The Freedom Tower

New York city Fire Chief
Recalls 911 to Charlotte Audience

An emotional speech by New York Fire Chief Richard Picciotto drew a packed house of more than 1,100 Friday morning at the Charlotte Convention Center.
Picciotto is the highest-ranking firefighter to survive the World Trade Center collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. The Hood Hargett Breakfast Club brought him to Charlotte in its effort to raise more than $100,000 in scholarship money for the children of local public-service professionals such as firefighters and police officers.
During his speech was published in the Charlotte Business Journal. Picciotto described his experience in the North Tower as he and colleagues rushed in to locate trapped individuals in the burning skyscraper.
Picciotto said he had to make the difficult decision to turn his men around on the 35th floor of the 110-story building and save those they could from that floor down.
“I’m responsible for my men,” he said. “We take risks, but those risks are calculated, and we knew the people above those floors probably did not survive. It was probably the toughest decision of my life.”
Picciotto stopped at each floor on his way down, shouting into his bullhorn to get people to move toward the stairwells. There were only three stairwells in the building and 99 unusable elevators. He was trapped in stairwell C when the building began to collapse in a fiery heap.
“The shaking was unbelievable, everything went black and the air started to compress,” Picciotto says. “The wind was like a hurricane typhoon in there, and it was actually picking people up and throwing them around.”
Each floor measured more than an acre, but it took only eight seconds for the tower to fall. In those few seconds, Picciotto says he felt super-humanly aware of his surroundings.
“I accepted what was happening but I prayed, ‘Please, God, make it quick,’ ” he says. “The floor I was on disintegrated, and I began free-falling until everything was silent and black.”
Picciotto says he and a group of 13 men and one woman were trapped miraculously in a pocket of debris. However, he couldn’t feel his body, and for a moment he thought he was dead.
An emotional speech by New York Fire Chief Richard Picciotto drew a packed house of more than 1,100 Friday morning at the Charlotte Convention Center.
Picciotto is the highest-ranking firefighter to survive the World Trade Center collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. The Hood Hargett Breakfast Club brought him to Charlotte in its effort to raise more than $100,000 in scholarship money for the children of local public-service professionals such as firefighters and police officers.
During his speech, Picciotto described his experience in the North Tower as he and colleagues rushed in to locate trapped individuals in the burning skyscraper.
Picciotto said he had to make the difficult decision to turn his men around on the 35th floor of the 110-story building and save those they could from that floor down.
“I’m responsible for my men,” he said. “We take risks, but those risks are calculated, and we knew the people above those floors probably did not survive. It was probably the toughest decision of my life.”
Picciotto stopped at each floor on his way down, shouting into his bullhorn to get people to move toward the stairwells. There were only three stairwells in the building and 99 unusable elevators. He was trapped in stairwell C when the building began to collapse in a fiery heap.
“The shaking was unbelievable, everything went black and the air started to compress,” Picciotto says. “The wind was like a hurricane typhoon in there, and it was actually picking people up and throwing them around.”
Each floor measured more than an acre, but it took only eight seconds for the tower to fall. In those few seconds, Picciotto says he felt super-humanly aware of his surroundings.
“I accepted what was happening but I prayed, ‘Please, God, make it quick,’ ” he says. “The floor I was on disintegrated, and I began free-falling until everything was silent and black.”
Picciotto says he and a group of 13 men and one woman were trapped miraculously in a pocket of debris. However, he couldn’t feel his body, and for a moment he thought he was dead.