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The Barnes & Noble Review
Anyone who witnessed the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York City probably wonders, What was it like to be inside the towers after the planes hit? New York Fire Department battalion chief Richard "Pitch" Picciotto was there, inside the North Tower, evacuating survivors, when the South Tower collapsed. He and his men quickly realized they had only moments to escape before their building would fall as well. Could they shepherd everyone out in time? Could they save themselves? Readers will be spellbound -- even though Pitch himself obviously does survive, they will be furiously biting their collective nails nonetheless.

After a short tribute to the many members of "New York's Bravest" who perished that tragic day, Picciotto's recounting of September 11th begins with the usual rituals: getting his son, Stephen, off to school, seeing his wife, Debbie, off to her job, grabbing some bagels for the guys on the day shift. But when the news comes in, and all eyes in the firehouse turn toward the TV, everything changes: "Our world turned upside down and inside out and all over the place." Pitch, who was at the WTC during the 1993 bombing incident as well, immediately senses that this is no accident.

In a way, the scariest moment in the book is the frantic ride downtown to the WTC site. Everyone senses that this may well be the last such trip of their lives (and the reader, of course, knows just how true that is). Firefighters are trained to put such thoughts out of their minds, but this is no simple fire; it's what they all call "the big one."

For an ultimate "insider" look at what it was like that fateful day, Chief Picciotto's chronicle is highly recommended. (Nicholas Sinisi)

Nicholas Sinisi is the Barnes & Noble.com Current Events editor.

From the Publisher

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

New afterword by the author

A Firefighter's story of survival and escape from the World Trade Center.

Washington Post

[Richard Picciotto] has a remarkable story to tell.

Publishers Weekly

When the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, Picciotto, an FDNY battalion commander, was inside it, on a stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors, along with a handful of rescue personnel and one "civilian." This outspoken account tells of that indelible day, and it will shake and inspire readers to the core. The book starts by listing the 343 firefighters who died from the attacks, setting an appropriately grave tone to what follows, which begins as the author heads to work at Engine Co. 76 and Ladder Co. 22 on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Then comes a call on the intercom, and soon he is racing down to the World Trade Center. Arriving, he dodges falling bodies, runs inside and upstairs with a battalion not his own. Early in the book, this straightforward accounting is intercut with flash-forwards to 9:59 a.m., when Picciotto, on the 35th floor of the north tower, experiences the collapse of the south tower not visually, but aurally and in his body ("the building was shaking like an earthquake... but it was the rumble that struck me still with fear. The sheer volume of it. The way it coursed right through me... like a thousand runaway trains speeding toward me"). Picciotto, writing with Paisner (coauthor of autobios by Montel Williams and George Pataki, among others), pulls no punches, naming those who hindered his work and those who helped, taking numerous swipes at what he sees as a fire department bureaucracy whose money pinching puts firefighters at risk. This mouthiness can grate, but it certainly gives the flavor of a man and a department whose heroism became clear to all that day. It's Picciotto and his comrades' courage and willingness to sacrifice that every reader will remember, and honor, upon closing this gritty, heartfelt remembrance of a day of infamy and profound humanity. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Nola Theiss - KLIATT

Chief Picciotto tells his story with the same hard-hitting fervor he displayed when he performed his job as FDNY Chief of Battalion 11. On September 11, 2001, Picciotto and his men entered the North Tower of the World Trade Center and, like hundreds of other firefighters and rescue workers, worked at evacuating people caught in the building, displaying the same courage as they did every day in their jobs. As someone who had helped with the original 1993 WTC bombing, Picciotto was especially knowledgeable about the situation but was as uncomprehending of the full extent of the disaster as the rest of the world, although he was at the very center of it. His minute-by-minute account of rescue efforts and especially of the time he and 12 others, including one "Brooklyn grandmother," spent trapped in a staircase after the collapse of the building, is told with calm professionalism and utter honesty. Picciotto is never "politically correct"—he is as clear about the shortcomings of his department and the decisions that have cobbled the firefighters with old equipment and morale-eroding cost-cutting efforts as he is about the courage of his fellow workers. His voice is true, the writing gripping and the firefighters' commitment to their mission unflagging. He and his collaborator write a firsthand account that is unforgettable and unique among all the stories of September 11, 2001. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002, Berkley, 243p.,

Product Details

• Interviews & Essays
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Interviews & Essays

But as time crawled away from those terrible moments, and the doing was done, the struggle to make sense took on new significance. For many of us, suddenly, all that mattered was the context, the perspective. We struggled to understand what we'd been through in order to understand where we were going. Like it or not, we'd been a part of history -- and soon enough it would fall to us to share that history with the rest of the world. Our history. For all the hours and hours of taped footage of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, and the devastation on and around the plaza that has now become known as ground zero, there was virtually nothing being reported on what it had been like inside those buildings. For all the speculation on how the New York City Fire Department managed or mismanaged the monumental crisis that day presented, there were no accounts from the rank and file. And for all the urban legends of those who survived the attacks, from impossible situations against the longest odds, few people were stepping forward to offer their unvarnished view.

