It was like a crescendo, a loud sound getting louder.

The lights cut out. A tremendous wind whooshed through, knocking people off their feet.

And in eight seconds, the north tower of the World Trade Center was rubble.

“Eight seconds, barely enough time to gather your thoughts,” said New York Fire Department Battalion Chief Richard Picciotto, who was leading a rescue effort on a stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors on Sept. 11, 2001. “But my head was racing.

“I prayed a compilation of every prayer I ever knew in about a second, second and a half. A few expletives were thrown in there. But then my last prayer: Please God, make it quick.”

Sometimes, unanswered prayers are the best kind, Picciotto told an audience of about 130 Tuesday night at the Lied Center.

Picciotto, the highest-ranking firefighter to survive the World Trade Center collapse and the last fireman to escape the devastation, recounted his memories of the harrowing experience during an appearance sponsored by Kansas University’s Student Union Activities.

The tale is one he also tells in his best-selling book, “Last Man Down,” published in May 2002. He signed copies of the book earlier in the evening at Mount Oread Bookshop in the Kansas Union. SUA paid $12,000 to bring Picciotto to Lawrence.

Sept. 11 began with a sense of d vu for the veteran firefighter. As a newly promoted fire chief in 1993, he had led the evacuation of the north tower after it was bombed by terrorists. He knew that each tower had just three stairwells.

“Ninety-nine elevators, three stairwells,” he said, eliciting gasps from the audience.

When he arrived at the scene, he could see people huddling in windows, trapped above where the airplanes had struck. He saw some of them jump desperately to their deaths.

Clicking through familiar slides of the towers engulfed in flames, Picciotto recreated the minutes he and other rescue workers spent climbing stairs in the north tower, the seconds when they heard and felt the south tower crumbling next door and the hours he and a dozen others spent trapped in a nearly pitch-black cave before climbing to safety.

In haunting photographs snapped at Ground Zero, Picciotto pointed out the section of stairwell, barely distinguishable in the heaps of rubble, that he and the others survived inside.

Paul Willy, a battalion chief with the Olathe Fire Department, attended Picciotto’s talk with four other men from the department.

¢ 6News video report: Firefighter shares story with Lawrence community

“There’s certainly a connection there amongst all firefighters and emergency service people,” he said. “Everybody was hurt by it.”

Lawrence resident Christine Frese brought a bald eagle quilt for Picciotto to take back to one of the 343 lost firefighters’ families. She stitched it together as an act of catharsis after 9-11.

“It was a time of change for all of us,” she said. “Getting to hear from someone who was actually there helps to give some resolution to me. I want people to know in New York that they’re still thought about, are still in our thoughts and prayers.”