Last Man Down A Firefighter's Story of Survival and Escape from the World Trade Center

IntroductionSeptember 11, 2001: 9:59 A.M. It came as if from nowhere. There were about two dozen of us by the bank of elevators on the thirty-fifth floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center. We were firefighters mostly, and we were in various stages of exhaustion. Some guys were sweating like pigs. Some had their turnout coats off, or tied around their waists. Quite a few were breathing heavily. Others were raring to go. All of us were taking a beat to catch our breaths, and our bearings, figure out what the hell was going on. We'd been at this thing hard for almost an hour, some a little bit less, and we were nowhere close to done. Of course, we had no idea what there was left to do, but we hadn't made a dent. And then the noise started, and the building began to tremble, and we all froze. Dead solid still. Whatever there had been left to do would now have to wait. For what, we had no idea, but it would wait. Or it wouldn't, but that wasn't the point. The point was that no one was moving. To a man, no one moved, except to lift his eyes to the ceiling, to see where the racket was coming from. As if we could see clear through the ceiling tiles for an easy answer. No one spoke. There wasn't time to turn thought into words, even though there was time to think. For me anyway, there was time to think, too much time to think, and my thoughts were all over. Every possible worst-case scenario, and a few more besides. The building was shaking like in an earthquake, like in an amusement park thrill ride gone berserk, but it was the rumble that struck me still with fear. The sheer volume of it. The way it coursed right through me. I couldn't think what the hell would make a noise like that. Like a thousand runaway trains speeding toward me. Like a heard of wild beasts. Like the thunderfall of a rock slide. Hard to put it into words, but whatever the hell it was, it was gaining speed, and gathering force, and getting closer, and I was stuck in the middle, unable to get out of its path. It's amazing the kinds of things you think about when there's no time to think. I thought about my wife and my kids, but only fleetingly and not in any kind of life-flashing-before-my-eyes sort of way. I thought about the job, how close I was to making deputy. I thought about the bagels I'd left on the kitchen counter back at the firehouse. I thought how we firemen were always saying to each other, ''I'll see you at the big one.'' Or, ''We'll all meet at the big one.'' I never knew how it started, or when I'd picked up on it myself, but it was part of our shorthand. Meaning no matter how big this fire is, there'll be another one bigger, somewhere down the road. We'll make it through this one, and we'll make it through that one, too. I always said it at big fires, and I always heard it back, and here I was, thinking I would never say or hear these words again, because there would never be another fire as big as this. This was the big one we had all talked about all our lives, and if I hadn't known this before--just before these chilling moments--this sick, black noise now confirmed it. I fumbled for some fix on the situation, thinking maybe if I understood what was happening, I could steel myself against it. Realize, all of these thoughts were landing in my brain in a kind of flash point, one on top of the other and all at once, but there they were. And each thought landed fully formed, as if there might be time to act on each, when in truth there was no time at all. Somehow, in the middle of all this fear and uncertainty, I got it in my head that one of the elevator cabs had broken loose and was now cascading down the shaft above us. It felt like something was fast approaching, and this was what made sense. Of course, it also made sense that a single, falling elevator cab would no way generate the same kind of all-over, all-consuming noise and rumble, and I had this thought as well,Picciotto, Richard is the author of 'Last Man Down A Firefighter's Story of Survival and Escape from the World Trade Center' with ISBN 9780425186770 and ISBN 0425186776.