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A miracle amidst the rubble
(by Erin Patricia Griffiths - September 16, 2008)
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Photo Courtesy Of In Their Eyes Photography
After surviving the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Pasquale has moved forward with his life through the loving support of his wife and children. Pictured are Pasquale, his wife Louise, and two daughters, Hope, 6, and Mia, 3, with their family dog Brittany.
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On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, the lives of every American across the nation were forever changed. Mothers lost sons, brothers lost sisters, and daughters lost fathers. For 39-year-old Louise Buzzelli of River Vale, it was the day she watched as the weight of the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed upon her husband, who she knew did not escape the building before the skyscraper became a mound of twisted metal, concrete, and ash.
As Louise stood before the television, seven and a half months pregnant with their first child, her mind was filled with fear that she would have to raise the baby girl in her womb alone. When the phone rang at 3:30 p.m. on that fateful day, with the distant voice of her husband Pasquale on the other end saying he was being transported to St. Vincent’s Hospital, the relief she felt was overwhelming. But the healing to follow was something the couple, married only three years at the time, was not prepared for.
Pasquale had grown up a numbers man, enjoying working outdoors and being involved in construction with his father, an Italian immigrant. After graduating from St. Peter’s Prep, he went on to attend Cooper Union in New York City for engineering, where he subsequently earned his master’s degree in structural engineering. In 1992, Pasquale joined the Port Authority as a trainee, then began working full-time, starting with highway bridges and tunnels. The following year, he was in the tower for the first bombing, which he remembers vividly. “I’ll never forget where I was, you always remember. I was on line in the cafeteria on the 43rd floor, one person before paying,” he said. He explained seeing a flash of bright light outside and the way the floor shook with the explosion. Many people believed it to be a transformer explosion, but calmly he and many others moved into the staircase to begin exiting the building.
The staircase began filling with smoke, acting like a chimney. Pasquale took the napkins and soda with him from his lunch, wetting the napkin with soda to put over his mouth, passing it around for other people with him to do the same. But his experiences in the 1993 bombing caused Pasquale to respond differently when the planes hit on 9/11. “Both were threatening situations, but nothing was similar,” he said.
Pasquale was working in his office on the 64th floor of the North Tower when the first plane hit. “The stairways were clear, there was no smoke. We knew the plane was above,” said Pasquale. “I didn’t feel threatened when I was there, which is probably why we stayed so long. The idea was to keep the stairway clear because in ’93, you kind of learn from past experiences, but sometimes those past experiences may lead you in the wrong direction,” he continued.
Pasquale’s office had been receiving reports from people in the stairwells via handheld devices that there were many burn victims coming down and that they were trying to step aside to let those who were critically injured pass to get out first. So he and the co-workers he was with chose to stay in the office and wait until most people had descended and the firefighters had gone up to try to control the blaze above. “When the floor was clear, there was no smoke, the phones were functioning, the lights were on, and the incident is above you where people have been injured and they need to get down quickly and firemen need to get up there quickly,” he explained. “You kind of say, ‘let’s stay out of the stairs for now.’”
He spoke with Louise the second time that morning at about 10 a.m. He explained that he would begin moving into Stairwell B and begin his journey down the 64 floors to the exit. “Eventually it got to the point where smoke starting entering our floor,” he said. It was then that he and his co-workers headed for the stairwell.
At the time, Pasquale was unaware that the South Tower had collapsed. “We were on the northwest corner of the building and couldn’t see the South Tower,” he explained. “We felt a little bit of rumbling at one point, but attributed it to possibly the plane, part of it breaking off. As a structural engineer, once that building swayed and stopped moving and was stable, no one could have imagined it was going to collapse that way.”
Once Pasquale reached the 22nd floor, he felt the building begin to shake and the stairs start to shift. It sounded as though large objects, like anvils, were falling on the floors above. He crawled into a ball inside the stairwell, remaining conscious while he began free falling through the air and the building collapsed, with the base splitting open, unfolding like a budding flower.
