In short
Survivor Paul Karras recounts the September 11, 2001 attacks from inside the World Trade Center and how helping a stranger, Judith Toppin, shaped his faith and later ministry as a Catholic deacon.
Guest backgrounds
Paul Karras worked for the Port Authority; he rejoined the IT department six weeks before 9/11. He later became a permanent deacon for the Archdiocese of Newark (ordained May 2011). Judith Toppin was the overweight woman he assisted; she later wrote a book portraying him as an “angel,” and died after surgery.
Key claims
Paul believes the Holy Spirit led him to stop for Judith; her prayers (Psalm 23) steadied both of them; 9/11 triggered anger/rage and PTSD-like reactions; spiritual growth came through therapy and a Cursillo retreat, shifting faith from rules to a relationship with Christ.
Notable examples
carrying Judith down 71 stories using the banister; hearing the North Tower collapse as they escaped; stepping over bodies in dust-filled streets; ambulance traffic to Columbia Presbyterian annex; Judith’s later call reconnecting after days; Paul’s ordination with Judith present.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOPaul Karras: Deacon and Survivor
2:31 to 3:43
Meet Paul Karras, a deacon who survived the North Tower collapse.
“For this program, I've traveled to New Jersey to meet survivor Paul Karras.”
Sound of a Jet and PTSD
3:43 to 4:55
Paul recounts the sound of low-flying jets and its impact on him as a survivor.
“you are filled with hypocrisy and evil doing.”
A Typical Morning Before the Attack
4:55 to 6:32
Paul shares his routine leading up to the tragic events of September 11, 2001.
“and then I left for five and a half years doing other consulting engineering jobs.”
The Attack Begins
6:32 to 7:51
In real-time, Paul experiences the impact of the first plane hitting the North Tower.
“The building actually started to tilt almost to the point where you thought it was going to keep going.”
Helping Judith in Crisis
7:51 to 9:12
Paul describes how he helped a stranger, Judith, during the evacuation.
“That's when I ran into a small group of people who were huddled around a woman who was sitting down.”
Calm Amidst Chaos
9:12 to 10:40
Despite the situation, Paul notes a surprising calmness among evacuees.
“When you entered the stairwell with Judith and you started that slow descent down 71 stories, how were you moving down with her?”
Ignorance of the Outside World
10:40 to 11:56
Paul reflects on the lack of information about the unfolding crisis outside.
“When you're looking at the World Trade Center, we understand that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.”
The Urgency and Descent
11:56 to 12:52
Paul and Judith face urgency as they continue their descent down the stairs.
“After we felt that wind blast around the 25th floor Then there was a noticeable change in the atmosphere of everybody There was much more urgency At 9.59 a.m., the South Tower, the second to be hit, collapsed.”
Emerging from the Lobby
12:52 to 14:01
Paul describes the devastating scene outside the World Trade Center after they escape.
“And I said, oh, yeah, I better start praying.”
The Eerie Silence and Escape from Danger
14:01 to 18:15
Learn about the chaotic and surreal experience of escaping the World Trade Center during 9/11.
“There's debris on the base of the building that has continued to fall.”
Show all 13 chapters
The Eerie Silence and Escape from Danger
18:18 to 18:45
Learn about the chaotic and surreal experience of escaping the World Trade Center during 9/11.
The Journey to Healing and Friendship
19:15 to 28:00
Explore the aftermath of 9/11, the development of a friendship, and personal healing through faith and therapy.
“shelter and got into the back of an ambulance and inside there was an injured firefighter.”
Reflections on Tragedy and Purpose
28:00 to 28:36
Explore how personal experiences during 9/11 shaped one's faith and purpose.
“God does amazing things with the tragedy.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Judith Toppin:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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1:15Judith Toppin:The Documentary, home of the best documentaries from the BBC World Service.
1:23Paul Carris:There was nobody. It was just eerie silence. Everything was gray with dust all over it. We were just sort of following instinct to get to West Street, head north, and then try to head to the river. I looked back and I saw the top of the tower actually starting to come down. Oh, my God! Oh, my God! At that point, people just, the firemen or the emergency workers started yelling, run, because the North Tower we had just exited was starting to come down.
1:59Colm Flynn:Paul Karras was one of the last survivors to walk out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York on September the 11th, 2001, just moments before it completely collapsed.
2:12Judith Toppin:Let's look at the North Tower quickly, quickly. Oh my God. The second tower.
2:25Paul Carris:It's hard to put it into words.
2:27Colm Flynn:This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Colm Flynn, and in this episode of Heart and Soul, which explores personal approaches to spirituality from around the world, I'm in the USA, marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, when almost 3 ,000 people died in New York at the Pentagon in Virginia and near Shanksville in Pennsylvania. For this program, I've traveled to New Jersey to meet survivor Paul Karras. His is an extraordinary story of survival and how a split-second decision to help a complete stranger not only saved her life, but Paul believes ultimately saved his as well.
3:11Colm Flynn:And a warning, some people may find the content in this program distressing.
3:25Colm Flynn:Inside Corpus Christi Church in the town of Hasbrook Heights, New Jersey, Paul Karras is standing on the altar. Today he serves as a deacon in the Catholic Church, and this morning he is proclaiming the gospel.
3:41Paul Carris:righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evil doing. Thanks a lot, guys. There's many prayers. Thank you.
3:55Colm Flynn:After Mass, Paul is talking to parishioners outside. Then he and I leave the group and walk over to the parish house, when the sound of a low-flying jet passes overhead. We hear the planes overhead. Which airport is that coming from, Paul?
4:10Paul Carris:It's Teterborough Airport. It's basically right next to Hasbrok Heights. And for a few couple of years after 9-11, if there were a low-flying plane with a loud engine roar, it would send chills through me because there was a roar when the jet hit the trade center that you just never forget. And I learned about PTSD. It's an unconscious thing. Your body actually reacts before your mind catches up to what happened. So that took a couple of years before that feeling went away.
4:40Colm Flynn:Let's go back in time to 2001. Paul was working in New York City and his office was on the 71st floor of the World Trade Center.
4:50Paul Carris:So I worked for the Port Authority. I actually joined them in 1986, and I worked for them for almost 10 years, and then I left for five and a half years doing other consulting engineering jobs. My daughters were getting to the age where I was traveling a lot in the consulting field, and I said, I need to be home more. So an opportunity arose to rejoin the Port Authority, and I joined the Port Authority in a different department that I'd been in six weeks before 9-11.
5:19Colm Flynn:So you were just back in the job before September the 11th. You were sitting, I mean, the office was new. You were just back into the company.
5:27Paul Carris:Even though I had been at the port for 10 years, I was joining a new department. I was joining the IT department. So there were no engineers in the IT department. I literally still had boxes that I had not unpacked from moving in when 9-11 came.
5:41Colm Flynn:What do you remember about the morning of September the 11th and going into work and what you did that morning?
5:47Paul Carris:It was a magnificent morning. Well, my typical commute, I would take the train down to Hoboken, New Jersey, and then take the ferry or path train across the river. And when I took the ferry, there's a little chapel sponsored by nearby St. Peter's Church right by the marina in Battery Park City. And I would go to the 8 o 'clock mass there, and that's what I did that morning like normal. And that was done by 8.30, and I'd go up to my office because I'm half a block away. and I was literally on the phone with my new boss around 8.45. I got off the phone and then heard the roar of a jet engine and then the impact of the building.
6:29And the impact of the building tilted the building.
6:33Paul Carris:The building actually started to tilt almost to the point where you thought it was going to keep going. And then it just rocked back and forth until it stabilized in place. My cubicle was on a window, and all of this flames and debris from above us was just coming down outside my window.
6:52Colm Flynn:It must seem like a movie, like this isn't real, this isn't happening.
6:56Paul Carris:Well, yeah, I mean, we had no idea what the size of the jet was that hit us, but there were a lot of people that had never been there during the 92 bombing, so they're all just sitting around like, what was that? Because the lights flickered off and came back on, The building stood still again, but then one of the managers of my department started walking around saying, everybody out.
