John Boyle

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Twenty five years ago today, a 62 year old man with cancer in his bones walked 2,687 people out of the South Tower, and then he went back inside.

Rick Rescorla was born in Hayle, Cornwall in 1939. British Parachute Regiment in Cyprus at 18. Colonial police in Northern Rhodesia. Then he came to America, enlisted in the US Army in 1963, and in November 1965 he went into the Ia Drang Valley as a platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry.

Hal Moore called him the best platoon leader he ever saw. His men called him Hard Core. He sang to them in the dark, Wild Colonial Boy in an Australian accent, because he had worked out that men who are singing are not men who are panicking. That is Rescorla on the cover of We Were Soldiers Once and Young, bayonet fixed.

Thirty five years later he was head of security for Dean Witter, later Morgan Stanley, in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

In 1990 he brought in his old friend Dan Hill and the two of them walked the basement. He warned the Port Authority that the parking garage was wide open, that somebody could drive in a truck full of explosives, walk out and light it off. Nothing was done. Three years later the 1993 bomb went off about thirty feet from the spot he had flagged.

After that he told Morgan Stanley the towers were still a target and the next attack would come out of the sky. He wanted the firm to leave Manhattan. The lease ran to 2006, so they stayed. Twenty two floors of the South Tower, roughly 2,700 people.

So he drilled them. Every three months, everyone, no exceptions, down the stairwells two abreast while he stood there with a stopwatch. Traders pulling seven figures resented being marched down concrete stairs by a Cornishman with a clipboard. He kept doing it anyway.

8:46 a.m. The North Tower is hit. Port Authority comes over the South Tower loudspeakers and tells everyone the building is secure and to go back to their desks. Rescorla picks up a bullhorn and tells his people to get out.

He phones Dan Hill. "The dumb sons of bitches told me not to evacuate. They said it's just Building One. I told them I'm getting my people out of here."

9:03 a.m. The second plane hits the South Tower, floors 77 through 85. His people are already in the stairwells, moving exactly the way they had been drilled, and Rescorla is on the bullhorn singing to them. Cornish songs. A version of Men of Harlech he had rewritten for Cornwall. Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming, can't you see their spearpoints gleaming.

He called his wife Susan from the stairs. They had been married two and a half years, met jogging in New Jersey. He told her to stop crying, that he had to get these people out safely, and that if something happened to him he wanted her to know he had never been happier, that she made his life.

Someone told him to get out. He said, as soon as I make sure everyone else is out.

2,687 Morgan Stanley employees went home that day. Thirteen did not, and four of those were Rescorla and the men who stayed in the building with him: Wesley Mercer, Jorge Velazquez, Godwin Forde.

He was last seen on the 10th floor, walking up.

The South Tower fell at 9:59. They never found him.

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

@alaskalandmine The Aurora Hotel isn’t the worst place to hang out

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

@alaskalandmine Coldfoot Camp has some of the most reasonably priced food in the state. Go figure!

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

Young eagle flying over the Cook Inlet with the tide out

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

Visible plume of steam at Mt. Spurr!

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

@alaska_avo @UAFGI @akdggs @USGSVolcanoes Thanks for the update and all of your excellent work!

[Shooter McGavin @ShooterMcGavin]

Watching The Weather Channel in the 90s was such a vibe. So many bangers were played during the Local On The 8s.

[Dr Douglas G Frank @DrFrankModels]

Revised to include Michigan and Alaska... they were off-scale!

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

@JeffLandfield @JMilei Afuera!

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

@cinyc9 Keep up the good work!

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

@elonmusk Thank you for holding the standard

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

It’s morning in America

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

@TheAlaskaDems Fletcher really putting off that “independent” vibe with a hit tweet from AK Dems…

[AK Forestry & Fire Protection @AK_Forestry]

🌲Tree Seedling give-away🌲 AK DOF's Forest Stewardship Program is connecting private forest landowners with seedlings - for free! Available this month in the Kenai Peninsula (4,700), Mat-Su (8,400) and Fairbanks (4,000).

Contact [email protected] for more info.

[National Weather Service @NWS]

ICYMI, @NWSSWPC has issued the first G4 (Severe) geomagnetic watch since 2005. The aurora tomorrow may become visible over much of the northern half of the country, and maybe as far south as Alabama to northern California.
https://t.co/SFKgB9x678

[Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation @OKWildlifeDept]

**we had to wait an entire 8 months for a study to wrap up before we could properly clap back to this*

BUT A LOT OF STUFF GOES ON HERE. 🧵

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

Hey ⁦@NWSAnchorage⁩ is this another land spout over the Chugach a few minutes ago or just a random, funnel-shaped cloud?

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

Exciting visitors at the feeder today- red crossbills!

[Javier Milei @JMilei]

.@elonmusk thank you very much...!!!

[John Boyle @JohnBoyleIII]

Peak Christmas Eve weather