HE WAS TRAPPED IN TOWER 1 COLLAPSE 'There Was No Fleeing From This Cascading Terror'

Newsday ^ | 5/26/02 | Merle English

[areafiftyone]

If anyone ever wondered what it was like to be caught in the bowels of the collapsing World Trade Center on Sept. 11, veteran firefighter Richard Picciotto had firsthand experience and lived to tell.

The New York City Fire Department battalion chief was on the 35th floor of the North Tower with about a dozen firefighters when "the building began to tremble, and we all froze. Dead solid still. To a man, no one moved. No one spoke.

[areafiftyone]

This is an excellent timeline for 9/11 HERE

[McGavin999]

I've got to get that book. I can't even imagine the horror they must have felt. What is so stunning is the number of people who showed such compassion and gentle love for their fellow man. It gives you hope.

[areafiftyone]

With all these terror alerts it is making us all on edge. We have to make sure it never happens again. HBO is having that program tonight and just to re-live that day again it is going to really upset me. I go to the book stores in NYC and I see special tables for 9/11 books. I haven't bought any yet but I will probably soon. its just too upsetting still.

[McGavin999]

I'm usually a pretty controlled person, especially in public. The other day I went to Costco and they had a couple of books on 9-11. As I looked through them the tears started and when I looked up there were about a half dozen people looking at me with tears in their eyes too.

There is no chance that we'll ever forget 9-11, it's become of permanent part of our souls. Unfortunately for the terrorists, those tears don't make us weaker, they make us stronger, and angrier, and more determined.

[CyberAnt]

Have you seen the thread "102 Minutes: Fighting to live as the towers died". Awesome account from the families who got phone calls from loved ones. So many, many heros that day.

The one which got to me what the woman who called her husband to tell him she was going back up for 6 more people - she had already helped to rescue dozens. She was killed when the building collapsed, along with the 6 people she had returned to help.

These people are what America stands for - courage and compassion. We truly are the greatest nation on the face of the earth!

[lowbridge]

On Sept. 11, Picciotto was on duty at his firehouse on West 110th Street in Manhattan just after 8:50 a.m. when he saw on television "what everyone saw. The North Tower of the World Trade Center smoking like crazy. Pandemonium at ground level." he writes. "All I was thinking was rescue."

Amazing.

__________________

On the way down, he and his team found about 60 people sitting quietly in offices. Some were in wheelchairs, others were on crutches, and some used walkers or canes. Co-workers had stayed behind to help them.

"It was the one time that morning I nearly cried," Picciotto writes, touched by "these shows of extreme human kindness." He directed his team members to help the workers escape.

Makes one proud.