That's what I've meant to do here, with Last Man Down, and I hope I've succeeded. Reading over what I've written, reconsidering what I've lived, I'm amazed I've survived to tell the story. But here I am. And here it is. My account of the darkest hours of our lives. No holds barred. No feelings spared. And nothing left to the imagination. (Richard Picciotto)

Read an Excerpt

Last Man Down

Berkley Publishing Group

Chapter One

There wasn't much doing from the night before. There had been a couple of incidental runs, and there was some paperwork left over, reports to be filed. The chief I was relieving, Bob Holzmaier, was particularly glad to see me. He'd been on since nine the previous morning, and he took one look at me and started figuring which Long Island Rail Road train he could catch out of Penn Station. Bob's not one of those "minute men" you sometimes find in firehouses, those guys who watch the clock and bug out at the first opportunity, but he was anxious to get home, can't blame him for that, and he had the train schedule so burned into his memory that he didn't have to consult it for his ride home.

It had been a quiet night, nothing much to report. Once or twice a year, you'll get a night tour with no calls, but there's almost always a run or three. Sometimes, it's a run to nothing, but when you check the calls throughout the battalion, there's usually something big somewhere. As battalion commander of FDNY Battalion 11, I supervised seven companies, along with battalion chiefs John Hughes, Dennis Collopy, and Bob Holzmaier: Engine Co. 37 and Ladder Co. 40, on 125th Street in Harlem; Engine Co. 47, on 113th Street in Morningside Heights; Engine Co. 74, on 83rd Street on the Upper West Side; Ladder Co. 25 on 77th Street on the Upper West Side; and Engine Co. 76 and Ladder Co. 22, on 100th Street on the Upper West Side, where I was based. If there were no big jobs here, with our two home companies, there were surely a couple elsewhere in the battalion.

I dropped the bagels in the kitchen, grabbed my cinnamon raisin, and hopped up to the office to go over a couple of things with Bob. Things move in much the same way all over the department, all over the city, as one guy comes in to relieve another. It's like a tag team, or a relay race, the way you pass on responsibility to the next guy, bring him up to speed on what's been going on. At the change of shift, there's usually three or four guys in the kitchen, shooting the breeze, talking about the jobs, in no hurry to leave. At the end of the overnight tour in particular, guys' kids are already off to school, and if their wives work, they're usually gone by this time, too, so there's no rushing home.

What you've got then are all these extra hands, guys not wanting to leave for fear they'll miss out on something. Often there's nothing to do but twiddle our thumbs, sip at some coffee, pinch at a muffin or a roll, and hash over the details of our last big job like it was the seventh game of the World Series. Or sometimes, it's actually the seventh game of the World Series, or the Monday Night Football game from the night before. The firehouse is like a second home to most firefighters, and if our real homes are empty, there's no better place to be. Honestly, there's not a firefighter in my acquaintance who will tell you, also honestly, that he'd rather be anyplace else than chewing the fat with his brothers. Looking back on the last job, looking forward to the next. Shooting the shit.

So this was the scene on that terrifyingly beautiful morning. Business as usual, about to be shattered. I was still in my civvies when I told Bob to take off, but I figured if we got a job I could put on my bunker gear over my clothes. You're not supposed to, goes against regulation, but I'd done it before. Two minutes, I'd be dressed and good to go. There are some chiefs, they won't relieve the chief on duty until they're sitting at their desks with their ties cinched tight, like they're posing for the newspapers. Regulation says we're to wear our work duty uniform whenever we're on duty: blue pants, white collared shirt with the chief's epaulets-gold oak leaves for the chief, silver oak leaves for the battalion commander. It's like the military, silver outranks gold, but if I can't find my silver leaves I'll wear the gold ones-that is, if I can find those. What the hell do I care? How I dress doesn't affect my job performance, how I approach each fire, how I look after my men. If a job comes in, I'm ready; it doesn't matter what I'm wearing.

At about eight o'clock, I wandered down to the kitchen, to talk with the guys, to grab another bagel, to put a head on my coffee. In one sense, the day had officially started, with me relieving Bob, but it hadn't really gotten going. We hadn't started checking the equipment, or recharging the batteries for our radios and other gear, which for the morning tour would have to wait until precisely nine o'clock. But the entire house was already in change-of-tour mode. Guys were still trickling in, small-talking on this and that, swapping out upcoming tours. Basically, we were waiting for nine o'clock, hoping our first run could hold out until then. And if it couldn't, then that would be okay, too.

Eight-fifteen, I was back in my office, making ready. A chief's office isn't much: two desks, two chairs, two computers-one for the chief and one for the aide. (My aide, for this tour, would be Gary Sheridan, but he was joined in our rotation by Doug Robinson, Super Dave Shaughnessy, and Bobby Pyne.) We kept our family photos and other personal effects in our lockers-in mine, there's a pair of Stephen and Lisa in my chief's hat, circa 1995 or so, which I'm guessing is a fairly standard pose for the children of firefighters-but the office itself is a spartan, bare-bones scene. Nothing that isn't standard-issue, or time-shared by the four chiefs assigned to each house-or occasionally, by a chief from elsewhere in the department called in to cover.

Continues...

Continues...

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Excerpted from Last Man Down by Richard Picciotto Copyright © 2003 by Richard Picciotto. Excerpted by permission.
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