At 8.46am on September 11, 2001, an impression like an earthquake rocked the south tower of the World Commerce Middle (WTC) in Manhattan.
Within the Merrill Lynch financial institution’s convention room on the 96th ground, partitions shook and home windows rattled. The lights flickered on and off.
Tania Head, 26, a supervisor on the financial institution’s fast-track scheme, was chairing a gathering when she heard shrieks from the hall. She and her colleagues seemed up.
By the home windows, they noticed black smoke billowing from the constructing reverse — the WTC’s north tower. They watched a ball of flame rolling up from about 5 flooring beneath them.
Folks started to scream, to clutch at one another in panic or make for the doorways. They grabbed their telephones and started calling buddies and family, begging them to change on the TV information.
A speck tumbled from a north tower window, after which one other. At first, Tania took them for items of furnishings, chairs or desks, flung from the burning constructing.
Then she noticed one was a human determine, its arms flapping, making an attempt desperately to fly because it plunged to the sidewalk 100 storeys beneath.
All that Tania may assume was: ‘The person I really like, greater than something on the earth, is in that constructing.’
Of all of the 9/11 survivors’ tales, none appeared extra astonishing than Tania Head’s (pictured: actual identify Alicia Esteve Head), however some survivors puzzled about parts of Tania’s story
As she hurried in the direction of the exit, she tried to work out whether or not it was his workplace that she had seen consumed in flames.
Her fiancé — ‘Massive Dave’, as he was recognized to everybody — was a guide on the monetary companies firm, Deloitte.
He labored on the a centesimal ground, and she or he had met him in February 1999, quickly after she arrived in New York from Barcelona, Spain, the place she had grown up.
Now they have been residing collectively on the Higher East Aspect with a golden retriever pet known as Elvis and plans for an October marriage ceremony.
Pushing down the hall, jostled by dozens of individuals additionally heading for the exit, Tania prayed that Dave’s workplace was above the positioning of the bomb, or gasoline blast, or no matter had precipitated the explosion.
Safety males shouted at them to return to their workplaces and keep calm. Nobody was listening.
The elevate would not cease on the 96th ground, so Tania used the steps to move for the open ‘sky foyer’ on the 78th.
Obese, she was panting closely as she reached the doorways of the ‘specific’ elevator that might take her right down to Flooring 44 and one other elevate. Her assistant, Christine, was following her.
The cabin of the elevate was already overcrowded. She noticed there was no hope of getting in rapidly, and that swirling panic was making the state of affairs extra harmful for everybody.
A person in a swimsuit and tie shoved previous her, shouting, ‘This is not the Titanic, girls, and it isn’t girls and kids first!’
Others behaved extra calmly, urging queues to kind. In moments, the road for the elevators snaked all the best way around the foyer.
Tania reached for her BlackBerry cellular and tried to name Dave. After they parted that morning, they’d been bickering — an insignificant row, however virtually the primary of their relationship.
It was so silly: he wished to get his mom a token current for her birthday and Tania thought they must take her to dinner. Now, irrationally, it appeared necessary to inform him it did not matter what they did, that no matter made him comfortable can be proper.
Of all of the 9/11 survivors’ tales, none appeared extra astonishing than Tania Head’s horrifying story.
Within the years following the atrocity — which marks its twentieth anniversary subsequent month — Tania turned probably the most seen figures within the motion representing those that had lived by the catastrophe.
Ultimately, she turned president of the World Commerce Middle Survivors’ Community.
Practically 3,000 individuals died within the assaults that day, and throughout America they have been thought to be martyrs. The survivors appeared to have much less cachet: Tania labored laborious to counter this, showing steadily within the media.
Tania claimed she was chairing a gathering in Merrill Lynch financial institution’s convention room on the 96th ground of the south tower of the WTC (pictured) at 8.46am on September 11, 2001
By 2005, she was main excursions on the WTC guests’ centre and, on one event, confirmed New York mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani across the web site.
A movie and guide have been even ready that featured her story — although not for the explanations she may need hoped.
As a result of because the years glided by, cautious observers noticed unusual inconsistencies in her unforgettable testimony. Ultimately, they got here to grasp, one thing did not add up and Tania’s story led to ignominy and shame.
On that fateful day, as she waited for the elevators, Tania knew she would by no means marry Dave if she did not get out of that constructing.
She was specializing in her respiration, making an attempt to recollect yoga methods, when a lady on the far finish of the sky foyer began screaming: ‘One other airplane!’
Tania noticed the wing of the United Airways Flight 175 Boeing jet slice like a knife into the constructing simply above her. Glass and particles crammed the air like confetti. Within the blink of an eye fixed, her assistant Christine was decapitated at her facet.
Because the partitions imploded, Tania was hurled again right into a marble slab. Her final thought was, ‘I hope I die rapidly. Do not let it harm.’
