This is the World Trade Center visitors pass issued to Christopher Briggs Young on the morning of September 11th, 2001. 

Christopher was an employee of Marsh & McLellan, who occupied floors 93-99. That fateful morning he was delivering materials to his boss for a presentation at 1 World Trade Center.

Christopher arrived at the complex at 08:25, received his visitors pass to the 99th floor and headed up to complete his delivery. At 08:45 he boarded an empty express elevator on the 78th floor Sky Lobby to head back down to the main lobby level. 

08:46, and flight 11 slams into the North Tower at nearly 600mph. The elevator comes to a halt, the lights flicker and Christopher has no idea what has just happened. No panic, he thinks, just a slight glitch, so he pushes the emergency call button and awaits help. 

Time goes by and still no help. But, with no obvious signs of issue, Christopher remains calm and waits patiently for an engineer to get the elevator back in service. That is until an enormous rumble can be felt in the distance (later he would find out this was the South Tower collapsing) and dust begins to seep into the elevator car. Now in a state of panic Christopher begins to pry the elevator doors open with his hands (which, since the power was knocked out by the collapse of 2 WTC he was able to do) and realises that the elevator has stopped just inches above the lobby level. 

Once Christopher managed to pry the doors open he stumbled out and walked across the lobby, completley empty and covered in dust (he described it as an "alien land") leaving the building through a broken window. 

Christopher made it out of the North Tower just minutes before it collapsed.

Christopher Young’s story