Page 15 - PCCAJournal4thQuarter2011

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PCCA Journal|4
th
Quarter 2011
15
P
CCA recently announced that Richard “Pitch”
Picciotto, the highest-ranking firefighter to
survive the World Trade Center collapse and
the last fireman to escape the devastation,
will be the keynote speaker at the 2012 PCCA
Convention, March 9-14 at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country in
San Antonio, Tex.
Picciotto was on a stairwell between the sixth and seventh
floors of the North Tower when it collapsed on Septem-
ber 11, 2001. An FDNY battalion commander, his is the
harrowing
true story of
an American
hero, a man
who thought
nothing of
himself and
gave nearly
everything
for others
during one of
our nation’s
darkest hours. Picciotto tells an outspoken account of
that indelible day, shaking and inspiring audiences to
the core.
On that morning, Picciotto answered the call heard
around the world. In minutes he was at Ground Zero,
acting boldly to save innocent lives as the towers began
to burn—and then to buckle. Picciotto had fought a
similar battle after the World Trade Center bombing
by terrorists in 1993. Again inside the North Tower,
where he found himself years earlier, burdened by an
eerie sense of familiarity, he focused his concentration
on the rescue efforts at hand. But it was there in the
smoky stairwells that he heard and felt the South Tower
collapse. He then made the call for firemen and rescue
workers to evacuate, while he stayed behind with a
skeleton team of men to assist a group of disabled and
infirm civilians in their struggle to evacuate the inferno.
And it was there in the rubble of the North Tower that
Picciotto found himself buried for more than four hours
after the building’s collapse.
Picciotto and his men used their radios to send out
Mayday calls until they made contact with a firefighter
on the ground, and a search party was dispatched.
When the light finally appeared about four stories
above, he climbed upwards, reached the top, and saw
the “unfathomable, mind-boggling destruction.” And
even then, it was not until after he organized the rescue of
the others that he walked across the rubble to safety.
Picciotto’s book,
Last Man Down
, is a tribute to the 343
firefighters and 2,400 civilians who lay dead in the rubble
that surrounded him on that day. And moreover, it is a heart-
felt remembrance of a day of infamy and profound humanity.
The book was an immediate
New York Times
bestseller upon
its release in May 2002.
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PCCA Enlists American Hero for 2012 Convention