Pasquale Buzzelli, a structural engineer, survived a fall of at least 15 floors when the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001. He was one of just 16 people rescued alive from the rubble, with his physical injuries limited to minor burns and a fractured bone in one foot.
Buzzelli was heading towards his office on the 64th floor of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 hijacked by Mohamed Atta, crashed into the building. He later became known as the "9/11 Surfer" after his remarkable survival.
Descent through the collapsing tower
His wife Louise was seven months pregnant and watching the unfolding disaster on television at their home in Rivervale, New Jersey. Buzzelli managed to call her shortly after the impact, initially unaware that the crash had been a deliberate act of terrorism.
"I called [my wife] and I said, 'Louise', I said, 'Don't be alarmed, I'm okay, everything's fine, just, can you put the television on, and tell me what you see', and she goes,...'Oh my God'... she goes, 'a plane hit your building'," he told 60 Minutes Australia.
Buzzelli and other people in his lift gathered what they could before making their way towards the stairs. "We gathered everything,...a flashlight, [and] we wet down some towels and stuff, and we started our way down the stairs," he recalled. They encountered a firefighter climbing upwards who told them to continue down to the ground.
Buried beneath the rubble
Everything changed when the group reached the 22nd floor. "And then, we went down maybe a couple more flights and it was, on the 22nd floor that all of a sudden, you know, everything started to shake," Buzzelli said. "I heard screaming, you know, people behind me screaming, and then, just everything went dark."
He dove into a corner and got into a foetal position. "I felt the wall that I was laying next to, just crack and the floor give away, and I stayed tucked in the foetal position with my eyes closed," he said. As the 110-storey building disintegrated, he was plunged down at least 15 floors, remaining trapped in a small pocket of the collapsing structure. He described the sensation as an "abrasive, sandblaster type feeling".
For around two hours, he lay buried beneath the rubble before regaining consciousness. He began shouting for help, and his voice was heard by firefighters searching through the devastation. One firefighter alerted his colleagues: "Holy s***, guys, we have a civilian up there."
Rescue and aftermath
Another fire broke out close to where he was trapped, leaving him terrified that he would be burned alive before rescuers could reach him. At one point, he even considered finding something sharp with which to take his own life. Firefighters eventually cleared a path through the wreckage and reached the 6'2", 19-stone engineer. As they carried him from the ruins, one remarked: "Man, you are a heavy f***. What's your name?"
Michael Morabito, one of the New York firefighters who helped discover Buzzelli, later described his survival as a "miracle". "It was amazing," he told Channel 4 New York, "especially the way he was sitting. The sky was blue and he was just untouched in all that destruction. It's gotta be a miracle. Someone was watching over him. He needed to make it home."
For Louise, however, the nightmare did not end when her husband returned. She told New York Magazine: "People think it ended when my husband walked through the door alive. That's when it began for us. You can't understand why you feel so bad when you should feel so elated. You can't make sense of anything."
Buzzelli subsequently battled PTSD and survivors' guilt before eventually returning to his career as an engineer and raising his family in New Jersey.
Legacy of the attacks
A total of 2,996 people were killed in the September 11 attacks, including the 19 al-Qaeda terrorists responsible. Around 25,000 others were injured as a direct result. Exposure to toxic materials at Ground Zero has been linked to more than 100 different forms of cancer, contributing to thousands of illnesses and deaths in the decades since. For survivors, rescuers and their families, the physical and psychological consequences have also endured, meaning that for many, the events of September 11 did not end when the smoke cleared.
