May 22, 2002: World Trade Center Attacks - Richard Picciotto

Art Bell opens with an emotional account of his wife Ramona's severe asthma crisis the previous night, when she turned blue and nearly required an ambulance from their remote home in Pahrump, Nevada. He then reports on the discovery of Chandra Levy's remains in Rock Creek Park, expressing suspicion about how searchers missed the body despite exhaustive prior efforts. Art also covers new earthquake activity in Japan that validated Stan Deyo's thermal prediction from a few days earlier.

New York Fire Department Battalion Chief Richard Picciotto, author of "Last Man Down," describes being inside the North Tower of the World Trade Center when it collapsed on September 11, 2001. He recounts climbing to the 35th floor, feeling the South Tower's collapse shake his building, and making the agonizing decision to order a full evacuation without being able to reach the destroyed command post. As he cleared each floor on the way down, he physically dragged a man from his computer desk who refused to leave more than an hour after the plane struck.

Picciotto describes reaching the sixth floor when the North Tower began its eight-second collapse, believing he was about to die. He survived in a small void within stairwell B, buried in debris with 13 others in complete darkness, unable to see or initially hear his fellow survivors until he called out into the silence.