The building shuddered and began to tip, nearly 100 stories above the streets of lower Manhattan.

Michael Hingson, blind since birth, had heard a muffled explosion as he stood in the doorway of his office in the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. “We probably moved about 20 feet,” he recalls,

Across the room, his colleague David Frank held onto a desk. “David and I actually said goodbye to each other,” Hingson, 76, tells PEOPLE, “because we thought we were going to take a 78-floor plunge to the street.”

Meanwhile, beneath Hingson’s desk, his guide dog, a yellow Labrador retriever named Roselle, was asleep.

Hingson remembers that as the building was righting itself, Frank shouted, “Oh my God, Mike, there’s fire and smoke above us. We got to get out of here — right now.”

All at once, they were plunged into a nightmare.

A regional sales manager for a computer-storage company, Hingson and Frank had been preparing that morning to lead a seminar when a jet hijacked by al-Qaida operatives struck the World Trade Center starting at 8:46 a.m. local time.

Initially, though, the scale of the terror attack wasn’t clear. Hingson called his wife, Karen, at their home in Westfield, N.J., and told her there had been an emergency. Then he, Roselle and Frank, after a safely sweep of the office and knowing there were no other co-workers there, started retreating down to the ground.

About 15 floors above them, the tower was being consumed in the aftermath of the first plane crash.

As Hingon’s small group made its escape, Roselle sometimes walked beside him, guiding him around obstacles. But in the tightly packed stairwell, there was often not enough room for her to do that job, so she walked at his heel as Hingson held the railing and walked down.

“The dogs don’t lead,” he explains. “They guide.”

As they descended, Hingson repeatedly told Roselle: “Good dog, Roselle. You’re doing a great job.”

“I knew she was going to sense the fear in everyone else, so I needed to let her know I was okay,” he says.

From left: Michael Hingson and Roselle; Sept. 11, 2001.Michael Hingson; Robert Giroux/Getty
About 10 floors down, a woman behind them stopped and said, “I can’t breathe, I can’t go on,’” recalls Hingson, who turned back to help.

“Literally, we had a group hug there on the stairs,” he says. Roselle offered some comfort of her own: kisses.

By the 50th floor, fear overtook Frank. “Mike, we’re going to die,” Hingson says he yelled. “We’re not going to make it out of here.” But Hingson was determined.

“Stop it, David,” he commanded. “If Roselle and I can go down these stairs, so can you.”

The words calmed Frank, who started walking one floor ahead, telling Hingson what he saw as they went further.

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“Anyone within the sound of his voice heard someone who was calm, focused, going down the stairs and yelling to somebody else that he was okay,” Hingson says. “David had to be one of the major forces keeping people in that stairwell from panicking.”

In time, firefighters began passing them on their way up — about 50 in all, Hingson estimates. Some people asked if they could help.

“Your job’s to go down and get out,” the first responders said. “We’ll deal with what’s going on upstairs.”

In total, 343 New York City firefighters would die when the World Trade Center towers fell that day.

Michael Hingson and Roselle.Michael Hingson
When Hingson finally reached the lobby, an FBI agent directed him and Frank out of the complex. Soon after crossing Broadway, a police officer screamed, “Get the hell out of here, it’s coming down!”

The 110-floor south tower, struck shortly after the north tower by another plane, was disintegrating. Hingson describes it as a “rumble that was a combination of a freight train and a waterfall.”

“Everyone,” he says, “turned and ran.”

“The first thing I thought was, ‘God, I can’t believe that you got us out of a building just to have it collapse on us,’” Hingson says.

“And when I did that, I literally heard in my head a voice that said, ‘Don’t worry about what you can’t control. Focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself.’ ”

Out on the street, his guide dog abruptly stopped at the top of a flight of stairs — and then led Hingson below ground, to shelter in a subway station.

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When a police officer told them it was safe to leave, Hingson, Roselle and Frank, who had stayed with them, returned to the street and to the shocking sight of the south tower. Or where it should have stood.

“David looked at us and said, ‘Oh my God, Mike, all I see are pillars of smoke hundreds of feet tall. It’s gone,’ ” Hingson says.

About 10 minutes later, the building where they’d worked and where they’d just escaped, the north tower, fell, too.

Says Hingson: “We hunkered down and when all the noise quieted, we got up and David looked around and he said, ‘Oh my God, Mike, there’s no World Trade Center anymore. It’s gone.’ ”

Michael Hingson.ROBERT BECKER/Lincoln Journal Star
Later that evening, Hingson finally returned home to New Jersey. Roselle, remarkably resilient, grabbed her favorite toy and started to play.

“For her, it was over,” he says. “Nothing threatened her. She was fine.”

Soon after the attacks, Hingson moved to California and worked for Guide Dogs for the Blind. He found healing through talking to audiences about trust, teamwork and controlling fear.

His 2011 memoir, Thunder Dog, became a New York Times best seller; his latest book, Live Like a Guide Dog, was published in 2024.

In 2002, Roselle received the Award for Canine Excellence (ACE) in the service dog category, and at the age of 14, died in June of 2011.

Hingson now lives in Victorville, Calif., with Alamo, his ninth guide dog. (His wife died in 2022.) When he thinks back to 25 years ago with Roselle, he credits getting through the historic tragedy to how he was able to remain level-headed and, of course, with trusting his companion.

“Don’t worry about what you can’t control,” he says. “Focus on the things that you can because if you worry about everything, all you’re going to do is drive yourself crazy.”

“If we allow ourselves to be blinded by fear,” he continues, “all we’re going to do is make it harder for ourselves to live.”