9/11 Firefighter Recalls Surviving the North Tower's Collapse

Twenty-five years on, Peter Fuca still remembers the sound — the deep, unmistakable roar of a jet engine far too close to the streets of lower Manhattan. The rookie firefighter with Engine 16 was heading into work that clear September morning when the noise swept over his firehouse, low and wrong in a way you couldn't explain.

"You just don't hear that roar of an engine flying over your head in that area," Fuca told 4BC Brisbane this week. "There's so many skyscrapers. It was unusual."

Within minutes, he and his crew were racing toward the World Trade Centre. They pulled up alongside the south tower just as the second plane struck. Debris from the impact rained down onto their fire engine. Stepping out onto the street, Fuca looked up and saw two enormous holes torn through the buildings. There was no longer any doubt about what was happening.

Fuca was what his colleagues call a proby — a probationary firefighter, two years on the job, young and relatively inexperienced. His lieutenant, steady under pressure, offered a measured warning before they entered: glass and steel were still falling. Look up before you move. As Fuca tilted his head back to check, he saw people jumping from the upper floors. "That was a shock," he said quietly.

The crew made their way to the command post in the north tower lobby and eventually climbed the stairs to the 23rd floor, waiting for orders amid flickering radio contact. A police officer passed on word that a third plane might be inbound. Moments later, the building lurched so violently that Fuca had to press himself against the stairwell wall to stay upright. He assumed they had been hit again. He didn't yet know it was the south tower that had just come down.

The evacuation order crackled through the radio — broken up by the concrete and steel around them, but just audible enough. "All fire department personnel, evacuate the building." They turned and headed down.

In the lobby, separated from some of their crew, Fuca waited. It was there that fellow firefighter Tim appeared, helping push an incapacitated woman out in an EMS chair. She couldn't walk. Fuca and the others grabbed the chair and got her into an ambulance outside. Then Tim made a suggestion: let's step to the corner, take two seconds, regroup, then go back in for more.

They had barely reached the corner when the north tower collapsed behind them.

"The building collapsed right behind us," Fuca said. That pause — a moment to catch their breath — is what separated him from 343 of his colleagues who did not make it home that day.

Fuca is now sharing his account as part of a new History Channel documentary, 102 Minutes Inside the Towers, which draws on the experiences of survivors to reconstruct events from the moment of impact to the final collapse. For Fuca, speaking about it is part of honouring those who were lost. "Thank you for having me," he said at the start of the interview. Some stories, even after a quarter of a century, still need to be told.