These Americans faced the unimaginable on Sept. 11, 2001.
Some felt the shake of the Twin Towers. Some worked late into the evening caring for survivors. Others braced for the news of a lost loved one.
Their personal scars from the terror attacks still remain today. They present in different ways: post-traumatic stress disorder, cancer caused by toxic debris, a still-empty chair at the dinner table.
Twenty-five years later, many have found ways to cope with the wounds. But they’ll never forget what was taken from them.
Lessons from 1993 terror attack helped this man save coworker on 9/11
The North Tower shook from the explosion. The power cut out. Within minutes, the smell of smoke had reached the Port Authority’s accounting department on the 69th floor, where Peter Bitwinski anxiously awaited evacuation orders.
It
was Feb. 26, 1993, and terrorists had just detonated a large bomb in the World Trade Center’s underground garage, killing six people and injuring hundreds.
At the time, Bitwinski thought it was the closest he would ever come to a terrorist attack.
But eight years later on Sept. 11, 2001, while sitting at his desk next to the window early that morning, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed 24 stories above him. Bitwinski was thrown onto his desk. The building rocked with the sound of crunching metal.
"One minute you’re sitting there doing your job, the next minute you feel like you’re going to die," he said.
The office was still mostly empty. But Bitwinski knew his friend and former desk mate John Abruzzo was always in early and was on the other side of the floor. He also knew Abruzzo was in a motorized wheelchair and would not be able to make it down the stairwell on his own.
Bitwinski and nine coworkers devised a plan. They would put Abruzzo into an evacuation chair − a device placed on all floors after the 1993 attack to slide the immobilized down the stairs. Two would be at his back and two at his front. They would alternate every five floors to avoid exhaustion.
Their descent took more than an hour. By the time the group made it to the lobby, a cloud had enveloped everything on the street. A fine white dust covered every surface. Bitwinski had no idea that another plane had hit the South Tower and that it had collapsed.
They began walking north on West Street carrying Abruzzo in the evacuation chair. They were only a few blocks away when they heard a roar. The North Tower was collapsing. A cloud of dust and debris raced toward them. They ran into an already evacuated school and stayed there for 20 minutes as the bright, sunny day became dark with dust. The group would find a bank of ambulances, and Bitwinski would accompany Abruzzo to an emergency room uptown, where they would learn everything that happened.
In the months and years that followed, Bitwinski felt everything from survivor’s guilt to post-traumatic stress. Depression and anxiety weighed on him. He sought help. One counselor told him something that stuck: Practice acceptance and your life will be better.
Bitwinski started volunteering at the now-closed 9/11 Tribute Museum, giving tours and telling his story to visitors. After he retired from the Port Authority and had more time, he began volunteering at other 9/11 nonprofits, including the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
"My job is to make it as real as possible," Bitwinski said. "There’s no exaggeration. I just let them know what occurred. I try to encourage kids to live a life where they help people rather than hurt people. That’s what it comes down to."
− Scott Fallon, NorthJersey.com
Karen Cangialosi, the wife who missed a phone call
Karen Cangialosi still remembers the call that got away.
She was getting ready to go to work on Sept. 11, 2001, and the phone rang, but she didn’t get to it in time. She later found out it was her husband, Steven, calling their home in Middletown, New Jersey, from his office at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
Soon after, a friend phoned and urged her to turn on the television. She saw the carnage.
"I was just hoping he was alive," Cangialosi said.
Steven Cangialosi was among those who died that day.
Twenty-five years later, Cangialosi’s two sons − who were 7 and 10 at the time − are grown and working. One is a doctor, and the other is in financial technology. She has two grandsons she dotes on.
"Life goes on. You still miss him every day," she said. "But it’s sad. I think their dad would be very proud of them, and instead he is missing out. I think they are well adjusted, and very successful. My sons are the image of their father. They are kind, thoughtful, compassionate and intelligent young men. I am very blessed to have them as my sons."
Cangialosi moved to Florida eight years ago and is an account representative for Fidelity National.
"You have to be a resilient person, show perseverance," she said about what got her through the last quarter-century. "I know the life my husband wanted them to have. We wanted them to get a good education, stay out of trouble. You are focused on raising your children."
She acknowledges having to do much of the child-raising alone, as so many other single moms have done. "You were the mom and the dad," she said. "And it affected a lot of things, college graduations, birthdays."
Cangialosi still spends summers in Red Bank, New Jersey, sees her grandchildren as much as possible and plans to eventually move back to the shore area to be near them: "You don’t want to be far away from grandchildren."
− Joe Strupp, Asbury Park Press
'We did all we could,' recalls New Jersey EMT sickened after 9/11
It was late on 9/11 when EMT Carlos Garrafa of Jersey City, New Jersey, got the call. More emergency workers were needed in Lower Manhattan as frantic rescue efforts were underway in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center.
Garrafa had already worked 15 hours on the Hudson River waterfront treating men and women with head wounds, broken ankles and dozens of other injuries after they were ferried over to Jersey City.
With the clock approaching midnight, Garrafa and a team of EMTs took a ferry to Manhattan and arrived at a place that was barely recognizable. White dust, which would later be declared toxic, still hung in the air long after the towers collapsed. It covered nearly every surface. Lower Manhattan was eerily quiet save for the occasional roar of excavator equipment at Ground Zero and the hum of generators powering floodlights.
