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"My God!" Santiago cried.

"Lord, save my baby! Save my son!" his wife prayed.

They fled before the wave of debris back to the church.

Meanwhile, after an orderly exit from the school, the students were swept into the chaos of the streets. They stopped to stare at the burning buildings.

They jogged south to the southern tip of Manhattan. Matthew was a little ahead of Phillip. Then they heard a long rumble. Phillip yelled, "Is that thunder?" They all ducked.

After the thunder they started to hear metal cracking. "You could hear something bending, and then a sound like the cracking of millions of pieces of metal. A huge gray cloud started rolling toward us. It became darker and darker as it got closer," Phillip recalls.

The teachers said to turn back north to an emergency area. But the teachers were unfamiliar with the area, so Matthew took charge of his small group, shouting, "To the church!"

By this time Phillip and another girl were alone. He started running with her and praying. "I prayed God would keep me, and for my parents, that the police would tell them to go back home."

"A huge, boiling cloud of smoke and debris came like a fast-moving flood down a tunnel toward us," Matthew recalls. He led his group south, then around the tip of Manhattan toward the east side, the farthest that they could get from the towers.

Phillip, meanwhile, was bent down, covered with debris. He and his classmate staggered away. But "the smoke kept getting darker and darker until at times I couldn't even see my hand.. . . We couldn't run fast enough, and my classmate and I were starting to have trouble breathing."

Phillip prayed, "God, show me the way." He recalls that he became calm and knew God was drawing him to safety.

He saw a green sanitation van and ripped open the door, shoving his classmate and falling in behind her. "It was a miracle it was open. God was watching!" he thought. "We caught our breath for a few minutes as the debris stormed by."

Throwing open the door, the two students ran some more. "It was very hot in the smoke, and you just felt your throat clogging up, even with a cloth over your face."

Pastor Rivera was scrambling at the church. "Get food! Get tables!" he barked. He took chairs and water outside for the refugees. He scanned the crowds for any sign of his son and the other children.

"I remembered the black pastor who stood over a guy with outstretched arms during the Los Angeles riots. He was standing between the dead and the living. That was me. People needed someone to hang onto."

But Rivera was worried. Every 30 minutes or so, he would lock himself in his office to pace and cry out. "I did not see the walls or pictures," he says, during his prayers.

Across the street, the Santiagos felt helpless and despairing. Phillip's mother at one point prayed, "He is with you!"

"Then, my son walked in. Though he was snowy white, I knew who he was."

Phillip embraced his mother, saying, "I am okay! He was telling me where to go! God was telling me!"

A few minutes before, Matthew walked into the church with his teachers and students behind him, his hair filled with ash, pebbles, and concrete. He stood before his father amid a sea of people streaming by in silence.

The father reached over and hugged Matthew, and they wept. Matthew prayed his thanks.

That night, the Riveras formed a circle in their bedroom to thank God. Rivera closed, "Our goodbyes should be with the knowledge that life is fragile, and we won't always see each other again." Upstairs, the Santiagos looked at the dark clouds where the World Trade Center towers had stood. The father said, "We have to look for someone higher than the 110th floor."

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September (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45