FDNY Battalion chief speaks to sold out crowd in La Crosse of being trapped on 9/11

Richard Picciotto was on call the day the World Trade Centers collapsed

He was trapped under the rubble at ground zero of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

FDNY Battalion Chief Richard Picciotto was on call that day Sept. 11, 2001 when the World Trade Centers collapsed.

Picciotto told his story Wednesday afternoon in front of a sold out crowd in La Crosse at the Weber Center for the Performing Arts.

Picciotto was in charge of the evacuation of the building when a bomb exploded in 1993, which meant he had prior knowledge of what he was dealing with.

“That buildings (had) only been evacuated once in its history and I was in charge of it,” Picciotto told the audience. “Two buildings, 110 stories high. I knew the floor area of every floor. I knew how many people, every day, were in the World Trade Center complex. I knew how many elevators were in each tower.”

That number being 99 – all of which were out of commission, meaning everyone had to file out of three stairwells. 

“I thought I was dead, but then I realized, it’s hot, it’s smoky,” Picciotto said. 

He used humor and intensity to tell his story of survival amidst the chaos in the moments it was happening.

“When the south tower collapsed, the lights stayed on in the north tower,” he said. “I was able to see. As soon as the north tower started collapsing it went black. It was banging. It was shaking. It’s pushing the air in the building down. That air is like a tornado or hurricane. It’s picking us up and throwing us around like rag dolls.”

Picciotto says it took several hours for rescue workers to find him and 12 others as they made their way out of the rubble. He added that ushering people out was tough on his crew.

“The average fireman is carrying close to 100 pounds of equipment,” he said. “They’re not made to climb 20-30-40 flights of stairs.”

Picciotto said politicians have torn the country apart again, comparing today to the moments of unity the country had following 9/11.

Picciotto has written about the experience, a New York Times bestseller, called “Last Man Down: A New York City Fire Chief and the Collapse of the World Trade Center.”