After the tower lurched back into place, Hingson’s colleague David Frank saw flames and large amounts of smoke from the office window. Debris rained down in front of the glass. And Frank became increasingly frantic. “We gotta get out of here right now!” Frank screamed, according to Victorville Daily Press. “You don’t understand. You can’t see it!” Frank was right. After all, Hingson was blind. He’d been blind since the day he was born.
Meanwhile, Hingson’s companion, a guide dog named Roselle, emerged from the nap she was taking underneath her master’s desk. The yellow Labrador Retriever was not showing any kind of fear reaction yet — and that led Hingson to believe that his office had time to evacuate in a calm manner. What happened next proves that the bond between this blind man and his guide dog was so much bigger than just the two of them.
After calling his wife and letting her know that he needed to evacuate the office due to an explosion, Hingson calmly told Frank that Frank followed as the office workers began walking down the stairs. And as soon as Hingson and Roselle entered the stairwell, Hingson smelled a familiar smell. He soon remembered it from the airport — jet fuel.
The group started their descent of over 1,460 steps from the 78th floor. Burn victims passed them on their way down. One woman began struggling to breathe and insisted that they wouldn’t get out of the building alive.
Hingson said that he and about eight others stopped and had a group hug right there on the stairs, encouraging the woman to keep going.
“Roselle gave her kisses,” Michael Hingson remembered, according to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. “Roselle was really good at that.” They continued downward. Firemen passed the group on their way up to fight the flames above them. Many gave the easygoing Roselle a quick pet as they passed her. Tragically, it would likely be one of their last moments of joy. Continue reading…
