Firefighters in desperate rescue effort at Columbia University site.
Three demolition workers from company with ties to the mob were trapped in the rubble of a Harlem building when tons of reinforced concrete crashed down on them Thursday, killing one worker and
seriously injuring two others.
Juan Ruiz, a 69-year-old grandfather who was about to retire, died shortly after he and another construction worker were pulled out of the twisted debris.
As anxious co-workers looked on, firefighters were tearing through the wreckage in a valiant effort to reach the third trapped worker, 60-year-old King Range.
“Help me!” Range cried out as firefighters guided by his pleas found him inside a crevice of crumbled concrete, his left arm pinned by a half-ton slab.
“There was a void in there,” FDNY Captain Robert Morris of Rescue 1 in midtown said later. “He was basically saying, ‘Help me.’ ”
Forty-five minutes later, firefighters carried Range out of the ruins.
“He was really banged up, but he talked all the way to the ambulance,” said a firefighter who helped get him to St. Luke’s Hospital.
Read more here.