7:20Colm Flynn:And I believe the building had tilted so much that even books had fallen off your bookshelf.
7:27Paul Carris:Yeah, books did fall off my bookshelf. And it was just, everybody was like, what just happened? You don't consciously understand what could have just taken place.
7:44Colm Flynn:At 8.46 a.m., the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
7:51Paul Carris:That's when I ran into a small group of people who were huddled around a woman who was sitting down. I just went over to stop to see if there was anything I could do, and the woman was doubled over. She was very overweight, and she was hyperventilating. For whatever reason, I just said, I'll take care of her. and the others left, and then I said, let's go, we'll get out of the building. And that started a journey with my then-new friend, Judith Toppin.
8:22Colm Flynn:You didn't know this person. You were new in that department, and you didn't know who this person was.
8:26Paul Carris:I did not know Judith. I just saw people struggling to figure out what to do with her because she really was very overweight. But she just listened to my voice and got up like I asked her to and then started walking out.
8:40Colm Flynn:What made you want to stop, Paul? Because I think for many of us in that situation, you're thinking of yourself first and getting to the stairwell. And even when you looked, you saw there were a group of people already around her. So you think, okay, well, she's already taken care of. I can just continue on.
8:57Paul Carris:There's no logical answer to that. I can look back on it now and realize that the Holy Spirit was probably leading me there. I have no rational reason why I stopped, why I said to the others, you guys can go, I'll take her.
9:12Colm Flynn:When you entered the stairwell with Judith and you started that slow descent down 71 stories, how were you moving down with her? How were you actually helping her?
9:22Paul Carris:Judith was probably 300 pounds and she couldn't manage to get down the stairs so I I put my right arm underneath her left arm told her to take the banister on the right side with her right arm and then I was holding the banister on the left side with my other arm just so I could support her going down the stairs but unfortunately that meant we were blocking the entire stairwell So as people were piling, you know, forming little traffic jams behind us, literally at every landing, we had to stop, move to the side, let the people behind us pass and then get back down. So literally every landing, we had to stop to get out of the way for people.
10:05Colm Flynn:And there's a landing between each floor. So you're stopping like twice for every floor. And were people getting agitated and angry behind you as they were being held up and were they starting to panic? The thing that nobody who was not there can understand is that everybody was so cooperative.
10:26Paul Carris:Everybody was so calm going down those stairs. There was no sense of panic. It was entirely calm given the chaos that everybody else in the world was looking at on TV outside the building.
10:40Judith Toppin:When you're looking at the World Trade Center, we understand that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.
10:47Colm Flynn:news started to break on TV channels around the world. We have some remarkable pictures coming in from New York which we can go to now. But this was before the time when everyone had a mobile phone or social media and so nobody inside the tower knew exactly what had happened. I guess ignorance is bliss and you guys didn't know what was going on outside.
11:10Paul Carris:Yeah, we did not know what happened. We just, we assumed a small plane might have hit the building. That was it. There was a smell of jet fuel, which I didn't know. It smells like kerosene. So that was permeating the air.
11:25Judith Toppin:What the hell is that?
Read the full transcript
11:27Colm Flynn:Yes! Oh my God! At 9.03 a.m., the second plane struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. But again, in the other building, the North Tower, they heard nothing. Isn't it amazing Paul when you think about it That people watching live on television in Australia Had more information and knew what was going on Far more than you did right there inside the tower
11:55Paul Carris:I mean it actually probably helped the calmness of everybody going down After we felt that wind blast around the 25th floor Then there was a noticeable change in the atmosphere of everybody There was much more urgency
12:10Colm Flynn:At 9.59 a.m., the South Tower, the second to be hit, collapsed.
