VENICE — Twenty-three years after Sept. 11, 2001, it remains a tough day for everyone, Eric Szillus said.
A New York firefighter that day, he was the keynote speaker at the 12th annual 9/11 Victims & Fallen Heroes Memorial Ceremony in Venice’s Patriots Park on Wednesday.
Today, he’s a nurse treating New York first responders. Sharing his Sept. 11 experience helps him to ease his pain, he said.
He suffers from PTSD, anxiety and a number of physical conditions related to his service.
“I used a lot of alcohol to numb the pain,” he said.
Now, he takes a lot of pills every day, he said.
“But I’m alive.”
For a time that day, he wasn’t sure he was.
His company responded to the World Trade Centers site before the towers fell, he said.
He was under the south tower, officially known as 2 World Trade Center, when it started to collapse and was hit first by a small piece of debris, then by the pressure wave of the building coming down.
Knocked flat and shrouded in darkness because of the dust in the air, he couldn’t see anything.