Blind since birth, Michael Hingson relied on his guide dog Roselle to lead him down 78 floors of the North Tower during the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and she did.
On September 11, 2001, Michael Hingson was in his 78th-floor office in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He was preparing for the workday when he suddenly heard a muffled boom. The building shuddered. Then, he felt it moving. “We moved about 20 feet,” Hingson recalled.
After the tower lurched back into place, Hingson’s colleague David Frank saw flames and large amounts of smoke from the office window. Debris rained down in front of the glass. And Frank became increasingly frantic.
“We gotta get out of here right now!” Frank screamed, according to Victorville Daily Press. “You don’t understand. You can’t see it!” Frank was right. After all, Hingson was blind. He’d been blind since the day he was born.
Meanwhile, Hingson’s companion, a guide dog named Roselle, emerged from the nap she was taking underneath her master’s desk. The yellow Labrador Retriever was not showing any kind of fear reaction yet — and that led Hingson to believe that his office had time to evacuate in a calm manner.
