind of wall street style values. you seem a very different character, i would imagine, to the pre-9/11 howard. how do you think you've changed as a human being through what's happened? >> you know, i was orphaned when i was young. my mom died when i was 16. and my father was killed. he went to the first chemotherapy shot on september 12, 1979 and the nurse made a mistake and gave him 100 times the dose and killed him. what happened that day, i knew what hell looked like. i'd been to hell before. and my extended family, they didn't come to our aid. they were afraid, you know, my brother, my sister and i. we would be -- we'd reach the hand in and we would stick. we ended up living with them.

i'd seen what pulling out looked like. no way i was going to pull out. the employees of cantor fitzgerald, we're all in. and when you're all in, that means you're really all in. and what i think it clarifies for me is that while work is about money, the work is full of human beings. and then they have lives and the children and they're beautiful. so you know this business, you have to make tough decisions. there's no choice about it. you can't be a softy and run a successful company. it's not going to happen. but we can -- what you can do is you can treat people with respect. you can treat them with dignity. you can be transparent. you can call them up. doesn't mean you don't have to make tough decisions but you can call them up and talk to them about them and be a human being. i think what happened with

i think what happened with 9/11 allowed me to understand that i'm a human being and i need to express my humanity. that's the most important thing. taking care of the families is a way i could be a human being. the way we try to run our family is we try to be better human beings. we're by no means perfect. we make tough decisions, that's for sure. but we try to do it as human beings. >> taking a short break and ask you about the way you rebuilt your company and the parallel you can draw now as one of america's top ceos to the way that america needs to rebuild itself, the economy, get people back to work. the kind of resources you need to make these things happen. ing. you've been stuck in the garage while i took refuge from the pollen that made me sneeze. but with 24-hour zyrtec®, i get prescription strength relief from my worst allergy symptoms. so lily and i are back on the road again. with zyrtec® i can love the air®.

you rebuilt cantor fitzgerald from the ashes and turned to a bigger more successful company than ever was before. you did it driven by what happened to you and your family and colleagues on that terrible day. you look at america, you see a real crisis in developing your country. what do you think president obama needs to do? you've been through a crisis. you've been through a different one. why is that? how can america get itself back on its feet? >> i think people in washington

spend too much time in washington. i used to live in london in june, july, and august. you had the international. so washington is not the engine of the economy. it's just not. and as long as they think what is washington going to be do to fix our economy? they can't fix it. businesses can fix the economy. they hire people. warren buffet came out and said we should raise taxes on americans and he should pay more taxes. my view is warren buffett is a really, really smart guy. instead of him giving the government an extra $100 million a year, maybe that's what he thinks he should pay extra. he should invest that $100 million. not buy shares of bank of america that's going to lay off 30,000 or 40,000 people.

do startups, invest in startups. start by getting people jobs. what we did, we started out by helping people's families. i needed business to to it. in so doing, i had 916 employees on september 11. i had 302 people. i had secretaries without bosses. by september, 2001, i had 150 employees in new york. now we have 1500 employees in new york. we hired for a purpose, which was we wanted to take care of our friend's families. we should do something entrepreneurial in a social way. we should have people who have the money, have the skills, get out, grow their businesses. have a philanthropy of employment instead of talking about raising taxes. they should spend the same money, but invest it in america.

i like that model a lot better. i think the engine of america is an engine in job growth. so i like the idea of talking about it. but let's face it, you know, the employment taxes? is that going to drive the business? we've got to find out ways to get employers to want to hire and grow their business. not about washington. just the wrong side of the coin. >> an extraordinary experience talking to you. one of the most powerful interviews i've conducted. i appreciate you reliving what you had to go through and being so optimistic about the future. thank you so much. >> thank you, thanks very much. coming up, a woman who very nearly lost her life at cantor fitzgerald, laura manning.

