For nearly a quarter century, John Drumm carried a strange distance from one of the most extraordinary survival stories of Sept. 11, 2001.

His fellow FDNY firefighters from Engine 39 had been inside the North Tower when it collapsed. Four of them survived in the remains of Stairwell B, one of the most remarkable chapters to emerge from the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Drumm survived too.

But his experience was different.

He had already escaped the building.

And for years, that difference made him feel as though the story belonged to the others.

Now, 25 years after 9/11, five members of Engine 39 have finally stood together again at the 9/11 Memorial — reportedly the first time all five had gathered as a group since that day.

Their reunion has brought renewed attention to an extraordinary paradox at the heart of their survival.

When Drumm disappeared from his crew inside the North Tower, his fellow firefighters believed he was still in danger. Some turned back to search for him.

Drumm, however, was already outside.

And the decision to go looking for a man who had already escaped helped place the others in the section of Stairwell B where they would survive when the tower came down.

Engine 39 Went Up While Thousands Were Trying to Get Out

On the morning of Sept. 11, firefighters from Engine 39 entered the North Tower as part of the massive emergency response unfolding in lower Manhattan.

They climbed to roughly the 30th floor.

Around them, the situation was changing by the minute.

Smoke filled portions of the towers. Civilians were descending. Firefighters and other first responders were moving upward, carrying equipment and trying to reach areas where people needed help.

Then the South Tower collapsed.

The destruction made the danger terrifyingly clear.

Crews inside the North Tower were ordered to evacuate.

Engine 39 began making its way back down.

That should have been the beginning of a straightforward attempt to escape.

Instead, somewhere near the lobby, the firefighters realized they could not account for Drumm.

In the confusion, they believed one of their own was missing.

They Turned Back for Him

For firefighters, leaving a crew member behind was almost unthinkable.

Lt. Jim McGlynn and others began looking for Drumm.

They had no way of knowing that in the chaos of the evacuation, Drumm had already passed them.

He was heading out.

They were heading back in.

Drumm eventually made it outside the North Tower.

His crewmates did not.

They were still inside, searching for him, when the North Tower collapsed.

In an instant, the building that had towered above Manhattan disappeared into an enormous cloud of dust and debris.

For those outside, the assumption was immediate and horrifying: anyone still inside had little chance.

But deep within the destruction, a section of Stairwell B remained.

Four members of Engine 39 were caught in surviving portions of that stairwell.

Against overwhelming odds, they lived.

Some managed to make their way out. Others were rescued over the hours that followed.

Their survival became part of the larger history of Stairwell B, a place forever associated with the small group of firefighters and others who endured the North Tower’s collapse from inside.

For Drumm, however, the story never felt quite the same.

“I Wasn’t There With Them”

Drumm had survived Sept. 11, but he had not survived it in the way his crewmates had.

He had made it outside before the tower fell.

He had not felt the structure collapse around him.

He had not been trapped beneath the wreckage.

He had not waited inside Stairwell B wondering whether the surviving pocket around them would hold.

That difference mattered to him.

Over the years, Drumm psychologically separated himself from the survival story that followed Engine 39.

His crewmates had endured something he had not.

They were the men who had been buried inside the collapsed tower and lived.

He was the firefighter who had already escaped.

Yet that version of events leaves out one remarkable detail.

The others were partly where they were because they had gone searching for him.

The Man Who Was Already Safe Changed Their Route

The irony is almost impossible to miss.

Drumm’s absence from the group caused his fellow firefighters to alter what they were doing at a critical moment.

Had they simply continued evacuating without looking for him, they might have been somewhere else when the North Tower fell.

No one can know precisely what would have happened under a different sequence of events.

But the fact remains that the search for Drumm changed their movements inside the building.

His crewmates believed he needed them.

So they turned back.

That decision helped determine where they were when the collapse occurred.

The man Drumm thought had no place in their survival story was, in a strange and unintended way, woven deeply into it.

That realization gives the 2026 reunion particular emotional weight.

For the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, all five men were together again.

Not just as firefighters who had once served in the same company.

But as people whose lives became permanently connected by a few chaotic minutes inside the North Tower.

Twenty-Five Years of Different Memories

Survivors of the same disaster do not always remember themselves as part of the same story.

Some carry visible injuries.

Others carry guilt.

Some feel defined by what happened.

Others spend years trying to put distance between themselves and the event.

Drumm’s experience appears to have existed somewhere in between.

He was unquestionably a survivor of 9/11.

But because he was outside when the tower collapsed, he did not view himself as having endured what the others did.

His crewmates, however, understood something he had struggled to accept.

His story and theirs could not easily be separated.

They had searched for him because he was one of them.

And that search became part of the chain of events that led them into Stairwell B.

Back Together at Ground Zero

A quarter century later, the five men returned to a place transformed by time.

The towers are gone.

In their place are memorial pools surrounded by the names of those who were lost.

For Engine 39, returning together meant revisiting a story they had each carried differently for decades.

Historical accounts had long documented how members of the company survived the North Tower’s collapse.

What was new was seeing the five men together and hearing them explain the part Drumm’s disappearance had played in those final minutes.

For years, Drumm had believed the real survival story belonged to the four men trapped inside.

But from his crewmates’ perspective, there were always five people in that story.

One was simply standing somewhere else when the tower fell.

Twenty-five years after Sept. 11, their reunion did not rewrite what happened.

It revealed something more complicated.

Drumm had spent decades believing he was outside their story because he had escaped.

The others remembered that they were still inside because they had gone back for him.