A longtime friend of recently-arrived Scott County resident Joseph Olivio is among the approximately 300 New York City firemen who are missing and believed to have perished in the September 11 terrorist attack that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Olivio, 35, said this week he had been friends “since I was 13 years old” with Paul Gill, who was stationed with Engine Company 54 at the corner of 48th Street and Eighth Avenue in mid-town Manhattan, approximately 10 minutes away from the Trade Center site.

“I knew that Paul was a fireman and that he would be sent to the Trade Center, so I became immediately concerned when I found out what happened,” Olivio said. “The telephone system in New York City was pretty much shut down that day, though, and I couldn’t get through to anybody to check on him.”

“I finally talked to his wife Tina the next day, and she said Paul had been with a group of firemen who were helping people on the 21st floor [of the WTC Marriott Hotel] try and get out of the building when they received word that the first building had collapsed,” Olivio said. “At this point, they began running down the steps to try to make their way to the bottom, but they were still on the third or fourth floor when the building they were in collapsed.”

Providing details of the group during those final terrifying moments, according to Tina Gill, was another fireman who was “probably 10 feet ahead of Paul at the time,” Olivio said. “When the building started to collapse, he jumped from a window and was able to survive. He said he turned back around and the group of firemen he was with, as well as that part of the building itself, had disappeared from sight. He said he never saw them again.”

Another longtime friend, Carmine Natale, and his wife Nancy, were among those World Trade Center employees whose survival that day was attributable to a combination of circumstances and good fortune that prevented them from being at their usual places of employment at the exact moment that the two planes struck the Trade Center.

“I talked to Carmine about 1:00 p.m. that day, and he said he had been aboard a train and was due to arrive at work about 9:00 a.m. He said the conductor announced shortly after 8:45, however, that a plane had just struck the World Trade Center and informed passengers that the train wouldn’t be stopping at Cortland Street, which was the usual Trade Center stop.”

He said Natale was able to almost immediately board another train heading back in the opposite direction, however, and was able to return to his home in the College Point section of Queens before the system was shut down.

Nancy Natale was even more fortunate. Employed by a Japanese firm on the 82nd floor, she was still at home because she simply hadn’t been scheduled to go in to work that day.

For both Carmine Natale, who worked for a computer firm on the 83rd floor, and his wife Nancy, there would have been very little chance of their survival had they been in their usual places of employment -- since the second plane struck the World Trade Center on the 81st floor.

“Nancy said the other people she worked with were all there that day, and none of them made it out,” Olivio related.
JOSEPH OLIVIO is pictured with his wife Pamela,
who sang “God Bless America” at Friday night’s
Oneida-Harriman football game.
A longtime friend is among firemen
missing in the recent World Trade Center disaster.
(Photo by David Terry).

The transplanted New Yorker, who arrived in Scott County on August 2 and married Pamela K. Phillips, an employee of Jim Barna Log Systems in Oneida on August 3, had worked at the Renaissance Hotel in Times Square before moving to this area.

“I used to go to the World Trade Center a lot to shop in some of the stores and small malls they had in there,” he said, “and I was probably last there around the end of July.”

Olivio grew up in the Astoria section of Queens, where his mother and sister still live, and he met Paul Gill, who lived in the same general area “through a mutual friend when I was 13 years old.” He said he and Gill were both friends of Carmine Natale, whom they had known for about 10 years.

“The hotel where I worked, which was located at the corner of 47th Street and Seventh Avenue, was only a block from Paul’s fire station,” Olivio recalled. “It was bought out by the Marriott Hotel chain, which is ironic, because Paul and the other firemen in his unit were in the Marriott Hotel section of the World Trade Center when the building collapsed.” He said he last saw Gill “somewhere around the end of June because we both kept pretty busy. He had been a fireman for about three years. Before that, he had worked as a union carpenter, and he was also an extremely talented artist." Gill, 34, had been married for 15 years, and he and his wife Tina have two sons -- Aaron, 14, and Joshua, 11.

Olivio said his first thoughts when his wife called him that day and informed about the attack on the World Trade Center were for his two friends “because I knew that Carmine worked there and Paul would be sent there as a fireman. It was hard to find out anything quickly, though, because the phone systems seemed to be all shut down, and you couldn't get in. I wasn't too concerned about my mother and sister, because they live in Queens, but I was immediately concerned about my friends. I was just amazed and shocked that something like that could happen.”

He said he opened up a copy of Time magazine's special issue on the World Trade Center disaster several days ago and saw a picture inside that had been taken of a bulletin board in the Manhattan fire station where Paul Gill had worked that had the names and photographs of the firemen that were missing. “The type under the pictures was pretty small, but you could tell immediately that one of the men was Paul.”

Olivio said he's been deeply touched by the outpouring of sympathy and support from the people of Scott County and across the State in the aftermath of the disaster.” I've only been here for a month and a half, but I love being in Tennessee. The people here are so friendly, and they've been very kind and outgoing about sharing their thoughts for the people in New York City. The support that they've shown has just been amazing.

His own thoughts and prayers, he said, continue to go out to the people of New York City who have experienced, and been affected so dramatically, by this tragic act. Although there remains little chance for his friend Paul Gill's survival, he said this week: “I'll keep hoping and praying that he somehow managed to make it until I get that call. We're not going to give up hope.”