my next guest was on the way to work to work at cantor fit gerald when a large flame burned her body. "unmeasured strength" story of survival and transformation. she joins us now. i know this has an emotional and inspiring to you in any ways former boss. and he told me to say from the start as far as he was concerned, you were a fantastic sales woman, never mind of everything else and you would like to be reminded of that because your life changed dramatically afterwards. >> in the business of life, we need to sell ourselves sometimes to our self. that's wonderful to hear. i love howard, he's a wonderful

man. >> take me back to that day ten years ago. you reached the lobby of the tower? what happened? >> i reached the lobby. running slightly late. i turned the corner to the elevator bank, there was a tremendous quaking sound, feeling the building shook, and whistle. and probably a second or so later out of the elevator shafts blew a wall of fire that enveloped me. i was spun around and began what was a battle at that moment. i was on fire. the woman that i had smiled at on my way in were on fire at well. and i struggle to get out against the back draft. and i was eventually spit out onto the sidewalk and made my way across the street to a grassy area to drop and roll.

>> and a bystander, i think somebody you may have worked with, came and threw a coat over you which may well have saved your life. you've never said who that was. you know who it is, don't you? >> it was a bond trader at another firm. and he and a friend, civilians that were incredibly brave that day, ran onto that bank where a few others had made it. and as i was rolling he came, helped me, and for 50 minutes i was there. and eventually made my way with assistance from him over to the ambulance. he was a true hero. >> it's hard to believe looking at you today, lauren that, you had 80% of your body burned that day. i mean, it's enough to normally kill people. how do you think you've managed to come through this? i mean, most people, women in particular, to have such a devastating attack on their body

like this, i would imagine, is just the worst thing that you could ever go through. how have you found the courage and the strength to battle through? >> i think it was a combination of how i was raised. my parents were incredibly supportive. and as my father, a former marine would say, things are going to get tough. you'll suffer disappointments. but get over it. and certainly my career really laid the groundwork for the perspective of every day you start from zero. and so it became my job and my recovery and certainly as a woman it was very, very difficult. we define ourselves not only by our careers but by how we look. and it was very hard to literally have the skin ripped off my body and to know that i would never look the same again. and in many ways have to learn

to inhabit a new place. >> you had obviously a great man with you, your husband. he stood by you. and you had a very young baby at the time. you've had another child since. how important was it for you to have not just your husband but also that little baby who you had to bring up as a mother despite what you were going through? >> he was the driving force that day in my decision to live. it certainly would have been far easier to succumb to the pain. and i saw a vision of him. and we had tried so hard to have a child. he was only ten months old. and it was truly for tyler that i lived. i hadn't had him long enough. and he is certainly my tribute and my life's work. i'm here. >> where would you be, lauren, on sunday when the anniversary takes place? >> i will be as i always am with my cantor fitzgerald family. and we remember those that are gone, and we reflect how we've

been able to move forward in many ways. it's been a long and challenging journey for everyone. >> i asked howard lutney. this i'll ask you as well. did you feel any sense of closure when osama bin laden was killed? >> i felt this sense that it was good we got the titular head, as it was, of al qaeda. however, like a cancer it was one piece of the disease. and unfortunately, it has tentacles that reach far beyond that one man. >> well, lauren, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. i've got to say, this is one of the most extraordinary books i've read in a long time. "unmeasured strength". i recommend everyone go and read this because it's a tale of inspiration and courage when i think many would have just packed it in. so i congratulate you on that. and i hope that sunday isn't too

painful for you and your old colleagues. >> thank you very much, piers. lauren manning. coming up, another new yorker's life was changed by 9/11. ♪

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9/11 changed everything for new yorkers. some have been working ever since to build a positive legacy from the aftermath of that day of destruction. here's one man's story.

>> it was a very tough time for the fire department. i lost some friend, guys i went to the academy with. afterwards people came from everywhere to help us out. it was incredible. you knew you weren't alone. for a new yorker to see that outpouring of kindness and generosity was more powerful than the terror that happened. it really changed me. i'm jeff parness. and i just want to show the world that new yorkers will never forget what people did for us following 9/11. every year on the 9/11 anniversary, we take volunteers from new york and send them to some part of the country where they had a disaster and help folks rebuild. it's definitely a real culture shock to work by a grain silo. homes or barns or churches, it's our way to say thank you. now more than half our volunteers are not from new york.