by MELISSA GRACE
The "Survivors' Stairway" - a key escape route for hundreds who fled the World Trade Center on 9/11 - was hoisted aloft Sunday and placed on a flatbed truck to await its place in history.
The 37-step granite passageway is slated to become the .poignant centerpiece of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
"Without that staircase I don't know how I would have gotten out of the plaza alive," said Tom Canavan, 48, who traveled from his home in upstate Fishkill to watch a hydraulic crane lift the 65-ton structure.
"[It's] like in a cemetery with a tombstone," he said. "It means something."
The staircase, the last above-ground remnant still standing where it did on 9/11, was moved to make way for a 78-story office tower developer Larry Silverstein wants to build.
The 22-foot-high walkway will be stored on a flatbed truck at Vesey and Greenwich Sts. until late summer, when it will be lowered into The Pit. The below-ground museum will be built around it.
The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and the .Lower Manhattan Development Corp. agreed to save the staircase last year after a long battle with preservationists, many of whom wanted it to stay where it was.
The PA picked up the $2 million tab for moving and storage.
Canavan, a former securities trader from First Union Bank, said he was on the 47th floor of the south tower when it was hit by a plane.
The father of 9-year-old Matthew and 5-year-old Meaghan, Canavan said he made his way to the concourse level of the north tower before climbing down a stalled escalator attached to the staircase to reach Vesey St.
As he exited, the first tower collapsed, he said.
"The south tower fell on top of us. It killed three of my colleagues and buried me," Canavan said. He said he spent 20 minutes digging himself out - and managed to escape as the north tower came down.
"Everybody remembers where they were that day," Canavan said. "I wish [the stairwell] could have stayed where it was."
Donna Dlugo of West Redding, Conn., got to the World Trade Center site at 7 a.m. yesterday to make sure she didn't miss seeing the staircase lifted.
"So many people escaped from here," said Dlugo, who volunteered at St. Paul's Chapel at the edge of Ground Zero in the weeks after the terror attack.
"It's really so important - people have to remember the good."
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