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Thomas Battillo was a dealer on Wall Road when he narrowly escaped the 9/11 terror assaults 23 years in the past. At present, he works for the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) to make sure that day by no means occurs once more.
“It’s not a job. It’s a mission,” Battillo advised FOX Enterprise. “We work weekends. We work holidays. We miss things with the family to be at the airport to make sure that we’re doing the security business that we need to do.”
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Battillo, then a dealer working on the New York Inventory Alternate, was headed to breakfast together with his colleagues on the World Commerce Middle.
It was an everyday, lovely Tuesday, he recalled. Battillo stated his colleagues headed to the Home windows on the World restaurant, positioned on the 106th and 107th flooring of the north tower, when he obtained a name from his son who was happening a faculty discipline journey. It was the cellphone name he credit for saving his life.
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As a substitute of heading upstairs, Battillo determined to take the decision outdoors. Whereas they had been speaking, “the first plane went over my head, [and] we watched it go right into the building,” he stated.
Thomas Battillo, Transportation Safety Administration assistant federal safety director for mission assist at Baltimore/Washington Worldwide Thurgood Marshall Airport. (TSA)
Shortly after, he watched the second aircraft fly into the south tower.
“At that point, we knew this was not any kind of accident or a mistake, but something very, very serious was going on,” Battillo stated. “And we were watching as people were breaking windows on the top floors to get air and then people were jumping at that point. And just to think that people lost hope and thought that this was the right way to go was just mind-boggling.”
He remembers operating again to the inventory change for security, however after the towers fell, he and his colleagues had been pressured to evacuate. Battillo took the ferry to Staten Island the place he stayed with a good friend till he might make it again to New Jersey.
REMEMBERING 9/11
A Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) officer at Ronald Reagan Nationwide Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. (Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg through Getty Pictures / Getty Pictures)
Battillo’s colleagues by no means made it out of the tower that day. They had been among the many almost 3,000 people who died within the assaults. It is a actuality that by no means will get simpler for him, even because the years go on, he stated.
“I went to the memorial services afterward… no bodies, no closure,” he stated. Some spouses did not get to say goodbye earlier than they left for work on that September morning, he added.
“We were just ordinary businessmen just going to work and then to have to experience all of that… It never gets easier,” he stated.
In 2011, Battillo grew to become a TSA officer in Newark, New Jersey, and labored his means up the ranks. Now he serves because the TSA assistant federal safety director for mission assist at Baltimore/Washington Worldwide Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Airline passengers wait at a Transportation Safety Administration checkpoint earlier than boarding flights in Denver, Colorado, on April 19, 2022. (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP through Getty Pictures / Getty Pictures)
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Battillo stated he’s nonetheless therapeutic from that day.
“Just knowing that I’m able to put my family on a plane, and it is safely going to get to a destination, and this will never happen again under our watch, is really the best therapy I think I can ask for,” he stated.