12:16Paul Carris:I think around the 25th floor that we felt this huge wind blast come up the stairwell. And everybody's like, what was that? And again, piecing together the timeline later, we realized that's when the South Tower collapsed. How was Judith doing? How was she faring going down all those floors? I think Judith was just totally focused on listening to my voice. But then she started praying. She started praying out loud Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. And stupid me, I wasn't even thinking of praying. I was so focused on Judith. And I said, oh, yeah, I better start praying.
12:57Colm Flynn:Actually, you know what, Judith? That's not a bad idea.
13:00Paul Carris:Yeah, yeah. So I started praying the Our Father to myself. But she was going down praying, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And obviously that hymn and that psalm has a huge meaning for me now. So she was saying this kind of repeating, going down it. She saw the urgency when we hit the 25th floor, and that's when she started to panic a little bit more. At one point she was almost just like a robot throwing her leg forward, and it took a lot more effort, and that's where somebody else had helped me keep her up because she would have just gone down. What are you saying to her, Paul, at this point?
13:40Paul Carris:Let's do this, come on. Well, the last 10 floors, it's like, Judith, move your leg. We've got to get down. We've got to get down. And at that point, there really wasn't very many people in the stairwell the last 10 floors. They had all passed you. They had all passed us.
13:58Colm Flynn:Honestly, there are scores of people that are literally running by me. There's debris on the base of the building that has continued to fall.
14:05Paul Carris:We got out into the lobby, and it was like you stepped into another world. It would look like European cities bombed after World War II. Just debris everywhere. You could see some debris that had pushed out from an elevator, just like a big pile. There was really nobody to direct us at that point, because most of the people were gone. The lobby of the World Trade Center were these huge glass panels, and they were all shattered. So there was glass all over the floor.
14:43Colm Flynn:And when you went outside and you looked around, what was it like outside?
14:49Paul Carris:Just debris everywhere. Nothing. There was nobody. It was just eerie silence. Everything was gray with dust all over it. We were just sort of following instinct to get to West Street, head north, and then try to head to the river. Probably the most startling image that I had was I realized we were stepping over bodies. And this one body I looked at, it was almost like a cartoon. it was two-dimensional. It must have been one of the jumpers and literally flat. And once I saw that body, all of a sudden it's like, oh, wow, there's more of them around. My initial view was just this gray ash. But then I saw that body, and I was trying to keep Judith focused.
15:45Paul Carris:You know, let's keep looking ahead, because she was starting to look up, starting to look, and I said, Judith, just keep going, keep poking us ahead.
15:56Colm Flynn:Judith and Paul were just one block away when they heard a deafening roar behind them.
16:03Paul Carris:I looked back and I saw the top of the tower actually starting to come down. At that point, people just, the firemen or the emergency workers started yelling, run, because the north tower we had just exited was starting to come down. Got to the corner as fast as we could, got around the corner of the building, And then this debris that was like a train shooting right past us, not even curling around the building. It was so much force. It went straight west. And we were around the corner protecting us. And then we got into the lobby of that building.
16:39Colm Flynn:What's that feeling like, Paul, when you have just made it out and you see the building you were in moments ago crumbling to the ground? Do you know that you have just escaped death?
16:52Paul Carris:When we got into the lobby of that hotel, which was on the corner, it was filled with emergency workers getting medical treatment. And I sat Judith down, got somebody to give her some more oxygen, and I walked over to a water cooler to get some water, and I had these two cups. And just 15 feet walking back to Judith, my hands started shaking uncontrollably, and all the water came out of the cups. and that's when, again, my body was responding to whatever I just went through and I started crying, hands were shaking. So I guess I held it together long enough to get to that lobby.
17:33Colm Flynn:It's amazing what the body can do, isn't it, in the mind, that fight or flight. You had just kind of gone into autopilot to get down and get out.
17:40Paul Carris:Yeah, and that protected both of us until we got to that lobby. Self-directed investing, trading, full-service wealth management, automated investing,
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19:15Colm Flynn:shelter and got into the back of an ambulance and inside there was an injured firefighter. And the paramedics were just said close the door we're getting out of here.