When he awoke, he was approximately 180 feet below the floor where he had last been, sitting on a concrete slab above a pile of rubble with smoke floating above his head. Occasionally, he could see breaks in the haze and the sky peering through. “As a structural engineer, it is amazing to me when I think of myself surviving, because all of that force, all of that concrete and steel, was basically coming down in the middle, and compressing,” he said. “So when it reached the 22nd floor that I was on, concrete, steel, twisted metal compressing, and falling rapidly, I got caught up in it and fell with it.”
As he began to feel pain in his foot, fractured from the fall, Pasquale knew he must have survived, because he would not feel pain if he had died. Pulling his shirt over his face to keep from inhaling the smoke, and yelling for help, Pasquale waited to be found. “Most of the concrete didn’t even make it. Most of the steel was twisted,” he said. “But yet I ended up on top of a pile, basically unharmed.”
A short time later, Pasquale was found by firefighters, who helped to move him across the rubble to where he could be transported to a hospital. From the ambulance, he contacted his wife to let her know he had survived. He was one of two survivors from the group of 16 people he was with.
Arriving home that night, Pasquale was overcome with emotion. “The feelings were so overwhelming. I was very thankful, but also very upset and very, very sad,” he described. “I was an emotional wreck. You want to be happy because you are alive, but you also feel guilty that you feel happy. You are happy that you made it, but you also wish that other people had made it.”
In the months that followed, Pasquale struggled with recovering from the traumatic experiences of that day. “I went to a funeral a few days later, just to try to grieve and pay my respects, and I was a disaster,” he said. “After that I had to deal with it myself, be able to digest it on my own. That is how I deal with a lot of things. Time heals all wounds, but it’s a long process,” he continued. “It’s going to be a long time.”
Seven years later, life is very different for Pasquale. He and Louise welcomed Hope Olivia into the world just two months after 9/11. Three years ago, another blessing arrived in the form of their second daughter Mia. But despite the joy and rewards of parenthood and moving forward, times continue to be tough. “For the most part, most days are better. Sometimes there are certain things that come up, I call them triggers, that will make you think twice, hesitate, and always around 9/11 there are just constant reminders,” he said. “And you can’t help but feel sadness and grief.”
The time that has passed has brought its rewards and its trials. Both Pasquale and Louise found it hard to comprehend what had happened, and tried to move forward from the event in the months and years after, but it has not been easy. “I remember the first time that I saw my husband after that in a suit and it was just incredible for me,” said Louise. “I didn’t want him to leave. I said, ‘Oh my God, you look just like the day you left.’ So it has just been so tough. Now, it has gotten better, but it will always be there.”
The couple sought help to deal with their emotions and the aftermath of the events of 9/11. “It is just so tough for me to be able to talk about it,” said Pasquale. He was plagued with phone calls asking for interviews and press wanting to know the details of his experience. After a while, it became too much to handle, and he declined to speak unless the foundation that he and his wife had started was given coverage.
After seeing a People magazine spread on the cover of the Feb. 25, 2002 edition of the publication, with photos of the women who were pregnant at the time they lost their husbands in the attacks of 9/11, Louise felt compelled to do something to help. “I think after Sept. 11, this is what changed my whole life,” she said of the spread. “I can’t be the same person that I was. I just couldn’t fathom being one of these women and knowing that they lost their husbands,” she continued. “I lived what they did for just a few hours, maybe a day if that, and so it started this whole thing inside me and I couldn’t let it rest.”
Louise was inspired to write and record a song as a tribute to the expecting mothers who lost their husbands. She founded the “Song for Hope Foundation” on Aug. 8, 2002 to generate funding for the expecting mothers and their children who were left to move forward alone after their husbands and fathers were killed. Louise sold the song she recorded at local stores, as well as to family and friends. The foundation generated $10,000, which was split and equally donated to the widows and their children at a Mother’s Day luncheon held in 2003.
