GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Army Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell was working in the Pentagon when American Airlines Flight 77 hit the building, just 20 feet from where he was standing.
"I heard the sound and then in between hearing the sound and feeling the concussion and the blast and the fireball, I only had a nanosecond to think 'bomb,' " Birdwell told WYFF News 4's Nigel Robertson.
Birdwell said that he never completely lost consciousness.
"I'm sure I was tossed like a rag doll inside the corridor I was in," Birdwell said. "While I was trying to get to my feet, there are two things I'm discovering. One, I am on fire and, two, everything around me is on fire or smothered in the black smoke."
Birdwell said that he didn't know where he was or how to escape.
"That's when you come to the realization that you are dying," he said. "Where I happened to collapse, where I gave up and said 'Jesus, I'm coming to see you' in a very loud voice, where I collapsed was where the Lord wanted me to be."
He soon realized he was lying right underneath a working sprinkler.
"It took me a while to realize I was soaking wet, because your sense of touch is (changed) with those kind of burns," Birdwell said. You don't really feel you are wet."
Birdwell said that he was able to get to his feet and escape the building. He was alive, but badly burned.
"My arms are completely grafted. My forehead is grafted. My eyes are grafted."
About 65 percent of his body was burned and most of those burns were the most severe type.
But through all of this he said he never asked 'why me?", only 'what now?' "
"I do know that I would be derelict as a soldier of Christ if I didn't share what he'd done for me Sept. 11."
As Birdwell's body has begun to heal, he knows that his life and the life of an entire nation changed that day.
Birdwell came to the Upstate as part of his nationwide travels to churches and other gatherings.
"I think in many ways, to reach your highest peaks, you have to experience your lowest valleys."
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