Michael Noble was on the 66th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower when the first plane struck the neighboring North Tower at 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001. Twenty-five years later, the Hermosa Beach resident stood at the city's 9/11 Memorial and told his neighbors what happened next.

Noble shared his survival story at Hermosa Beach's annual Remembrance Wreath Laying Ceremony on Friday, Sept. 11, at the memorial where the Greenbelt meets Pier Avenue. Easy Reader & Peninsula first reported on his account.

In a first-person essay also published Sept. 11 in Notre Dame Magazine, Noble, a 1974 Notre Dame alumnus now retired in Hermosa Beach, described the moments after the impact. He opened his office door and saw what looked like a ticker-tape parade. Confetti was everywhere.

A colleague who had survived the 1993 World Trade Center bombing came rushing down the corridor. "They're back," the colleague said, according to Noble's account.

Noble and a group of coworkers took an elevator down to the sky lobby on the 44th floor. A man with a bullhorn told them the building was secure and to return to their offices. That man, Noble wrote, would later die trying to save someone.

Noble kept going. Still carrying his Starbucks coffee, he entered a stairwell full of people walking down two abreast in orderly fashion. At the 19th floor, a loudspeaker again told occupants to go back. He did the math: about 20 seconds per floor meant he could reach the lobby in eight minutes. He kept descending.

The second plane struck the South Tower when Noble reached the ninth floor. He later wrote that if he had been in an elevator instead of the stairwell, he would not have survived.

The stairwell filled with dust. He set his coffee cup down and started to run. He exited at the second-floor lobby and followed a sign toward revolving doors onto Liberty Street, but debris outside jammed them shut. Noble later concluded that delay saved his life, too: a huge chunk of the building came down outside the door he would have used.

He and a young woman next to him made it out another exit onto Liberty Street. They parted there.

Noble's firm had occupied the 44th through 78th floors. The second plane struck between the 78th and 82nd floors. Thirteen of his colleagues died that day.

After escaping, Noble walked toward a nearby Greek Orthodox church and witnessed cars smashed and on fire. He watched a person fall from the towers.

"I think of that man often and the awful decision he made to jump," Noble wrote. "I will never get over the look on his face."

At the ceremony, Mayor Mike Detoy and community members delivered remarks. The Hermosa Beach Police Department Honor Guard and Scouts Troop 860 posted the colors. Elected officials and police and fire representatives placed wreaths at the memorial, which includes a piece of steel recovered from Ground Zero.