This past Thursday, on Sept. 11, the nation mourned the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. For Pasquale and his family, the day was a difficult one. “Anniversaries are tough. When that day approaches, in the past, I’ve taken off from work. It depends. I never know how I am going to feel that day. Sometimes, I will go into work just to see some of the people I was with,” Pasquale explained. “I always spend the day with family, with my wife and kids. And we do things that don’t remind me of that day, even though it is almost impossible to do.”
It isn’t the physical injuries that still cause pain for Pasquale, with his fractured foot having healed in the months after the attacks. “It just makes it tough because it is not so much what I went through physically, it’s really just so much more emotional and mental. I think about the people who were with me that day who didn’t survive, close co-workers, many of them,” he said.
Pasquale finds that spending the anniversary with his wife and children distracts him from the emotional pain of the memories he holds, and feels that it is up to each individual person to honor the events in their own way. “I think they should always have the memorial every year with the reading of the names,” he said. “I just think for me, being so close to it, it is just a difficult day. Ever since 9/11, there hasn’t been a day that goes by that I don’t think about it. There are certain things that I just don’t want to think about or do, because it will take me to a place that I’ve been before, and I just don’t want to go there.”
Seven years later, having suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor guilt, Pasquale still struggles with understanding why he survived the attacks. “It was such a miracle that I survived intact, so I eventually came to the conclusion that I am just going to live my life and be the best father and husband I can be, whatever road that takes me,” he said. “Maybe that is what I was here for. We just lead our lives the best we can. I think knowing I am here, to actually get to experience it, makes me say things could have been a lot worse, and I thank God that I am here to enjoy it or live through it or to just live life,” he continued.
As each year passes and the girls grow older, it becomes harder to explain the details of what happened to his daughters. He knows that although his daughters have grown up with the knowledge that their father is a survivor, he is unsure of how much they comprehend at their ages. Louise spoke about explaining the events to 6-year-old Hope. “The really, really hard part is, she is in first grade and she knows a little bit. But how am I going to sit down and explain to her? How do these parents sit down and explain to their kids how they lost their father or mother?” she asked. “It doesn’t make sense to them, it doesn’t make sense to us. I tell her it is like God caught Daddy in his hand, and placed him down so you can have a daddy. But then she asks, what about the other daddies, why didn’t he catch them?”
As his daughters try to learn and understand what happened to their father, they exist as a blessing for Pasquale that he attributes his happiness and recovery to. “I always said I think both my daughters saved me, because it makes you focus on not falling into deep depression,” he explained. “It makes you focus on what you need to be here for and gather some strength, and be there for them and experience life with them.”
When Pasquale returns home from work with the Port Authority, where he now serves as senior project manager with the security group, his wife and children embrace him as he walks through the door, hanging from his arms as he changes hats from engineer to father, for bath times and bed time stories, a nightly routine he shares with his wife.
This year on the Sept.11 anniversary, Louise and her husband sent an e-mail to friends and family expressing gratitude for the support they have received over the past seven years, including the support of the River Vale community. “When this happened, we didn’t really know anyone here. And just the wonderful people we have met and the beautiful community that we live in… I am just so happy to be here and to have what we have,” said Louise.
The message reflected not only sadness and joy, but also gratitude for where the family is today. “When I woke up this morning and watched Pasquale get dressed for work, it was so familiar to that day he left seven years ago,” Louise wrote. “I thank God for saving him and bringing him back to me. Back then it was just Pasquale, me and Brittany who sleeps at the foot of our bed. This morning I woke up to find two newcomers that joined us! I wouldn't have it any other way!”
The road ahead for the Buzzelli family is long, and although time heals all wounds, the memories of what happened during the events of Sept. 11, 2001 will never leave their minds. But as a 9/11 survivor, Pasquale will continue to move forward with the support of his loving wife and two beautiful children, and the community that has embraced him.
Erin Patricia Griffiths' e-mail address is GriffithsE@northjersey.com.
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