She regained consciousness in a hell of twisted metallic and flames. A person with a pink bandana tied over his face was beating her with a jacket.
She screamed at him to cease, and realised in the identical breath he was placing out the fireplace burning her mangled arm.
The person helped her to her ft. With a type of indifferent horror, she noticed her arm was half-ripped from her torso, hanging on by sinews. Together with her different hand, she supported it, utilizing her pocket as a makeshift sling.
Clinging to the person within the pink bandana, Tania struggled by the rubble. A person crawled out of the smoke, holding out a hand in the direction of her. ‘Take this,’ he mentioned, and dropped one thing sizzling into her hand.
It was a marriage ring. ‘Please give this to my spouse,’ he gasped.
‘I am going to discover her and I am going to give it to her,’ she promised. One other choking cloud of mud smothered them. When she may see once more, the person was gone.
Tania’s rescuer advised her that one of many stairwells was nonetheless intact. As they neared the exit, extra individuals stumbled previous them, badly burned and preventing for breath.
On the high of the steps, a wave of panic hit her. ‘I am scared!’ she sobbed.
‘You are able to do this,’ he mentioned, then went again in to the carnage.
She struggled down greater than 50 flights of stairs till, exhausted and weak from blood loss, she handed out once more. This time, the determine standing over her when she was revived was a firefighter.
‘We’re leaving right here collectively,’ he advised her, and carried her down the final 20 flooring.
As they emerged into the open, the streets choked with poisonous mud and ash, the bottom shook. A cataclysmic shrieking of concrete and metallic tore the air.
Folks have been operating in all instructions, shouting that the tower was falling. Her rescuer thrust her into the arms of one other firefighter, who flung her beneath a fireplace truck and shielded her together with his physique because the skyscraper crashed round them.
Gasping for air within the searing black mud, Tania felt the fireman press his oxygen masks to her face. She gulped air like water. His physique was pressed in opposition to hers. They have been buried alive.
After that, she remembered nothing, till she awoke in hospital, swathed in white gauze, with a tube in her mouth. Her first thought was for Dave. She begged nurses to inform her the place he was. Nobody would say.
It was not till her dad and mom reached her bedside from Spain that Tania learnt the appalling actuality. Her fiancé was useless. She was a widow earlier than she had ever married.
Tania’s arm was reattached, however she didn’t go away hospital till Thanksgiving, in November.
She devoted months of analysis to discovering the identification of the person who entrusted his marriage ceremony ring to her. Contained in the gold band was the one phrase: ‘Without end.’
When she lastly tracked down his widow, she quietly returned the ring, with out fuss or media consideration. She by no means divulged the person’s identify.
However there was no lingering thriller concerning the identify of the person within the pink bandana who saved her when he discovered her unconscious within the flames.
He was Welles Crowther, a 24-year-old equities dealer and volunteer firefighter. He died when the south tower collapsed.
Welles’s household have been sure their son was the hero of the WTC assaults, as quickly as they heard of a person carrying a pink bandana over his face. Welles had carried one in his pocket since he was six years outdated.
The New York Occasions later revealed that Tania’s actual identify was Alicia Esteve Head (pictured in white shirt) and on September 11, 2001, she was not within the south tower, and even in New York
At a memorial service for Welles in 2006, Tania was too overcome with emotion to talk.
However a pal stood up and skim her assertion: ‘Even after 5 years, I nonetheless bear the burden of being alive when so many different lives have been taken from us… In my household, we’ve a convention at Christmas. Annually, we inform the kids tales drawn from our lives.
‘The story they wish to hear, yr after yr, is the story of the person within the pink bandana, whose braveness stood taller than the Twin Towers themselves.’
It had taken Tania a very long time to construct the arrogance to speak in public about her 9/11 experiences.
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She did not inform her entire story till 2003, when a person named Gerry Bogacz invited her to hitch his group, the World Commerce Middle Survivors’ Community, which met in actual life in addition to on-line.
Different members have been surprised by what she had suffered. A few of them had been within the Twin Towers that day, others had misplaced family members: however Tania was the one member who belonged to each classes.
Much more, she was one of many 20 or so individuals who had been on the topmost flooring, above the purpose of the planes’ impression, and survived. In consequence, she was handled virtually with reverence by a number of the others.
In a wierd method, Tania turned a star survivor — her standing confirmed when Bogacz was voted off the group’s board and Tania was elected as its president… a brand new title, created particularly for her.
Tania pushed for the community to implement a code of conduct, guarding in opposition to scammers who claimed to be 9/11 victims nursing long-term accidents and looking for to con cash from well-wishers.
Spending her personal cash freely, Tania turned the group’s driving pressure — organising conferences, reserving audio system, successful non-profit standing for the group.
