A Moment Of Terror

Luigi-Gino Fasulo had little in common with Mohamed Atta. An affable Italian native who ran an air-taxi business from the lakeside Swiss town of Locarno, Fasulo lived light-years from the bitterness of anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism that fueled the Sept. 11 attacks. But for a long, breathless moment last week after the 67-year-old pilot crashed a small plane into Milan’s tallest skyscraper, the world couldn’t help thinking back to the indelible images of the World Trade Center’s tragic demise orchestrated by the Egyptian-born Atta.

As investigators try to figure out what sent Fasulo straying toward downtown Milan, all signs now point clearly away from terrorism. But as the sun set on a perfectly clear Thursday, it had seemed that the other shoe — though of a much smaller size — had dropped in the heart of a key European financial capital. There were the first eyewitness accounts of the small private plane coldly slicing into the upper floors, the television images of black smoke rising from the country’s tallest building, the scattered papers on the sidewalk and huddled shock of office workers forced to scurry down stairwells as brave firefighters went charging up.

Twenty minutes after the single-engine Rockwell Commander 112 had blasted through the 26th floor, Jaime May of Humboldt, California, who is studying art history in Florence, arrived at Milan’s central train station just 200 m from the site of the crash. Hours later, the 23-year-old — who has been in Europe for more than a year — continued to stare up at the hole in the former headquarters of the Pirelli tire company. “It’s a very scary time. My dad has been wanting me back home for months.” Three people, including Fasulo, were killed, and another 29 were injured. As the world tuned in and President George W. Bush received regular briefings, Milan tried to make sense of its unwanted attention and the improbable gash in Il Pirellone (big Pirelli), Italy’s first bona fide skyscraper, now owned by the Lombardy government. Though terrorism had been ruled out, many in Milan continued to wonder if the building was not a target in some other way. Maurizio Invernizzi came to the site to “try to figure out the mechanics” of the crash. “That it was simply an error is hard to believe,”‘ the Milan bank teller said, pointing upward. “He hit [the building] right in the middle. It seems like something he wanted to do.”

Fasulo took off at 5:15 p.m. from Locarno Airport heading to Linate Airport on the outskirts of Milan. Nearly 30 minutes later he radioed the Linate tower saying that he had minor landing gear problems and asked for clearance as he approached from the north. But he ignored subsequent directions from the tower to circle near the airstrip and suddenly turned westward toward downtown. Moments later his altitude dropped suddenly and the plane pierced the building in a perfectly horizontal position, according to witnesses.

The day after the crash, one of Fasulo’s two sons was quoted in the Rome-based daily La Repubblica as saying his father probably committed suicide because of mounting financial problems. An experienced flyer, Fasulo was “very discreet and mysterious about anything related to his plane,” a fellow Locarno pilot told Swiss television. Italian Transport Minister Pietro Lunardi ordered checks on Fasulo’s health record and financial situation. “There are reasons to believe that something strange happened here … The plane did everything wrong from beginning to end,” Lunardi told reporters. “If this accident had happened before Sept. 11 one might just have talked about destiny, but seeing as it happened after Sept. 11 destiny seems less plausible.”

Maurizio Vitali, who worked in the regional government offices on the Pirelli building’s second floor, was thinking of the World Trade Center as he and his colleagues filed down the stairs after hearing a “huge blast” and seeing glass and debris raining down from above. “It’s hard to know what was in the pilot’s mind, but I know what we were thinking.” The reinforced cement building withstood the impact and was never at risk of collapsing. Also, several of the upper floors were being renovated, which likely prevented further casualties. That was welcome news. The bad news is that, up there somewhere, the other shoe is still waiting to drop.