19:26Paul Carris:They got onto the west side highway which was jammed with cars and they literally made their own lane. We were scraping up a side of the concrete median as they were heading north and we ended up going so far north that we I thought we were going to Columbia Presbyterian which is 168th street and it turns out we were even farther north than that we went to an annex to Columbia Presbyterian hospital and we're up by the Bronx border.
19:51Colm Flynn:So this ambulance is literally scraping the concrete on one side and cars on the other just making its way through the traffic.
19:58Paul Carris:Yes yes because they the firefighter was injured and they were trying to get him to a hospital somewhere.
20:04Colm Flynn:When Judith and Paul eventually got to the hospital, they were separated. And because Paul had no medical issues, he made his way home.
20:12Paul Carris:And I didn't end up getting home until like three o 'clock in the afternoon. And yeah, again, some close friends from my neighborhood were just there with her waiting for me.
20:22Colm Flynn:What was it like when you came home at three o 'clock in the afternoon? Lots of hugs.
20:28Paul Carris:Lots of hugs, lots of tears, but a lot of happy faces.
20:38Paul Carris:I had no way of contacting Judith or even really knowing who she was. But about three days later, she had called all of her contacts we worked with. And she found my number and called me up and said, Hi, Paul, this is Judith. I was like, wow.
20:57Paul Carris:I don't know, we have silence on the phone, just like what we had gone through.
21:01Colm Flynn:Paul and Judith developed a friendship, chatting on the phone and meeting up every now and then. But as the years went on and life got busy, they were in touch less and less. And you yourself, Paul, in the years that passed, how were you doing? Were you thinking back to September the 11th? How did you feel when you thought of that time?
21:25Paul Carris:Well, we got right back to work. We had temporary offices set up in Journal Square and Jersey City. So that was consuming us. And, yeah, there was obviously lists of people who were missing, and they were trying to find out where these people were. I did start having episodes of anger. I didn't know where I was coming from. I learned the difference between anger and rage because I crossed the line into rage several times. Unfortunately, my family witnessed all of that, realized I was a mess, went to my church.
21:59Colm Flynn:This was emotionally. You couldn't control your emotions after 9-11.
22:04Paul Carris:Yeah, the anger had just... And I didn't know what I was angry at. It just came. I didn't even know enough to think what I was angry at. It was just this rage was coming up from inside. So I stopped in the church, and I was just crying my eyes out, saying, God, what's going on with me? One of my parish priests came in to close up the church that night. We know each other, so he came over and said, Paul, how are you doing? and I'm wiping my eyes trying to pretend nothing's going on. And then I said, I'm a mess. And he said, all right, why don't you meet with me? And when I did meet with him, he said, I don't know what you're going through, but I'm probably not qualified to help you.
22:41Paul Carris:And he gave me the name of a Franciscan priest who ran a psychology practice in a neighboring town. I got introduced to Father Jim Kelly that way. And he helped me with about nine months of therapy.
22:54Colm Flynn:Paul started attending weekly therapy sessions with this priest, and he says it forced him to look at how deep his faith actually was.
23:03Paul Carris:Up to that point in my life, you know, you get your church life, where, you know, everybody sees you going to church, I'm a lector, I'm in the choir, and then there's a social life and the work life, which is a different breed. And that caused some issues in my marriage at one point, Judith had written this story about me who did everything right. And internally, not consciously recognizing it, looking at this picture Judith painted and not living my life the best way I could have at that point as a Catholic or a Christian.
23:42Colm Flynn:Judith had described you as an angel. Angels walk among us. And you were reading this thinking, I'm not an angel.
23:50Paul Carris:Yeah, it just flew in the face of my past life, even though on the surface I was this great guy going to church all the time. But it wasn't always the case.
24:02Colm Flynn:It's funny, in the Mass today, the Gospel, when you were reading it, you were talking about the hypocrites, the Pharisees and the preachers.
24:12Paul Carris:Yeah, everybody looks good on the outside. They follow the church's rules and laws, but inside they're hypocrites hypocrites and they're doing all sorts of things to take care of themselves.
