Excerpt from Report From Ground Zero by Dennis Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

We were looking at the TV closely, looking to see if we could see John McLoughlin on the outside, or fire trucks, or anyone I know.

Then at about quarter to eleven, I get a call from Billy Butler's wife, Diane, and she tells me that Jay is trapped, but that they are trying to get him out. So now I am thinking that Jay is trapped, but that Billy is there trying to get him, and Billy is like a football field, so I know he will get to him. Billy can get to him with just his strength alone, so that's a good thing. He's on the outside working in.

But when Jay worked in rescue, he would tell me about certain jobs he had where people were trapped, so I know what the word "trapped" means. Many people who are trapped don't make it. So I am not very comforted. But it is good to know he is alive and they are trying to get to him.

I am watching the television, and they have only one thing to show, the building going down again and again, a hundred times. Every time I watch it go down I say, "How can anybody survive this? How can anybody be in there?" It is very stressful, and the wheels start to turn.

I am thinking that Jay was probably thinking about the Yankee game in there. And then I'm thinking, Oh, my God, how do I tell three kids that their dad is dead?

My emotions would go up and down depending on who called. When my brother called, I was hysterical because we lost both our mom and our dad in the last five years. I'm one of five, and we have been through those deaths, and I couldn't bear doing it again.

Jeremy calls me when he gets to Ground Zero. Every time I talk to him I break down, and I am putting like a thousand pounds on this young man because I said, "Jeremy, he's in there, go get him."

Later, when I look at pictures of the site, I can see how it wasn't so easy to just go in there and get him.

At about 2:30, Jeremy called me back and said, "I can hear his voice—he's out. It's going to take me an hour to get over there, Judy, but I hear him talking on the department radio; he's out, and they are taking him to the hospital."

We are all under such stress that I say, "Well, he's not brain dead. He's talking, anyway. I'm still thinking that he was buried up to his eyes."

In the meantime, when school got out at a quarter of three, Donna McLoughlin went home. Back in '93 when the bombing happened, her husband never called until late at night, and he had not yet called. But later that night, John's brother went to Donna's house and told her that John was missing. He was last seen walking from tower 1 to tower 2 when tower 2 collapsed. I went over there for a little while to be with her.

About fifteen minutes after Donna left my kitchen, Chris Staubner from Rescue 3 called and said, "I just kissed your husband twice."

I was so relieved. "Well," I said, "don't get used to that."

Chris said, "He's walking over to get his eyes washed out at the ambulance."

He's walking, I thought. Every piece of information helps. He's in better shape than I expected.

Jay finally got a phone that worked, and he called me. All he kept saying was "I love you," and he must have said that a hundred times. "I love you, I'm coming home."

I was so happy, I said to Jay, "I'm going to give Billy Butler the biggest kiss he ever had," thinking that Billy was one of those who got him out.

And, Jay said, "Billy? What about me?"

It was then I learned that Billy was inside there with Jay all the time.

The next morning, Wednesday, they found John McLoughlin. He was forty-five feet down in the debris. It was a miracle. He was the last person taken out alive. But he was severely injured, and they rushed him to Bellevue Hospital.

So they had gotten Jay out, and they got John out, too, the next morning, and I thought that was unbelievable, so why wouldn't I believe they would find lots of people and rescue them? We just had that hope. Then, seeing these guys going down there every day, and coming back, talking about desperately digging down for their buddies into these pockets, and then hearing that there was nobody there . . . It is very overwhelming. Every wake I go to I have to say, this could have been me talking to all these firefighters tonight. This could have been me. Thank God, we were very lucky.

Copyright 2002 Dennis Smith. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Viking.