18 people survived the collapse. One firefighter, Mikey Kross,
was one of them.
Kross and the 17 others were at or near the bottom, and basically hid in the corner and got lucky to be protected by the debris that fell around them.
The "dust lady" shown above, Marcy Borders, was not one of them. She was in the North Tower, but 12 floors below impact. She made the decision to evacuate, but was so high up that it took about an hour to get down the stairs.
She had just made it out of the building when the South Tower collapsed. The ensuing dust cloud knocked her to the ground and she couldn't breathe. Some guy nearby saw this, picked her up, and dragged her to safety to a nearby building. That's where that picture was taken.
She died of stomach cancer in 2015, likely due to the dust exposure. She was only 43. This is often the timeline for such exposure, as you rarely feel symptoms immediately.
However, it should also be noted that, between 2001 and 2011, Borders developed a bad drinking problem as a result of the trauma, and that could have contributed. Borders quit drinking after feeling closure when Osama bin Laden was killed.
Kross, the firefighter I mentioned above, also developed a bad drinking problem for the next 5 years.