24:22Colm Flynn:When Judith published that book describing you as an angel, was part of the anger that you felt like a fraud, like a phony?
24:29Paul Carris:Yeah, to an extent. She painted this hero and with the things I've done in my life, I didn't feel like I was a hero. So that dichotomy of how I was living up to that point and this angel that Judith described. My pastor invited me to this retreat called Cursillo, which is a three-day retreat run by laymen. It's a short course in Christianity, but the weekend woke me up to what being Catholic really is. It's not about just following the rules and going to Mass. It's about having a relationship with Christ. I didn't know that. I was 46 years old. I didn't know that after all that time. At the end of that weekend, all the candidates get to share something.
25:20Paul Carris:And I said, you know, before 9-11, I didn't think there was anything wrong with my life. I didn't kill anybody. I was doing good. After 9-11, I had that rage develop because something was missing. And after that Christian weekend, I realized what was missing is really having a relationship with Jesus.
25:37Colm Flynn:How did that relationship with Christ then that had developed, how did that change your life?
25:42Paul Carris:Well, Curcio was the opening door. It led me to doing weird things like I would stop in a religious bookstore, which I'd never done in my life, and led me to certain books that became very important to me. One of St. Teresa of Avila's books I read, and it was just like the words were jumping off the page at me.
26:08Colm Flynn:Paul wanted to live a deeper life of faith and 10 years after the attack in May 2011 he was ordained a permanent deacon for the Archdiocese of Newark and Judith was there to see it.
26:22Paul Carris:She showed up from Brooklyn, she came to Newark for the ordination, She had surgery and had lost about 150 pounds, so she was barely recognizable to me. It made me realize when other people would say, oh, you saved Judith, that no, God put Judith in my life to save me. Being ordained a deacon was sort of the, not the culmination of that, but the start of a ministry that I was called to, that I had no idea I was being called to.
26:52Colm Flynn:So you really believe that, that it wasn't you who saved Judith, but it was Judith who saved you as well.
26:58Paul Carris:God saved both of us. I really, it took a little while for me to actually come to appreciate that.
27:09Colm Flynn:You got a phone call then one day. Poor Judith had passed away.
27:14Paul Carris:Yeah, I had a voicemail on my phone, and she said, I'm really sorry to let you know that Judith passed. And she got me in time where I was able to get to the funeral service out in Brooklyn. I saw Judith as this frail, sickly person. And what I saw at her funeral was that she was the rock of her family, you know, from Trinidad and Tobago to Brooklyn to Canada. She was like the matriarch. Everybody turned to her when they were in trouble or needed advice, and she was a strong one for all of them. So hearing that gave me a totally different perspective of understanding Judith.
27:53Colm Flynn:It's incredible to think, Paul, isn't it, that even from the darkest of times, light can shine through sometimes. It's a beautiful thing.
28:05Paul Carris:God does amazing things with the tragedy. If we're lucky enough to be able to look through or past the tragedy, we see those things. Given everything that happened and the timing of everything. Should I be here? Probably not. But boy, he got my attention to take me on a path that, you know, 9-11 almost feels like a different lifetime ago. My ministry has really come to define who I am now at this point.
28:37Colm Flynn:You've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This episode of Heart and Soul was produced and presented by me, Colm Flynn, and the series producer is Rajiv Gupta. lazy
From the publisher
On 11 September, 2001, Paul Carris was working on the 71st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. When the building was struck, he joined the evacuation and came across a colleague, Judith Toppin, who was struggling to descend the stairs. Paul stayed with her, supporting her through the long journey down as thousands fled and firefighters climbed towards the danger. They emerged only minutes before the tower collapsed. Paul believed he had saved Judith, but in the years that followed he came to understand that she had also saved him. Colm Flynn meets deacon Paul Carris to hear how the events of 9/11 transformed his life and faith. Paul recalls the extraordinary calm inside the stairwell, Judith praying Psalm 23, and the silence he later recognised as the presence of God. Twenty-five years after the attacks, he reflects on the terror of that day, and how a split-second decision to help a stranger changed his life forever.
