On September 11, a fire chief climbed 37 floors of the South Tower with 50 pounds of gear on his back and reached the exact floor where the plane had hit. He got on the radio. His voice was out of breath, and completely calm. He said the fire was manageable. Two hoses. They could knock it down. One minute later, the tower fell. His name was Orio Palmer. Battalion Chief, Battalion 7, FDNY. Forty-five years old. A wife named Debbie and three kids, Dana, Keith, and Alyssa, in Valley Stream, Long Island. Before he was a firefighter he was an electrical engineer who specialized in elevator repair. That detail is why this story exists. When Palmer arrived at the South Tower after the second plane hit, every elevator in the building was dead. The impact was on the 78th floor. Hundreds of people were trapped above and around it. And the only way up was stairs. Seventy-eight flights, in gear, in smoke. Palmer found a stalled elevator, got into the mechanism, and fixed it. He rode it to the 41st floor. Then he started climbing. He was a marathon runner. He had run the New York City Marathon and dedicated his first one, in 1989, to his daughter Dana's first birthday. He had won the fire department's physical fitness award five times. He was the fittest man in the department, and he was climbing 37 floors in bunker gear with an air tank on his back. His radio transmissions were recorded. You can follow him up the building. 9:32. The 55th floor. 9:45. The 74th floor. He reports damage to the stairwell walls. No serious smoke yet. He tells the men coming up behind him to be careful. Somewhere around the 75th floor he meets Fire Marshal Ron Bucca, who has climbed every step from the ground. Also a marathon runner. They go up together. 9:52. The 78th floor. The sky lobby. The impact zone. The place where roughly 200 people had been waiting for elevators when a Boeing 767 came through the wall. Almost nobody had been able to get that high that morning. Palmer and Bucca and a few men of Ladder 15 behind them were the only firefighters who reached the point of impact in either tower. Palmer keyed his radio. Out of breath. Steady. "Battalion Seven. Ladder 15. We've got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines." Then he reported what he was standing in. Numerous 10-45s, Code One. That is fire department language. Code One means dead. He was telling command that there were many dead civilians around him, and then, in the same breath, telling them where to send the water. He called for more companies. More hose. More men. At 9:58, he and the others freed a group of civilians who were trapped in an elevator on that floor. At 9:59, the South Tower collapsed. Orio Palmer, Ron Bucca, and everyone with them died in it. The tapes of the radio traffic were kept sealed for months. When the Fire Department finally played them for the families, Palmer's widow Debbie went in afraid of what she would hear. She came out and said the only thing she had heard in her husband's voice was that he was working. No fear. No panic. Just a man on the 78th floor with two fires in front of him and a plan for putting them out. At home they called him the Music Man. He played guitar. He made up silly songs. He invented fairy dances for his little girls. He took the neighborhood kids fishing. Debbie died in 2021. His children have seven kids of their own now, on Long Island. They are the grandchildren of a man who fixed an elevator in a burning building so he could get closer to the fire. Here is what that recording is. It is the sound of how far up hope physically climbed that morning. An electrician who could not stand to see a broken elevator. A runner who could not stand to stop. A chief who could not stand to leave people up there. Seventy-eight floors. He got there. He reported in. He called for water. And the last thing anyone ever heard from him was a man who thought he could still win. 🇺🇸