Melissa in the WTC South Tower Update

I wrote here a while back about my former co-worker, Melissa Doi, and her harrowing experience in the last moments of one of the two towers of the WTC. Unfortunately, she didn't made it out of the building.

I learned about her fate slowly over time. The first report (at work) was that she was unaccounted for, then missing, then confirmed dead (though I don't think ever identified).

The last time I wrote about her was when I saw a PBS documentary about the accounts of survivors of the South Tower. One man was from the floor above Melissa (84th & 83th, above the impact) and I became pretty sure that she was in the group that managed to climb down past the impact point in the only remaining stairwell. The reason being that the last anyone heard from her, she called from the 44th floor, well below the fires.

http://worldtradeaftermath.com/wta/okay/melissa_doi.asp

From the puzzle pieces I had to that point, I figured that she made it down with the survivor and some others to the 44th floor where she stopped to call her mother on her cell phone in the company of firemen. The survivor continued to safety. The building collapsed before Melissa got out.

What I only just found out is that one of the voices heard in the Moussaoui Trial on April 12 was hers. I didn't follow the trails very closely, but I was reading about them today on Wikipedia and saw her name unexpectedly. The prosecution used hers and another victim's phone calls against Moussaoui.

Full transcript:
http://www.floppingaces.net/?p=1640

The curious thing is that they implied that she died trapped on the 83rd floor shortly after the call. This conflicts with earlier reports about her trip down to the 44th.

After some further investigation, the two incidents may have both happened.

In the transcript, Melissa mentioned that she heard someone coming (perhaps expected firecrew assured by the 911 operator). While I remember that the people who escaped the 83rd and 84th floors were not with firecrew until they reached lower floors, it could be that she was rescued, temporarily, at the end of her, now well-known, 83rd floor call. Indeed the people she heard may have been from the 84th floor.

It is very strange to think about the last time I saw her (in a parking lot) just before she moved to New York, and that since then all this has happened and her name is all over the news. I was not very close to her, however I considered asking her on a date. She was quite a bit more attractive than the photo on the website shows. She was very bright (as you can tell in the transcript, which really reminds me of they way she used to confirm things that you told her). I haven't tried to listen to the audio recordings of her call. I've heard it's emotionally difficult enough without knowing her.

I thought Melissa's possible trip down the building and later posthumous involvement in the trial was interesting enough to mention here.

Wow. Thank you for sharing that.

If her call is the one I'm thinking of it really upset me, by far the worst of the calls I heard from that day. Interesting turn of events as the going theory was that she passed out from heat and smoke and thats why the call ended

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

If her call is the one I'm thinking of it really upset me, by far the worst of the calls I heard from that day. Interesting turn of events as the going theory was that she passed out from heat and smoke and thats why the call ended

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I've heard about that recording and read the transcript. I'm sure I couldn't bear to hear it. That's not how I want to recall her voice.

I only wrote this now because I was totally unaware, until this week, that one of the two phone calls I had heard about used in the trial was hers. She was only one of thousands of people in the building complex that morning.