On the morning of September 11, 2001, Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) chief Richard Picciotto answered the call to help in Lower Manhattan.

After American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Picciotto raced up stairwell B to rescue those trapped by the explosion. Then—at 10:28 a.m.—he thought he was going to die as the 110-story building collapsed on top of him.

“It took eight seconds—what are you doing with less than eight seconds left in your life?” Picciotto asked students, September 11, during an event hosted by the Kennedy Political Union. “I’ll tell you what I did: I prayed. I thought about my wife, my family, my kids. I prayed, ‘Please, God, make it quick.’ I just didn’t want to suffer.”

On the 24th anniversary of 9/11, Picciotto, the highest-ranking firefighter to survive the World Trade Center’s collapse, joined Bill Braniff, executive director of AU’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, to share his harrowing account of surviving the deadliest terrorist attack in US history.

Picciotto joined the New York Police Department at age 21 before moving to FDNY. He served 28 years as a firefighter, helping to evacuate the World Trade Center during the 1993 bombing and again on 9/11.

After the North Tower came down on 9/11, Picciotto and a few others were trapped in complete darkness for four hours before a sliver of light broke through in the rubble.

Crawling his way out at Ground Zero, Picciotto was just one of 13 people to survive the collapse of the North Tower. Among the 2,753 people killed in New York on 9/11, 343 were FDNY firefighters. 

In the 24 years since that horrific day, the duality of man—the choice humans have to help or harm—continues to stick with Picciotto.

“It’s a big world. There are a lot of great people doing a lot of good in society, but there’s evil too,” he said. “[But] I think the overwhelming majority of the population is good.”