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Trapped Under the Rubble
"I wasn't injured, but I was trapped," McLoughlin says. "A slab fell across me. The wall of debris at my feet was solid. My right arm was locked underneath me. My helmet was stuck."He called out to his men, but only two answered: Dominick Pezzulo and Will Jimeno. Jimeno was pinned and badly hurt, but Pezzulo managed to pull himself free. McLoughlin instructed Pezzulo to try and get Jimeno out before going for help. "So," he says, lowering his eyes, "Dominick was doing his best at freeing Will when the North Tower fell." A chunk of concrete landed on Pezzulo, killing him.
A shower of twisted metal shifted the debris surrounding McLoughlin. "That's when I got nailed," he says. "I was on my side on a cement slab, my knees and hips were between two pieces of concrete, and the bones were being crushed together. I didn't know how I was going to survive, the pain was so bad."
Sweaty, thirsty and alone, the two men began talking about their families. As the afternoon wore on, balls of flame fell into the hole, and the heat burned Jimeno's arm. Later, Pezzulo's overheated gun fired, narrowly missing them. Always, there was the grinding pain. They prayed together.
Late that evening, each man began making his peace with the idea of death. Then Jimeno heard a muffled voice shouting, "U.S. Marines!"
"Hey!" he shouted. "Down here!"
Within minutes, a group of rescuers gathered above them. "There was such relief," says McLoughlin, "knowing we were going to get out of there, that we were going to live." It took the workers three hours to extricate Jimeno, who, today, still has nerve damage and wears a brace. McLoughlin was in much deeper.
Donna, who left the children with friends and rushed to Manhattan to be near John, was approached by the rescuers at dawn. They told her that they might have to amputate John's legs. Did they have her permission? "Just get him out," she said.
They crawled through smoking wreckage to reach McLoughlin, and were finally able to free him without amputating. At about 7 a.m. on September 12, 2001, he was pulled from the rubble -- legs and all.
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