Firefighter Peter Fallucca Survives 9/11 After Colleagues Perish

Peter Fallucca drove across the Verrazzano Bridge on a bright morning in New York City. The Manhattan skyline stood clear before him as he headed toward work. He was then a fresh member of Engine 16 and had no idea that the view he admired would change forever. After the first plane roared directly over his firehouse, Fallucca and his unit were immediately dispatched to the World Trade Center. They arrived just as the second plane exploded into the South Tower.

Fallucca entered the North Tower carrying hoses and air tanks. He joined firefighters climbing upward while office workers filed calmly down narrow stairs. He reached the 23rd floor before the building shook violently. An evacuation order brought him back to the lobby, where an injured woman drew him outside shortly before the tower collapsed. Every firefighter from Fallucca's Engine 16 survived that day. But members of Ladder 7, housed under the same roof, never came home.

'I'm not even supposed to be here,' he told the Daily Mail regarding his narrow escape. That survival allowed him to become a grandfather nearly 25 years later. Fallucca believes America has forgotten both the surge of patriotism that followed the attacks and the danger exposed that morning. The younger generation increasingly sees September 11 as merely a page in a history book. It could happen again, he warned.

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 argued that concerns about offending people should not prevent the country from confronting those who openly express hatred toward it. Americans must remain vigilant and recognize that an attack could happen again.

Fallucca has shared his story in The History Channel documentary 102 Minutes Inside the Towers, premiering on Friday, September 11 at 8pm ET. His 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. 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. 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. The chalkboards showing everyone on duty that day are still in the firehouse as they were on September 11, 2001.

Fallucca knew what lay ahead when he spoke to the new recruit: "This is gonna be a tough one." He did not expect it to turn quite that terrible. The streets were packed with onlookers staring at the tower as Engine 16 rolled toward the scene, and then the second plane struck.

A deafening explosion shook Fallucca inside the North Tower. Debris rained down onto the fire engine below while the crew realized the nation was under attack. Inside, orders came to move up to the 70th floor to handle communications and fight fires. The firefighters climbed ten floors at a time, laden with hoses and air bottles. They 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 and hand the bottle back." The civilians offered fierce support. They told the men, "Look at these guys. We're running out; they are going in."

The team reached around the 23rd floor when Cross stepped onto an office floor to check conditions. Suddenly the tower shook violently. Falluca was inside the North Tower when the second plane hit and received a call for all firefighters to leave shortly after. He went back to the lobby, waiting for his boss, but was asked to help another crew carry a wounded woman to safety. That decision saved his life as moments later the North Tower fell.

Fallucca believes America has forgotten both the surge of patriotism that followed the attacks and the danger exposed that morning. At first, he thought another plane had struck the North Tower, unaware that the violent shaking was actually the South Tower collapsing nearby. Amid the confusion, Falluca 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 ten to fifteen 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. He 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 collapsing. Fallucca froze for three or four seconds, staring in a trance-like state before others raced past him and he realized he had to run. He saw people dart by in his peripheral vision and told himself it was time to move. Behind him loomed a dark black cloud, the falling debris of the tower. Then a gust of wind hit him hard. The dust, sand, and particles were so thick that visibility vanished completely. It felt like lights out. You could not see your own hands in the street.

Fallucca ran with one hand pressed against a building wall until he spotted light spilling from an open doorway. He followed others into Stuyvesant High School for shelter. Outside, fighter jets roared overhead while he thought of his two young daughters waiting 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 stopped him and other surviving firefighters from returning to the wreckage immediately. They told fresh crews were arriving from across the city. 'They wouldn't let anybody back in,' Fallucca said. Officials did not know how safe the area was at that moment.

Fallucca eventually made it back to his firehouse, but he returned quickly to Ground Zero. He worked twenty-four hours on and then twenty-four hours off as crews desperately searched for survivors. The site remained eerily quiet apart from the heavy machinery. Fallucca noted that rescuers could hear a pin drop in the silence. His first shift stretched to roughly twenty hours after a mask from Ladder 7 was found near the Marriott hotel. This discovery sent 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. It was flesh or human remains in some cases, but much of it could not be made out clearly.

Fallucca worked at Ground Zero for roughly two or three months before the cleanup ended his direct involvement there. He later developed asthma, acid reflux, and sleep apnea. These conditions have been attributed to the dangerous work at Ground Zero. He retired in 2024, yet 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 his life. Mickey 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 twenty-fifth anniversary, Fallucca worries that never forget has lost its meaning. He fears 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. These milestones were 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.