...given first- aid and prepared for removal. Another worker stretched out flat and covered in rebar and wet concrete was freed with metal cutters and removed from the debris without a basket.

Missing Workers

As far as rescuers could tell at this point, four workers were missing. In addition to Bigelow, one was Michael M. Wittland, 43, a 16-year-ironworkers’ union officer whose sons and nephew also were members of Local 350. One of Wittland’s sons broke his neck in the collapse but survived.

Only days before, Wittland had joked at a union officers’ meeting that he had bought his last pair of work boots because he planned to retire from construction work in six months. Now he could not be found. Both he and Bigelow had been welding steel staircases on the levels below the collapse. The collapse had poured tons of debris through the slab openings, and now no one knew where they were.

Outside at ground level, Evans and Pauls began to search together. They threw a 20-ft extension ladder against the building and headed for the debris on the third level, kicking through sheetrock in their hunt for Bigelow and Wittland.

Capt. Steve Costello of Engine Co. 6 says he heard calls for help from the stairway area where Pauls and Evans, now joined by others, were searching. Digging through the debris, they reached a worker who was partly covered by concrete. Costello could only get to his hand and took his pulse.

It was Bigelow, alive but pinned under two very heavy steel staircases. Costello radioed for help and equipment. Other firefighters soon arrived with cribbing and tools. Together with eight construction workers and two state police officers, they began digging and slipping cribbing beneath debris.

In the end, it came down to muscle. Those on the scene grabbed and rotated one steel staircase, then another off of Bigelow, shoring each as it was moved. "It seemed like hours," wrote Costello in his report, but it was only minutes. But as the weight of the stairs was taken off Bigelow, his pulse disappeared, Costello remembers. Others say the worker still was breathing when he was finally whisked to an ambulance.

How to Save a Life

Keep close tabs on the number of workers at a jobsite.

Make use of construction workers when shoring is needed to secure debris.

Limit rescuers’ exposure to collapse once hopes dim for finding any more survivors.

Pulling Back

While Wittland still had not been found, there were signs of him. Costello found a baseball cap and rescuers began digging. But by then–about 12:20 p.m.– firefighters were even more worried there would be another collapse. Fire Dept. commanders ordered all rescuers out of the building and back to the command post. At 1 p.m., all fire companies at the Tropicana reported to the staging area and some off-duty personnel manning reserve apparatus were relieved.

By that time, New Jersey’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, based at Lakehurst, had begun to stream into the area. Local firefighters were very happy to see them. A few minutes earlier, the firefighters had switched their command post to the Fleet Bank office in order to run the operation from inside. The project’s architect, engineers for the contractors, city officials and even some lawyers buzzed around. Outside, some of the hundreds of construction workers who had gathered from area jobsites were chafing at being kept out of the rescue. Police had to restrain a few from going back inside the damaged building to search for the missing.

A more time-consuming and cautious phase of the rescue now was beginning. Speed was still important because someone could still be found alive. But since the missing were believed to be in the worst areas of the collapse, hopes dimmed.

Bryan Juncosa, the longest-serving structural engineer on the rescue task force and a veteran of the World Trade Center rescue effort in 2001, was in northern New Jersey when he got the call about the collapse. The engineer, with Atlantic Engineering, a Kinnelon, N.J.-based firm, arrived at the site at 1 p.m.

Juncosa and the others learned that the collapse had occurred while concrete was being placed on the structure’s top floor and had affected all seven of the new floors. After setting up a base of operations, the team took a closer look at what confronted them. Three stranded and bowed columns on one side of the collapsed bay were not a concern because they were leaning away from the collapse area, which was located over the adjacent structure that had served as a triage area and now had been evacuated.

But the 85-ft-high wall that remained upright definitely was a problem. Project structural engineer Stephen DeSimone and the general contractor’s engineer believed the wall could collapse if the winds acting on it reached 17 miles an hour. The urban search and rescue team started monitoring 11 points in the building with a theodolite, including two or three on the wall.

Juncosa, DeSimone, Pauls and others used the project tower crane and a manbasket to get a better view of the debris–a big tactical advantage.

But Juncosa could not find any penetrations in the wall that could be used to anchor it, and he did not want to risk drilling. As he deliberated, Juncosa remembers that "things were very tense–people were yelling at us and 100 other men and women in the rescue operation were waiting to get in to do their jobs. The families and the firemen were there and so were the construction workers who wanted to go back in."

Caught in Concrete. State rescue team conducted painstaking preparations needed for safety before removing the bodies of two cement masons killed in the collapse.

Juncosa says most of the rescuers were virtually certain that Wittland, as well as two missing cement masons from Local 2–Scott N. Pietrosante, 21, and Robert A. Tartaglio, 42–had died because "they were in the worst places."

But some did not wait to find out. As Juncosa was trying to design a safe stabilization plan on paper, Evans, the firefighter who had searched with Pauls and others for Jimmy Bigelow, directed several task force members to a place between two pancaked slabs at the rear of the bay. A cement mason’s tool had been spotted there early in the rescue. Evans crawled down a void between two collapsed floors and found the cement ma-sons. Both were dead.

The task force now considered its work a recovery, not a rescue. Juncosa weighed several methods of tying off the stranded wall, including rigging cable to adjacent buildings and using an available crane for support. But these were discarded for fear that any rigging installation could cause further collapse of the wall, which at this point was not moving, says Juncosa. Instead, the engineer opted for a plan in which beams and columns on the opposite side of the collapsed bay–the side from which slabs were hanging–would be carefully tied back with steel cable to other parts of the garage. That effort took about two hours. Search crews then proceeded from the braced side of the bay toward the other side in the direction of the tub. They shored as they went, working with local ironworkers to install cribbing and hydraulic jacks and blocks.

As Evans left the building, he stopped by the stairway area where Bigelow was found. The search and rescue team was using probing cameras and dogs to search for Wittland. But the effectiveness of the animals was limited by uncured concrete blocking the voids and masking the odors of human beings.

As darkness slowly covered the sky, the search for Wittland dragged on. A pool of blood was spotted in the stairway area, so rescuers searched the level above. At 11 p.m., almost 12 hours after the collapse, Wittland’s body was located. But it took another seven hours of work to remove his remains. The long disaster was reaching an emotional conclusion. Wittland’s relatives were present as his body was carried out and his fellow craftworkers closed around as an informal honor guard.

The rescue operation had fostered an unparalleled display of unselfish teamwork. "There was no jealousy over turf and authority," says Daniel Mitten, a state police officer who serves on the rescue task force. But there was one final disappointment. Jimmy Bigelow, the apprentice ironworker who was found alive, died at Atlantic City Medical Center. He is survived by his wife and a two-year-old son.