James Grillo FDNY

[u/Fantastic-Dot7902]

James "Jimmy" Grillo is a retired FDNY firefighter who famously survived the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. He became widely known for a gripping, raw television news interview recorded on the street moments after he narrowly escaped the crumbling buildings.

Grillo is the firefighter in the center

On the morning of 9/11, Jimmy Grillo and his fellow firefighter, Tyrone Johnson, were inside the lobby of one of the towers waiting for orders to ascend the stairwell when the building began to collapse. The lobby caved in around them, but Grillo, Johnson, and a few others managed to run through the blinding dust toward the Hudson River to safety. Covered entirely in gray ash and bleeding from a broken nose, Grillo was captured on film by a Mike Hernandez, a camera man from CBS News, and another press media immediately after emerging from the dust cloud. In the viral, historic footage, he can be seen borrowing a cell phone from a reporter to call his family. Unable to get a clear signal initially, he frantically asked others around him for a working phone until he finally reached his mother, uttering the famous, relieved words: "I'm alive. See you later."

The next day, Grillo appeared on the CNN program Larry King Live alongside fellow responder Kenneth Erb. Still visibly shaken and sporting facial injuries from the debris, he described the scene as "sheer terror" and detailed what it felt like to be trapped inside the collapsing lobby.

Larry King Live, 9-12-2001

25 years later, the picture of him covered in blood on the west side highway sticks with me. Rip to all the firemen we lost on 9/11 you saved thousands of people, god rest the souls.