The shock wore off when Garrafa began to help other first responders injured in the rescue. He eventually was sent to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, where he spent 16 hours tending to others. Garrafa returned to Jersey City at 4 p.m. on Sept. 12. He was caked in dust from head to toe. He could feel it inside his boots. As he stepped off the ferry, he and others were serenaded with cheers and applause from the crowd gathered at the waterfront. He took it in for a moment and then walked home.
"I still feel like I didn’t deserve any of that," Garrafa said. "We didn’t save anyone. We didn’t pull anyone out. But now I know we did all that we could."
Garrafa would continue his career as an EMT in Jersey City and later for Hackensack University Medical Center.
Four years ago, Garrafa's doctors found cancerous polyps during a routine colonoscopy. Several rounds of chemotherapy helped eradicate the cancer. Then, late last year, the cancer came back. Garrafa had surgery to remove a portion of his rectum.
Hackensack sent all of Garrafa's test results and medical records to the World Trade Center Health Program, the government program that provides free health care to those who were there during the attacks and its aftermath. Colorectal cancer is one of the covered conditions. Although it is difficult to link cancer to any one cause, Garrafa and his doctors believe his came from inhaling and ingesting all that toxic dust.
"There's no doubt in my mind that it came from that," Garrafa said. "A lot of people were injured on 9/11. A lot of people died. We're still seeing that today. It didn't stop on 9/11."
Garrafa’s recovery has been grueling. Now, at age 57, he is not sure he’ll be able to return to his job.
On a spring day this year, he brought his 6-year-old grandson, Thiago, to the waterfront. At the very spot where he treated dust-covered victims is a memorial made of steel girders from the World Trade Center.
Garrafa told Thiago what he had done there and in Manhattan. Thiago asked him if he would go again.
"I don’t know," Garrafa said. "I have you in my life now."
He hugged his grandson, took a selfie with him and walked home from the waterfront, just as he did 25 years ago.
− Scott Fallon, NorthJersey.com
He sent firefighters to the flames, then attended their funerals.
Charlie Roberto was a New York fire captain stationed at Harlem’s Engine 58 and Ladder 26 − known as "The Fire Factory" − in 2001. On the morning of Sept. 11, he was in the middle of a 24-hour shift, having come off an unusually quiet night for the notoriously busy firehouse.
The longtime nature lover stepped outside the firehouse around 7 a.m. to get some fresh air.
Roberto recalled thinking, "What a gorgeous day it is."
"Little did we know it was the worst day of our lives," he said.
Around 8:47 a.m., a dispatcher announced multiple alarms at the World Trade Center. Roberto went over to a TV to catch the news. Reporters were speculating that a small plane had crashed into the building, perplexed something like that could happen on such a clear day. Seeing the gaping hole in the North Tower, Roberto knew that it wasn’t a small plane − and that it wasn't an accident.
"I expected to go down, because our companies went down in '93," Roberto said, referring to the 1993 bombing.
Instead, Roberto, a senior captain on the shift, was put in charge of organizing the recall for the 3rd Division, which encompasses Manhattan from about 34th to 125th streets.
The fire department issued a full recall, "the first time in my career," Roberto said. Firefighters who were on vacation and off shift were expected to report in. Even those on medical leave showed up.
Roberto commandeered Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses to get firefighters to the scene.
"We flagged them down, and they stopped," he recalled. "No one went past us." Extra guys jumped on rigs that were heading south.
He had more than 200 report in. Two chiefs from Roberto's 12th Battalion were killed; one had just gotten off duty at 9 a.m. but headed down anyway.
By Thursday, two days after the attacks, Roberto said, he was getting "a little buggy" and headed to the smoking remains of the World Trade Center, called "the Pile," to help search for firefighters and "see what we were dealing with."
When he saw the wreckage, he knew they were all gone.
Then the funerals began. On Saturday, Sept. 15, he attended services for FDNY Chaplain Father Mychal Judge, the first certified victim of 9/11, at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Midtown.
Over the next few months, Roberto attended more than 100 funerals and memorial services for firefighters he knew. One morning, he was leaving a funeral at a church in Long Island when an FDNY battalion car pulled into the parking lot. Roberto said he realized another funeral was about to begin. He stayed.
He has been connected to nature since he was a kid growing up in Putnam County, New York. He got into birdwatching in the 1980s, an experience he said is "like seeing old friends every year in springtime."
Just weeks after 9/11, Roberto was set to lead a birdwatching hike for the Audubon Society. He struggled, he recalled, because people wanted to thank the fireman for his service. He was courteous, but he hoped just to focus on the birds.
Soon, though, Roberto was again finding solace in nature.
In 2004, he helped establish EagleFest, a winter celebration hosted by Teatown Lake Reservation to laud conservation efforts that restored the bald eagle’s presence in the Hudson River Valley and the United States.
Roberto, who retired from the FDNY in 2019 after 41 years on the job, continues to share his love of nature by leading explorations and giving talks.
“I think nature is good for everybody," Roberto said. "It gets you out of your head.”
− Nancy Cutler, Westchester Journal News
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 25 years later, these 9/11 survivors still carry the scars