On the identical time, film-maker Angelo Guglielmo was making a documentary concerning the survivors.
He hoped to make Tania one of many central figures in his programme. Guglielmo found she was a tough topic, although, and never all the time keen to co-operate.
He additionally could not assist noticing that the scars on her arm, although critical, did not look as if the limb had been reattached. However he mentioned nothing, feeling it will be crass to remark.
In the meantime, a few of her fellow survivors puzzled about parts of Tania’s story. Little issues appeared odd. One was puzzled Tania generally known as Dave her fiancé, at different instances her husband. She defined she had petitioned to have their marriage posthumously ratified.
Tania by no means shared images of herself and Dave collectively, and was reluctant to make his final identify public.
Eventually she revealed it, in confidence, to at least one pal — who checked and noticed that certainly Dave had died within the north tower. His obituary, although, made no point out of Tania.
Most important of all, when buddies visited Tania at her condo, the retriever she had all the time talked about, Elvis, was by no means there. He was all the time being walked by Tania’s maid.
These discrepancies have been ignored till September 2006, the fifth anniversary of the assaults.
Two reporters on the New York Occasions, Serge Kovaleski and Dave Dunlap, examine Tania’s story and have been puzzled to seek out that she had not been interviewed in 2001, through the instant aftermath.
Their suspicions mounted once they tried to talk to Tania and she or he repeatedly dodged interviews, then began blocking their calls. She warned different survivors to not speak to the reporters both.
Panicked by the reporters, she went to a lawyer to organize a press release — however as she did so, she admitted a number of inconsistencies in her story.
She stole many details from an interview within the New York Occasions with Ling Younger. Ling was guided to security by Welles Crowther (pictured), the person within the pink bandana and a real hero
She conceded she had by no means labored for Merrill Lynch. She was not a rising star on the financial institution — she had merely visited the workplaces to use for an internship, by unhealthy luck on the very day of the assaults.
Dave was not her fiancé. That they had by no means owned a canine known as Elvis. In reality, that they had been relationship just for just a few weeks.
Rumours quickly unfold by the survivors’ group: Tania Head’s story could not be trusted. Elements have been exaggerated, embellished or just not true.
When the New York Occasions revealed its exposé every week later, even the lawyer’s assertion fell aside.
Tania’s actual identify, the paper revealed, was Alicia Esteve Head. On September 11, 2001, she was not within the south tower of the WTC. She was not even in New York, or the U.S.
She was in Barcelona, a pupil at a enterprise school. Merrill Lynch had no report of her, not whilst an applicant for an internship.
Dave’s household had by no means heard of her. And he had by no means met her.
Every thing she wove into her story was gleaned from newspaper and journal experiences, together with Dave’s identification.
Specifically, she stole many details from an interview within the New York Occasions with Ling Younger, who labored within the New York tax division on the 86th ground of the south tower, and who was within the sky foyer when the second airplane struck.
Ling was guided to security by the rubble and flames by Welles Crowther, the person within the pink bandana and a real hero of the assaults. Of all of the individuals betrayed by Tania, none have been extra harm than the Crowther household.
Alicia Head was the fifth baby and solely daughter of a rich Spanish household. The scars on her arm got here from a automotive accident in her teenagers, on the Spanish coast with buddies.
An attention-seeker since childhood, she used to inform individuals in Barcelona that the automotive was a Ferrari and the motive force was her fiancé — the love of her life. Extra lies.
After which she disappeared after the New York Occasions revealed her {photograph} and story beneath the headline: ‘In a 9/11 Survival Story, the Items Simply Do not Match’.
She did not make any try and brazen it out. She made no excuses. She merely vanished.
Additional investigation advised she had dedicated no crime. Tania did not take funds from the group — in truth, she was a number one donor.
Why she advised such colossal lies, perpetrating essentially the most offensive fraud possible, nobody knew — simply as nobody knew what occurred to Alicia Head subsequent.
One hearsay mentioned she returned to Spain, the place she was sacked from at the very least one job after her lies in America caught up together with her. One other mentioned she killed herself in 2008, unable to reside with the disgrace of what she had completed.
Establishing the reality of this, like a lot else with Alicia/Tania, was tough… not least as a result of she was estranged from her household. Removed from coming to her hospital bedside, her dad and mom have been not in contact together with her.
Her present whereabouts are unknown. However film-maker Angelo Guglielmo believes he noticed her as soon as. She was in New York, popping out of a resort. And Angelo confronted her.
‘How dare you?’ he shouted. ‘Do not you’ve any emotions for the individuals you have harm?’
Alicia Head threatened to name the police. Then she disappeared into the group.
Angelo Guglielmo’s movie about Tania Head, additionally advised in a guide co-written with Robin Gaby Fisher, is known as The Lady Who Wasn’t There.
