Blind 9/11 survivor credits 'hero' guide dog with saving dozens of lives in incredible escape
Michael Hingson was 51 years old and sat in his 78th-floor office when the first hijacked plane tore through the World Trade Center's North Tower, somewhere between 15 and 21 floors above him. He had no way of seeing the fireball, the smoke, or the panic spreading through the building.
What he could do was listen to his guide dog.
Speaking to UNILAD, Hingson explained that as the tower tipped 20 to 25 feet under the impact before stabilizing, his five-year-old Labrador Roselle gave him the clearest read on the situation anyone in that office had.
While his colleague, David Frank, began shouting that burning debris was falling past the windows and they needed to run, Roselle was sat calmly beside Hingson's desk.
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"She was just wagging her tail and yawning," Hingson said, describing a dog who showed no trace of the fear she displayed during thunderstorms.
Roselle was Hingson's fifth of eight guide dogs and, by his own account, the one whose composure that morning became central to how he tells the story today.
Having lived with Roselle long enough to know what she looked like when she was genuinely afraid, Hingson used her reaction to make a judgement call.
"I wasn't smelling any smoke or fire or anything," he explained, "so I knew whatever was going on was not such an imminent threat that we couldn't try to evacuate in an orderly way."
How did Michael Hingson escape the World Trade Center?
Hingson, who has been blind since birth and was working as Mid-Atlantic Region Sales Manager for Quantum Corporation that day, led his colleagues to the stairwell instead of the elevators, a decision rooted in emergency training he'd sought out himself after joining the building years earlier.
"I spent a lot of time learning all I could about the complex, talking to fire department people, emergency preparedness people, the Port Authority police," he said.
What followed was a descent of 78 flights, roughly 1,463 steps, with Roselle at his side the entire way.
Around the fourth floor, Hingson recognized the smell filling the stairwell as burning jet fuel, information he shared with terrified strangers who had no idea what had hit the building.
By the 50th floor, Frank had reached breaking point, telling Hingson 'we're going to die' and that they wouldn't make it out.
Hingson's response was blunt: "David, stop it. If I can go down these stairs, so can you."
Frank later credited that line with snapping him out of it, and spent the rest of the descent shouting out floor numbers to reassure everyone within earshot that the group was still moving.
They reached the ground floor and made it outside by 9:45am, roughly 30 people following Hingson and Roselle's lead down the staircase.
Firefighters passed them heading up around the 30th floor, carrying oxygen tanks and equipment for the fight still ahead.
Hingson recalled resisting their offers of help, saying, "I didn't want any of them to have to help me. They wouldn't really know how to do it very well anyway."
Hingson and Roselle were separated from Frank when Tower Two collapsed, briefly reuniting on Fulton Street before sheltering in a subway station and then behind a retaining wall as the North Tower came down around them too.
"There's no World Trade Center anymore," Frank told him as they finally stood back up.
Hingson eventually reached his wife, Karen, who told him two more planes had hit the Pentagon and a fourth was down in Pennsylvania, the first confirmation either of them had that the attacks were deliberate. Reflecting on the hijackers, Hingson was firm: "That is not what Islam is all about. That is not what any religion is about."
Hingson later turned the experience into the New York Times number one bestseller Thunder Dog, with a foreword written by Larry King, alongside two further books, Running with Roselle and Live Like a Guide Dog. He now works as a public speaker, traveling the world to talk about trust, leadership and what Roselle taught him that day.
"I've learned more about trust and teamwork and moving forward and functioning from guide dogs," he said, "than I ever learned from Ken Blanchard, Tony Robbins and all those people."
Thomas Bamford