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MORGANTOWN - On the ground.
Lt. Joe Torrillo was being pummeled like an outmatched prize fighter that morning in the shadow of dying Tower 2.
Torrillo, who technically had the day off, rushed to his Brooklyn fire station to respond to the call anyway. How could he not?
He had studied structural engineering and design before settling on a career in public safety.
He knew what was going to happen.
He knew buildings were going to buckle and collapse. He knew that if you were on an upper floor, you were doomed.
He also knew that wasn't going to stop him.
On a shocking morning in lower Manhattan, he was there to save lives - and that was it.
Right and left, he was frantically hooking arms and elbows, trying to hustle people out of the inevitability.
The 110 stories of the twin towers of the World Trade Center went up one floor at a time, and on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, they came down the same way.
Each floor collapsed onto the one below.
And each time that happened, another explosion was set off, rivaling the ones generated by the hijacked airliners earlier.
For a throwback fireman like Torrillo, it was akin to being in a knife fight in an old-school phone booth.
Chunks from the ruined building slammed his back and ribs.
Pulverized clouds of glass and concrete carried in the terrible tumult blurred his eyes and corkscrewed down his throat and into his lungs.
His helmet long gone, a pinwheeling shard of metal sliced his scalp - neat.
A surgeon couldn't have done it better.
When the second tower began giving up its structural ghost, the only thing Torrillo could finally do was run.
Except, you can't outrun something like that.
A whoosh of air from the structure's final throes lifted his heels and pitched him forward - just like a clip on a kickoff.
Then, darkness.
NEVER FORGET
Terry Vance can only shake his head at the bravery.
"All the firemen and policemen and paramedics," he said.
"Think about 'em being there. When people were running out, they were running in. We can never forget what they did."
Which is why he's doing what he is on this Friday, Sept. 11 - the 25th anniversary of the day terror came calling on America.
Vance is a U.S. Air Force veteran and paramedic by training who served during the Gulf War.
He now works as a veteran partner coordinator and peer support specialist at Valley HealthCare System.
Vance helps those who wore the uniform regain their footing, as they wage emotional battles they never counted on in the transition back to civilian life.
Friday's event, meanwhile, runs from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Morgantown Readiness Center, 90 Army Band Way.
The "Never Forget" gathering, Vance said, is all about those who are all about us.
Some 90 outreach organizations that support community causes for veterans and first responders are scheduled to be there, Vance said.
The tables and representatives run the gamut of the human services business, he continued.
You'll have the pageantry of colors presented by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9916, American Legion Post 174 and Marine Corps League Detachment 342.
"Freedom," the bald eagle, will make an appearance, Vance said, joined by the West Virginia University Mountaineer and "Cooper," from the West Virginia Black Bears.
The Morgantown High School band and vocal group the Mountainaires will offer musical selections, with a live radio broadcast also on the bill.
Dr. Brian Sharp, the CEO of Valley HealthCare, will make remarks, along with state Attorney General J.B. McCuskey.
"It's a celebration for our military veterans and for our first responders of Sept. 11 especially," Vance said.
Of course, he said, it's about the first responders in our community that we count on daily.
"If you're in a situation where you have to call 911, they're gonna show up," he said. "They're gonna be there for you and your family."
THREE DAYS DEAD - BUT STILL HERE
"Wait. If you're not him, who are you? We need to start calling people."
That was what the nurse said, when Torrillo, recovering from surgery three days after being buried in the rubble of Ground Zero, told her he wasn't the guy whose name was on the coat he was wearing when he was wheeled in.
In his haste to respond on Sept. 11, Torrillo inadvertently grabbed the gear belonging to another firefighter who had also had the day off and kept it that way.
Torrillo's family, meanwhile, had heard he was at Ground Zero.
Hey: there was no mistaking the stocky little guy with the giant moustache, his co-workers said.
In the chaos and confusion, however, no one had seen Torrillo since, and the avowed family man hadn't checked in at home, which he would have - had he been able.
For three days, he was declared missing (officially).
Then, he was declared dead (unofficially).
And Torrillo wasn't talking - because he couldn't.
He was partially buried in the rubble and was among just a handful of firefighters who survived the third Ground Zero impact, as it were, when the towers came down.
Torrillo had undergone a series of emergency surgeries in those immediate hours, given the extent of the trauma he suffered.
He had sustained a skull fracture, snapped ribs and a compound break of his arm.
Several vertebrae in his back were ruptured.
His corneas were badly scratched, also.
When the tube came out in between procedures and he could formally make his acquaintance, the Torrillo residence was called - and a family was again whole.
'CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?'
"I can't get away from first responders," Torrillo said with a chuckle Friday morning.
In the months after Sept. 11, Torrillo was able to retire. His injuries were too severe for him to stay on active duty.
Over the years, groups began asking him to share his Sept. 11 story, which he gladly obliges, he said, because he gets to talk about first responders and what they did that day in lower Manhattan.
And, at the Pentagon and in that field in Somerset County, Pa., also.
He was checking in with The Dominion Post from a speaking engagement in Seattle, in fact.
This coming Friday, he'll mark the 25th anniversary with an appearance in California, where he'll again talk about that morning - and how his life was forever informed and defined by it.
He marked his 70th birthday last November and it was a good time, he said.
Right up until he blew out the candles on his birthday cake.
When he woke up, he was in the ambulance.
His son, a paramedic, was there too, and on the phone with Torrillo's daughter, a nurse and operating room coordinator of the hospital where they were headed.
Torrillo had suffered the dreaded "Widowmaker" heart attack - an almost complete blockage of the left anterior descending artery.
"Can you believe it?" he asked.
"First responders saved my life again. A couple of them were my kids. Everybody knew who I was this time."
If he could hit the "Back" button on Sept. 11, would he change anything?
Torrillo went full Brooklyn in his response.
"Are you kiddin'? I woulda got there quicker."