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Princeton University Athletics
'It Was A War Zone'
September 12, 2001 | Football
Sept. 12, 2001
Dan Swingos was a football player. Every Saturday was "a war." He played in three games that went "sudden death." As a defensive end, he always found himself in "the trenches."
And then the real thing hit.
Miraculously, he is still here to talk about it.
Tuesday morning, three years after he led Princeton out of the tunnel onto the Princeton Stadium turf as captain of the first Tiger team to play in the new facility, Swingos found himself at Ground Zero of the attack on the United States.
Swingos woke up Tuesday morning and went to work like he always does. His work address was the 60th floor of the World Trade Center, building two.
He was on the 45th floor of that building around 9 a.m., when the first hijacked plane struck building one.
"I didn't hear it, but I looked out the window and saw papers flying around everywhere," he said Wednesday morning. "I said to myself, 'what in the world's going on?' Then I looked down and saw fires on the ground everywhere and I figured that something had exploded." Swingos works with former Princeton players Tim Ligue and Chuck Hastings. Across the street at the time was former Tiger Gerry Giurato, who works at the World Financial Center.
"I didn't see the plane hit," Giurato said. "But I heard it coming. I knew it was a plane. At the time, everyone was speculating that it was just an accident, that a plane had lost control and hit the tower. I was thinking that a lot of people might not get out."
When the first plane hit, Swingos was with a few other people. They immediately went for the elevator, but they were told they could not use it. Instead, they went into the stairwell.
It took around 15 minutes to get from the 45th to around the 15th floor, and then they heard an announcement from the loud speaker.
"They said a plane had hit the other building," Swingos said. "Then they said that we had nothing to worry about, because our building was fine and that we could go back upstairs. We all said no to that. We just wanted to get outside and see what was happening."
Swingos and his group made it to the ground floor, but getting out of the building was another matter. Police were guiding people to the outside and weren't permitting some regular exits to be used.
Swingos thought to get the subway and actually boarded an E train, but the train did not move. After that, he opened the door to the subway exit, the same one he normally takes to work.
"I looked outside, and it was a war zone," he said. "There was fire. Shrapnel. And then maybe 10 seconds after I opened the door, I heard it. It was like a missile, and it just tore into the building."
It was no missile. Instead, it was the second hijacked plane, which struck building two, at the base of which he was standing.
"All of the sudden, huge pieces of metal were falling from the sky," Swingos said. "I dove under the entrance to the building that was covered, but I was just halfway under the cover. I couldn't stay there. I had to take off, across a courtyard."
This was the beginning of the most harrowing part. Swingos ran through a maze of falling debris, some of which were huge metal pieces that would have surely killed him.
"It got back to the lobby of the building, and I just saw the metal falling all over," he says. "After that fallout let up, I just got out and started running north."
At the time, he had no idea about Hastings or Ligue, both of whom made it out of the area that was the workplace for many former Princeton athletes and Princetonians in general.
"It was a madhouse," Giurato said. "I never, ever thought anything like that could happen. A lot of guys have been calling, and to my knowledge, everyone had been accounted for. Obviously, we can't be sure. We may still find out stuff about who isn't safe."
For Swingos, the story didn't end there, however. Around 700 miles away, in his family restaurant outside Cleveland, his anxious family was waiting to hear from him. During this time, they were glued to the TV set, watching first the planes hit and then the buildings collapse.
"I didn't have my cell phone with me," Swingos said. "I couldn't get through. Then this girl was the on the street with her cell phone and she was getting reception, and she let me borrow her phone. I called the restaurant, because I knew they'd be there. My brother answered, and as soon as he picked up, they went into hysterics. They were sure I hadn't made it out."
But he did make it out, largely by listening to his instincts.
"People were just doing what they had to do to survive," said Swingos, who along with Giurato and the others had to walk several miles north to get home. "I just tried to make good decisions and keep going. I wasn't really thinking about the larger picture at the time. I saw a lot of people who were just frozen, who couldn't move. I hope as many made it out as possible. There are a lot of people I work with still missing. It was a horrible, horrible thing. It was the worst thing ever."
He came through it. Maybe his experiences as an athlete, as a football player, helped him. Maybe he was just lucky.