In a daring bid to rescue the woman trapped in Monday's tunnel disaster, Fire Lt. William Donovan and EMT Greg MacCurtain risked their lives by crawling through broken chunks of Big Dig concrete and steel to climb into the half-crushed Buick where they found Melina M. Del Valle dead.
Meanwhile, the threat of death hung over their heads in the form of a massive slab of concrete that clung precariously to the tunnel roof, said Boston Fire Lt. Jeff Price, who watched the rescue bid unfold.
"There was a hunk of concrete hanging by a piece of rebar directly above the whole thing," Price said. "It looked like it may have come down on us. It was swinging like a pendulum, probably a 2,000 pound slab just swinging, hanging on by like a bolt."
The two rescuers responded without knowing what caused the collapse or if more slabs would plummet from the ceiling.
"That was my biggest fear all night long," said incident commander Deputy Chief Joseph Finn. "That came down for a reason. Whatever that reason was it was the same thing that was holding up the rest of the sections. I was concerned that other sections of the tunnel could begin falling as well."
Donovan and MacCurtain quickly found Del Valle and realized there was no chance of a rescue. The concrete inflicted severe head wounds and crushed parts of her body, officials said.
In order to pull the car to safety and recover the woman's body, Finn said firefighters first removed the dangling concrete mass by tying rope to it.
"It came down in two good yanks with four guys on the ropes," Finn said.
Fire Lt. Sandy Lasa of Rescue One then removed the 12 tons of concrete and metal by using 100 foot chains and an end loader to pull the rubble off slab by slab.
"Training is vital," Finn said. "In the last three months we've had four fatal construction accidents ... Technical rescue is very important to the survivability of some poor soul."
Republished with the permission of The Boston Herald.
