VIDEO: As another anniversary of 9/11 sits on the horizon, officials at Seneca East Local Schools are paying tribute.
“As I’m taking my last breaths of life, I realized that my life was over and I did something I hadn’t done in a long time, I closed my eyes and said a prayer,” Joe Torrillo, a retired lieutenant with the New York City Fire Department said.
Those prayers were answered. Torrillo, along with four other firefighters, were rescued from the rubble of the south tower collapse.
“About 25 minutes later they found a void and they found four of us. They pulled us out and they put me on a stretcher, and they ran, they put me on the deck of a boat on the Hudson River,” Torrillo said. Torrillo, near death, thought he was safe, and then the north tower collapsed.