The morning started with the kind of clarity New Yorkers remember: the Manhattan skyline sharp and gleaming as firefighter Peter Fallucca drove across the Verrazzano Bridge toward another shift in New York City.
Fallucca, still a relatively new firefighter assigned to Engine 16, could not have known that the view he took in that day would soon become an image fixed forever in the nation’s memory.
Moments after the first plane thundered over his firehouse, Fallucca and his crew were sent to the World Trade Center. They arrived just as the second hijacked jet slammed into the South Tower in a fireball.
Loaded down with hoses and air tanks, he entered the North Tower with other firefighters beginning the long climb upward, passing office workers who were making their way down the cramped stairwells with striking calm.
He made it as high as the 23rd floor before the tower lurched violently. An evacuation order sent him back toward the lobby, and an injured woman helped draw him outside only minutes before the North Tower came crashing down.
All of the firefighters from Fallucca’s Engine 16 survived the attacks. But their colleagues from Ladder 7, who worked out of the same firehouse, did not return.
“I’m not even supposed to be here,” Fallucca told Our News Outlet, looking back on the split-second turns of fate that allowed him to live, build a family and become a grandfather.
Nearly a quarter-century after September 11, Fallucca worries that Americans have lost sight of both the unity that followed the terror attacks and the vulnerability exposed that morning. For many younger people, he said, 9/11 has become something distant, confined to history books. “It could happen again,” he warned.
Peter Falluca, a firefighter with Engine 16, rushed to the World Trade Center shortly after the first plane hit. Above is him wearing a mask moments before rushing into the North Tower
Above is Falluca (second from right) with other firefighters from Engine 16. The entire unit survived on 9/11, but Ladder 7 that was also stationed at the same firehouse did not come home
Fallucca added: ‘I think we lost that patriotism that we had in the days after 9/11. There wasn’t a house that didn’t have an American flag on it.
‘Now, today, [if you have] an American flag, people think you’re racist or you’re something. So it’s almost looked down upon to be a patriot.’
He warned that Americans must remain vigilant and recognize that an attack could happen again, arguing that concerns about offending people should not prevent the country from confronting those who openly express hatred toward it.
Fallucca has also shared his story in The History Channel documentary 102 Minutes Inside the Towers, premiering on Friday, September 11 at 8pm ET.
The firefighter’s life changed when he and his unit were standing outside when they heard the thunderous sound of a low-flying aircraft.
‘I literally heard that first plane fly right over the firehouse,’ Fallucca recalled. Within a minute, a report came over the scanner that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.
His lieutenant, Mickey Cross, told the crew to prepare, and within about two minutes they were sent to the scene.
As Engine 16 traveled south on the FDR Drive, Fallucca could see the damaged tower.
Every firefighter from Fallucca’s Engine 16 survived, but members of Ladder 7, housed under the same roof, never came home. The chalkboards showing everyone on duty that day is still in the firehouse as it was on September 11, 2001
What initially looked like birds flying around it was office paper pouring from the building.
A probationary firefighter who had joined the academy about two weeks earlier sat across from him, excited to be responding to his first fire. Fallucca sensed what awaited them, saying to the new recruit: ‘”This is gonna be a tough one.” But I didn’t think it was going to be as bad as it was.’
The streets were filled with people staring at the tower as Engine 16 approached, and then the second plane struck.
Fallucca heard a deafening explosion as debris rained onto the fire engine, and the crew understood the country was under attack.
Inside the North Tower, Fallucca’s crew was ordered toward the 70th floor to establish communications and fight any fires it encountered.
Loaded with hoses and air bottles, the firefighters climbed about 10 floors at a time.
Firefighters moved up one side of a narrow stairwell as office workers descended on the other.
‘The stairwell was shoulder to shoulder,’ Fallucca said.
‘They had bottles of water. They were handing us bottles of water, and we’d take a slug of water and hand the bottle back to the guy behind us.
‘They were super supportive. They were like, “Look at these guys. We’re running out, they’re going in.”’
The firefighters reached around the 23rd floor when Cross stepped onto an office floor to assess conditions. Suddenly, the tower shook.
Falluca was inside the North Tower when the second plane hit and recieved a call for all firefighters to leave shortly after
Falluca went back to the lobby, waiting for his boss, but was asked to help another crew carry a wounded woman to safety. The decision to help saved his life as moments later the North Tower fell
Felluca believes America has forgotten both the surge of patriotism that followed the attacks and the danger exposed that morning
Fallucca initially thought another plane had struck the North Tower, unaware that the violent shaking was actually the South Tower collapsing nearby.
Amid the confusion, Fallucca heard an order over the radio directing all Fire Department personnel to evacuate.
