At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower.

Across the plaza, people in the South Tower could see fire and smoke pouring from the other building. Conditions inside their own tower were initially different. Announcements, personal judgment, and changing information shaped the decisions made in those early minutes.

Welles was at work on the 104th floor.

The South Tower had not yet been hit.

According to family accounts, he left a telephone message letting his mother know he was all right. It was the last contact his family received from him. The message confirmed that he had survived the first impact, but it could not tell them what would happen next.

At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.

The aircraft entered the building across multiple floors in the upper eighties. The impact destroyed parts of the tower, ignited fires, and severely damaged routes through the building. The 78th-floor sky lobby became one of the most heavily affected occupied spaces.

Welles was above the impact zone.

Most people trapped above the damaged floors did not escape. The official record establishes the scale of the loss, but it cannot provide a complete minute-by-minute route for every individual. For Welles, the surviving evidence comes largely from the people who encountered him below his office.

Somehow, he reached the 78th floor.

It is important not to turn that sentence into an invented action sequence. The exact path he followed from the 104th floor is not completely documented. No responsible account should supply fabricated doors, conversations, flames, or split-second decisions.

What is documented is that survivors encountered him at the sky lobby after the impact.

They described devastation and confusion. People were injured. Smoke and fire complicated movement. The normal logic of an office building—hallways, elevators, signs, predictable routes—had been broken.

Welles used the red bandana over his mouth and nose.

He located a stairway that remained passable and directed survivors toward it. Accounts describe him telling those who could stand to do so and asking them to help others who could be moved.

The instruction transformed scattered survivors into a group.

It did not remove danger. It did not guarantee that everyone could be saved. It created a next action where moments earlier there had been none.

The usable stairway was Stairway A, the route through the impact zone that remained passable for a limited number of people from above. Finding and reaching it was the difference between entrapment and a possible descent.

Welles began guiding people down.

Survivor accounts place him helping the injured and bringing groups toward safety. One group descended until it encountered firefighters farther below. At that point, Welles did not simply remain with the people he had already led away from danger.

He turned back upward.

That return is the hinge of the story.

If he had continued down, he might have reached lower floors with the first people he helped. The record cannot tell us whether that path would definitely have saved him. The South Tower had less than an hour between impact and collapse, and conditions were changing continuously.

What the record does show is that Welles repeatedly returned toward people who still needed help.

The young trader from the 104th floor was no longer moving only toward the street.

He was moving between groups of strangers and the one stairway that still offered them a chance.