By Jonathan Lemire
Daily News
Copyright 2008 Daily News
 AP Photo/David Karp Members of emergency services units sift through the rubble of a crane collapse in New York Monday. Seven people have been reported dead so far as search efforts continue. |
It was just a faint call for help from the rubble, but firefighters and paramedics headed straight for it — hoping to find a miracle under a mountain of debris.
They did.
Painstakingly digging by hand so they wouldn’t trigger a collapse that could have buried them all, the FDNY team tunneled for three hours in the rubble of a townhouse reduced to ruin in Saturday’s crane disaster.
Finally, they found him — survivor John Gallego, completely submerged in 30 feet of rubble, but able to cry out in pain.
“When we finally got to him, as I put an IV in his neck, he asked me why God had abandoned him,” said FDNY paramedic Juan Henriquez.
“I said, ‘God didn’t abandon you — and we’re going to make sure you don’t die here.’ ”
The last person pulled alive from the catastrophic collapse on E. 50th St., Gallego remained in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital Sunday.
Best friend Odin Torres, who was staying with him after arriving from Miami for the St. Patrick’s Day weekend, remained missing and was presumed dead, FDNY sources said.
Gallego, 30, told his rescuers he and Torres were in his second-floor apartment’s kitchen when a 19-story crane plunged off a construction site, clipped another building and pulverized the townhouse.
“We got the call over the radio, and it sounded really frantic,” said FDNY paramedic Marco Girao, who was working with Henriquez in an ambulance stationed at Bellevue.
“We got there minutes later, and I hate to say this, it looked like 9/11 with people running around and this dust on everything and everyone,” Girao said.
As dozens of firefighters and Emergency Service Unit cops crawled over the demolished four-story townhouse, a cry from the rubble prompted everyone to immediately silence their equipment, Henriquez said.
“We turned off the machinery so we could hear him yell for help,” said Henriquez, an eight-year veteran of the FDNY. “We couldn’t be sure of his exact location, because the sound was traveling and echoing off the debris.”
Believing Gallego was in a small air pocket more than two dozen feet under the rubble, the paramedics and firefighters began desperately clawing through the wreckage.
“It was hard to even move the smallest things because things are locked together; if you move something the wrong way, the whole thing could come down,” Henriquez said.
Under the supervision of FDNY Lt. Tom Donnelly, the rescuers used their hands and small power tools to cut through bricks, stone, wood, pipes and even a leather couch as they inched .toward the anguished cries.
“It was ultimate danger for everyone working on that pile,” Donnelly said.
“It was a pancake collapse, meaning [Gallego] had the remains of several floors of that brownstone lying atop him,” said Donnelly, of Rescue 1. “It was unbelievable that he was alive at all.”
As the team worked toward Gallego, Girao helped pull out Juan Perez , who had been working at the street-level bar Fubar. The collapse shattered one of Perez’s legs.
“He was in 8 feet of debris, pinned from the waist down and in a ridiculous amount of pain,” Girao said. “But we got him out, and — thankfully — he’s going to be okay.”
Ripped out his IV
Nearly three hours after the FDNY units began digging, they reached Gallego — at first only spotting the five fingers of his left hand.
 He was disoriented and really emotional, screaming that God had left him and he was going to die.  | ||
| — Juan Henriquez Paramedic, FDNY | ||
“Imagine having that much weight on you,” Henriquez said. “He was disoriented and really emotional, screaming that God had left him and he was going to die.”
Henriquez quickly plunged an IV into Gallego to begin pumping him with medicine to ward off infections or kidney failure — but the panicked man ripped it out, causing blood to pour from his neck.
“I thought we might lose him then,” said Henriquez, who is part of a cutting-edge FDNY urban search-and-rescue program trained to administer drugs to a patient to fight off the potentially fatal effects of “crush syndrome.”
“When a crush victim starts losing circulation to parts of his body, that blood turns acidic and could kill him,” he said. “If we didn’t get him the medicine as fast as we did, he’d have died.”
Once Gallego was stabilized, firefighters were able to slowly lift him from the rubble and into a waiting ambulance. His wife, Luz Maya; sister, Jessica Gallego, and other family members were at his Bellevue bedside Sunday.
“He’s a really honest guy [and] really hardworking,” said friend Manuel Rodriguez, noting that Gallego cares for his late brother’s three young children.
“He is so lucky,” Rodriguez said. “I mean, you see that building. ... God knows the kids need him.”
Firefighters worked through the night searching for Torres and a pair of missing construction workers, who were identified by NYPD and FDNY sources as Clifford Canzona, 45, and Santino Gallone, 37.
Gallego, who runs an Internet site that imports Latin American clothes, had invited Torres to come up for St. Patrick’s Day, said Fubar owner John LaGreco.
“I think she came up Friday night,” said LaGreco, who would often see Gallego in the bar. “Can you imagine coming up to see a friend for a big party weekend, and then the next day you’re dead?”