‘I told the lieutenant from Engine 1, “Hey, Lou, I just heard on the radio they want us to evacuate the building,”’ Fallucca said.
‘He said, “No, no, they don’t mean us. They mean the civilians.”
‘I said, “No, they said Fire Department personnel.” And he said, “No, I’m going to keep going up.”
‘And he went up. That was the last I saw him.’
Unable to reach Cross by radio, Fallucca began walking down with the probationary firefighter, checking offices and searching for the rest of their crew.
They did not run because they still did not know the other tower had collapsed.
When they reached the lobby 10 to 15 minutes later, the command center that had been buzzing with activity was deserted.
‘When we first got there, the lobby was a beehive of activity,’ Fallucca said. ‘When I came down, nobody was in the lobby. I said, “Where did everybody go? What’s going on?”’
Over 200 FDNY units, engine and ladder companies, responded to the World Trade Center towers that morning
Fallucca waited for Cross, fearing his lieutenant might endanger himself searching for the separated firefighters.
After what felt like an eternity, a senior Engine 16 firefighter appeared with an emergency medical worker, carrying a woman in a rescue chair.
‘If he doesn’t walk out, I sit in the lobby, and I wait,’ Fallucca said. ‘I was like, “I’m not leaving,” because I’m waiting for Lieutenant Cross to come.’
But when the firefighters needed help carrying the woman outside, Fallucca reluctantly abandoned his post and followed them, a decision that would save his life.
Fallucca helped move her across the West Side Highway and into an ambulance, then headed toward a corner to regroup before returning for more people.
Fallucca turned and looked up. The North Tower was coming down.
He stared for three or four seconds, frozen ‘like in a trance,’ before seeing others race past and realizing he needed to run.
‘I remember, in my peripheral vision, seeing people running past me, and I said, “I should start running now.”
‘I looked behind me, and that cloud was coming, a dark black cloud. Then I got hit with this gust of wind.
Fallucca recalled when the North Tower fell, forcing him to run for his life. He was engulfed in debris before making it inside a nearby school
‘It felt like sand and dust and particles and everything. That was lights out. You couldn’t see your hands in the street.’
He ran with one hand against a building wall until he saw light spilling from an open doorway, then followed others into Stuyvesant High School.
Outside, fighter jets roared overhead as Fallucca thought about his two young daughters at home on Staten Island.
‘I knew the country was under attack,’ he said. ‘My little girls are back in Staten Island. What are we doing?’
Fire chiefs prevented Fallucca and the other surviving firefighters from immediately returning to the wreckage, telling them fresh crews were arriving from across the city.
‘They wouldn’t let anybody back in,’ Fallucca said. ‘They didn’t know how safe the area was at the time.’
Fallucca eventually returned to his firehouse, but he was soon back at Ground Zero, working 24 hours on and 24 hours off as crews desperately searched for survivors.
The site was eerily quiet apart from the machinery, Fallucca said, adding that rescuers could hear ‘a pin drop.’
Fallucca’s first shift stretched to roughly 20 hours after a mask from Ladder 7 was found near the Marriott hotel, sending him and others rushing there to dig.
He found victims during the search, but no one alive.
‘Some things I found, you couldn’t even identify exactly what they were,’ said Fallucca.
Fallucca eventually returned to his firehouse, but he was soon back at Ground Zero, working 24 hours on and 24 hours off as crews desperately searched for survivors
‘You knew it was some sort of flesh or human remains, but a lot of it you couldn’t make out.’
Fallucca worked at Ground Zero for roughly two or three months. He later developed asthma, acid reflux and sleep apnea, which he said have been attributed to the clean-up at Ground Zero.
He retired in 2024, but the attacks have never let go of him. A low-flying plane can still make him look up and track it across the sky.
Fallucca also thinks about the chain of decisions that spared him. Cross survived as well after stopping with about a dozen others in a section of stairwell to help another woman who could go no farther.
‘With all the tragedy that was of that day, there are a lot of miracles,’ Fallucca said. ‘Mickey Cross was a miracle. I feel I was a miracle. The whole Engine 16 was a miracle. We all walked away.’
As he prepares to return to Engine 16 for the 25th anniversary, Fallucca worries that ‘never forget’ has lost its meaning and that the unity once symbolized by American flags outside homes has faded.
Survival, meanwhile, has made the life that followed feel immeasurably precious. Fallucca watched his children grow and lived to meet his grandchildren, milestones denied to many firefighters who entered the towers that morning.
‘There are so many things that I got the opportunity to do,’ he said, becoming emotional. ‘A lot of guys didn’t.’
