Thursday, October 1, 2026
On Sept. 11, 2001, many people left their homes unaware of what the morning would bring. For Hewlett resident Joe Ruvolo, 65, his day began in Springfield Gardens, Queens, with the New York Police Department Highway Patrol.
After the South Tower was struck at 9:03 a.m., Ruvolo said every NYPD department was mobilized to Manhattan, but not before he was asked to bring his supervisor John Sassano’s car to the World Trade Center.
Sassano’s driver, John McNamara, came into the office after seeing the news and joined Ruvolo. As they were heading toward the Midtown Tunnel on the Long Island Expressway, they saw a sign that read, “New York City closed to all traffic.” It wasn’t long before they could see smoke.
“[We] knew that the tower had been struck,” Ruvolo said. “We kind of knew it was a terrorist attack at that point. We knew what we were going into, but we were apprehensive about what we would find when we got there.”
Driving through Midtown, Ruvolo said it was eerily quiet. People were walking in the street, but vehicle traffic was uncharacteristically light. He and McNamara crossed 34th Street and drove down the West Side Highway, with people holding up signs and shouting words of encouragement as they passed.
Ruvolo was on Chambers Street, just a block away from Stuyvesant High School, when the North Tower fell at 10:28 a.m. With the dust cloud from the tower’s collapse approaching, He and McNamara ran into the school. After the cloud passed and they stepped outside, Ruvolo said nothing was recognizable.
“Everything was covered in a dust, and the air was pretty thick,” Ruvolo said. “I walked over to a Poland Spring truck and poured a five-gallon water jug over my head to wash all the dust off.”
For two weeks, Ruvolo was assigned to the Emergency Operations Center at 1 Police Plaza in lower Manhattan, representing the Highway Patrol. He helped organize escorts for building department officials, food and supply donations to first responders and heavy equipment from across the tri-state area. Ruvolo said leaders assigned to the center were told not to go to Ground Zero because of their roles.
When he took a motorcycle there two weeks later, he saw the devastation. He said the air had a “wet concrete smell” and little fires continued to burn.
"It was this landscape of debris,” Ruvolo said. “Building debris, an occasional [emergency] vehicle. I came to recognize that everything was pulverized from the collapse.”
He said every police officer who responded was assigned an exposure number due to the toxic chemicals in the air and goes for what is called a “Sept. 11 physical.” He noted he’s developed an unidentifiable asthma from inhaling the air at Ground Zero.
Ruvolo and his wife, Michele, 60, have two sons — Brian, 28 and Tyler, 24. When they were growing up, he said, he established a rule.
“I’ve taught my kids to never leave the house angry and never leave the house without saying ‘I love you,” Ruvolo said. “Many people left the house that day, and some of them, I’m sure, were fighting with their wives and their kids, and people never got the opportunity to say I love you.”
