An employee recalled the horrific experience he had on 9/11 when he managed to survive falling 15 floors while inside the World Trade Center building.
Pasquale Batselli had the horrific experience of September 11, 2001, as he was inside one of the World Trade Center buildings. A few days before the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack, he spoke on the show “Minutes Australia” that fateful day.
Pascual had just arrived at work and was taking the elevator to the 64th floor of the North Tower when the first plane hit the building. The structural engineer of the Port Authority said that the lights in the elevator flickered and fell about a foot. They wondered what was going on. They had no idea that American Airlines Flight 11 had hit their building, 29 floors above.
” I called my wife and told her not to worry, that I was fine and to turn on the TV to tell me what she was seeing. “Then she informed me that a plane had crashed into my building, ” Pasquale recalled .
He then managed to get out of it with the others in the elevator, but they had no idea that another plane had hit the South Tower . He called his wife again and told her he was still inside the building. She told him to leave immediately.
He assured her that he was well and then decided that he had to go downstairs to escape the smoke coming from the upper floors. ” We packed our things, got a flashlight, wet some towels and started going down the stairs. “As we were descending, our building began to shake as the South Tower began to collapse, ” the civil engineer continued.
“We met a firefighter, who told us to keep going down the stairs until we got down. When we got to the 22nd floor, everything started to shake. People behind me were screaming, everything was getting dark.
The building began to shake violently. I found a corner and it remained in the fetal position, so if something big or heavy fell I would have at least two sides to protect me. They felt the wall break and the floor disappear and I remained in the fetal position with my eyes closed.
I felt the wind as I fell and felt some flashes of light from the blows to the head. I remember saying that I can not believe that this will be the end my God, I can not believe that I will die like that. “I was thinking about my wife, my unborn child, and I said, ‘Please, God, make sure death is fast,’ ” he added.
The Pasquale was one of only 16 people rescued from the debris and only one of the two people who died in the collapse of the twin towers and lived.
The small piece of concrete in which it was found fell on the seventh floor , where it was finally found by firefighters. Despite falling over twelve floors, he escaped with a broken leg and a few burns.
