William Rodriguez says he relives the September 11 attacks every single day.
Rodriguez, who was 40 and single in 2001, had worked nearly two decades as a custodian at the North Tower of the World Trade Center without ever taking a sick day. That Tuesday morning, the beauty of the weather nearly broke his streak. “It was so beautiful outside, I thought, ‘I’m just gonna stay home and hang out,'” he told The Post. “I called my supervisor and said I wasn’t going to work.” His boss persuaded him to come in anyway.
He arrived at 8:30 a.m., too late for the free breakfast his friends at Windows on the World on the 106th floor usually slipped him. He headed straight to the B1 basement. Sixteen minutes later, American Airlines Flight 11 struck floors 93 through 99.
“We heard an explosion so powerful, so big the walls cracked,” Rodriguez recalled. “The building shook, the sprinkler system activated. It was horrible.” He initially suspected a generator had blown on a lower sub-level. Then a second explosion echoed from above, followed by screams echoing down the elevator shafts.
A man staggered into the basement office, skin hanging from his hands “like he was wearing gloves,” Rodriguez remembered. The man was badly burned and covered in blood. Rodriguez guided him out to a loading dock near Vesey Street. Only then, looking up at the gaping hole in the tower, did Rodriguez understand what had happened. “I saw everybody on the streets looking up with their mouth open. That’s when I saw the hole,” he said. “I saw the fire and the smoke, which was so dense it covered the antenna of the North Tower.”
His thoughts raced to his friends trapped at Windows on the World. He started screaming, “We gotta go back!” None of the restaurant workers or guests survived. But Rodriguez possessed something almost as precious as time itself: a master key that opened any door in either tower, one of only six such keys in existence.
He led police and firefighters up to the 39th floor, unlocking emergency doors so workers and visitors could flee. A now-famous photograph by Post photographer Matthew McDermott shows Rodriguez in a bright orange safety vest helping carry an injured person from the building. He was outside when the North Tower collapsed, diving beneath a fire truck for cover. Rescuers found him four and a half hours later. He is widely considered the last survivor out of the North Tower.
The vest and the master key remain in his possession 25 years later. “I relive 9/11 every single day. There’s not a day I don’t think about it. Mostly because I lost 200 friends, and the emotional inventory losing so many friends is devastating,” he said. The city’s response in the aftermath stays with him too. “New York during that time was so innocent about terrorism, and the outpouring of love we got from the city was just amazing,” Rodriguez added. But he worries “that’s all gone now. It’s like people forgot how they felt during that time.”
That fear has driven him to speak to a generation with no living memory of the attacks—approximately 100 million American adults today. “I try to tell them that it wasn’t about the towers, it was about the people that we lost. I’m alive because of a miracle that happened on that day, I believe,” Rodriguez said. “So I try to tell the story around the world so people won’t forget.”
His documentary work and interviews have helped raise an estimated $122 million for survivors and families of the killed. He focuses particularly on survivors who have fallen through gaps in assistance programs. The tragedy also reshaped his personal trajectory. “I was thinking about having a good time—40 years old and single,” he said of his mindset before that morning. “But after 9/11 my life made a whole metamorphosis. I became a person that was more spiritual, that has a sense that compassion is more powerful than violence and has a continuing desire to help others.”
He frames his survival with characteristic humility. “I got boxes and boxes of recognition, but I just survived,” he said. “I’m going around the world doing interviews, doing documentaries because it’s the only way people won’t forget. It’s the only way I can glorify the friends and the people we lost on 9/11.”
Rodriguez continues traveling internationally to share his account, with upcoming appearances scheduled to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks.