Both Mrowka and Mesnik learned of five or six friends who had also been lucky. One friend had stopped for coffee on the way to work. Another had been assigned to jury duty. One of Robbason’s friends, Ayesha Malik ’97, was still making her way to an interview at the WTC.

Overall, the number of workers in the towers able to get to safety appeared to be higher than was initially thought.

“We believe that we evacuated our entire staff,” said one human resourse representative at Credit-Suisse/First Boston.

As the wind in New York City shifted around to the south and began to blow smoke uptown, Harvard alumni across the country continued to update electronic lists of secure graduates.

“You have such a wide network of people you know from all different years,” said Whitlow, who lives in San Francisco. “It seems that [the list] just started to spread.”

The list is available at www.jasonwhitlow.com/people.html. Another database with information for Harvard and a number of other schools is available at www.finebrand.com/statuses.

—Staff writer Zachary R. Heineman can be reached at heineman@fas.harvard.edu.