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Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
BCA, London; Hardcover, 197 pages
Description
An inside look at the events of September 11, 2001 from a high-ranking FDNY officer describes the rescue efforts at Ground Zero and his personal ordeal of being buried for more than four hours in the rubble of the North Tower.
User reviews
LibraryThing member uryjm
Richard 'Pitch' Picciotto was one of the very few people who survived the collapse of the Twin Towers from the inside, caught up in the devastation of the implosion in the midst of trying to evacuate the building. This is the story of how he and some of his compatriots made it out, and fascinating
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reading it is too. We are all too aware of the images of September the 11th and most of us must have wondered what it was like to be there on that day. This book gives one unique view, and although it is brusque and not given to introspection, you can't help but wonder how you'd have responded. It's fair to say that running into one of the Towers while everyone else was trying to get out would not have been an instinctive personal reaction, but probably that's why I'm not a fireman! Show Less
LibraryThing member summonedbyfells
This book is a personal account of the events following the collision of passenger filled aircraft into the north and south towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City on 11/09/01, or as it is known ‘9/11’ the USA date format which has prevailed throughout the worlds record of the events
Richard ‘Pitch’ Picciotto is a city fire chief responding to the terrorist attack by making rapid way to the World Trade Centre where he quickly gets involved in a doomed attempt to evacuate the workers in the north tower. While trying to reach the trapped workers, the south tower collapses. The author illustrates in a most vivid account, the consequential awareness that terrible things are happening, that they can be heard, but can neither be seen nor understood. Then the north tower collapses and here is the remarkable account of how a fortunate few among thousands less blessed came through and survived the collapse of one of the tallest buildings in the world. An outcome so unlikely as to verge on the unbelievable, of the thousands who died that day in the north tower this is the story of a dozen or so fire-fighters and a lone ‘civilian’ who survived inside the central stairwell as over 100 stories of office block above collapsed and fell upon them. The author describes himself as a ‘practising catholic who has forgotten how to practice’ by the end of the book I felt he should seriously reassess his attitude to observance!
The author’s description of these events is compelling and exciting but he spends rather too much time describing his own attitudes to life and his employers as to stray onto the margins of egoism, but this makes for a good read in terms of getting a grip and making things happen, and of course, if the account you relate is yours and yours alone then it can only be first person singular, and this is OK but given the odds against escape, I think the reading experience would have been improved by contributions from some others in the party led to safety by the author. So, for me this book is best thought of as a contribution to the wider picture of the narrative, which sets 9/11 in its historical perspective: -
I believe it has been easy for Europeans to forget how 9/11 played such an important part in moulding USA public opinion, which moved swiftly to a near unanimous approval for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But now the world is gripped by an awful remorse for the failure and loss of life involved in these invasions, and in the blind alleys where death’s sting prevails it has been easy to forget the horror that al Queda brought on 9/11 to New York, and in it’s direct or mutant forms to Bali, Madrid, London, Nairobi the Gulf and elsewhere. The polemic in this book is personal, not political; it is a tribute to the New York fire service and above all to the 343 of its brave men who lost their lives that day. To every one of them civilisation owes so very much. And to the several thousands of others murdered by Muslims who seek to destroy the standards of the free world we owe nothing less than a determination to see that enemy off. There is a power in that centrifugal force of grief. So let us mourn, and salute the dead, and pray that justice will prevail over revenge, for if God will not bless America, there is little hope for the rest of us.
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of that day. Richard ‘Pitch’ Picciotto is a city fire chief responding to the terrorist attack by making rapid way to the World Trade Centre where he quickly gets involved in a doomed attempt to evacuate the workers in the north tower. While trying to reach the trapped workers, the south tower collapses. The author illustrates in a most vivid account, the consequential awareness that terrible things are happening, that they can be heard, but can neither be seen nor understood. Then the north tower collapses and here is the remarkable account of how a fortunate few among thousands less blessed came through and survived the collapse of one of the tallest buildings in the world. An outcome so unlikely as to verge on the unbelievable, of the thousands who died that day in the north tower this is the story of a dozen or so fire-fighters and a lone ‘civilian’ who survived inside the central stairwell as over 100 stories of office block above collapsed and fell upon them. The author describes himself as a ‘practising catholic who has forgotten how to practice’ by the end of the book I felt he should seriously reassess his attitude to observance!
The author’s description of these events is compelling and exciting but he spends rather too much time describing his own attitudes to life and his employers as to stray onto the margins of egoism, but this makes for a good read in terms of getting a grip and making things happen, and of course, if the account you relate is yours and yours alone then it can only be first person singular, and this is OK but given the odds against escape, I think the reading experience would have been improved by contributions from some others in the party led to safety by the author. So, for me this book is best thought of as a contribution to the wider picture of the narrative, which sets 9/11 in its historical perspective: -
I believe it has been easy for Europeans to forget how 9/11 played such an important part in moulding USA public opinion, which moved swiftly to a near unanimous approval for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But now the world is gripped by an awful remorse for the failure and loss of life involved in these invasions, and in the blind alleys where death’s sting prevails it has been easy to forget the horror that al Queda brought on 9/11 to New York, and in it’s direct or mutant forms to Bali, Madrid, London, Nairobi the Gulf and elsewhere. The polemic in this book is personal, not political; it is a tribute to the New York fire service and above all to the 343 of its brave men who lost their lives that day. To every one of them civilisation owes so very much. And to the several thousands of others murdered by Muslims who seek to destroy the standards of the free world we owe nothing less than a determination to see that enemy off. There is a power in that centrifugal force of grief. So let us mourn, and salute the dead, and pray that justice will prevail over revenge, for if God will not bless America, there is little hope for the rest of us.
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LibraryThing member kslade
Excellent survival story of a man caught in the World Trade Center on 9-11 and how he got out.
Subjects
Other editions
Similar in this library
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition) by National Commission on Terrorist Attacks