husband tapped on the door to see
whether she was OK.
Quietly, a few days later, Webster
checked on the young woman she had
refused to declare dead. The woman
had horrendous injuries that would
take months to heal. But she was alive
and would get well.
Scenes like this were common-
place as one of the best-organized
rescue efforts in history went into ac-
tion. Within hours, search-and-rescue
teams were en route from California,
New York, Washington State, Arizona,
Maryland, Florida, and Virginia. In
addition to support from K-9 search-
dog teams, the most sophisticated
technical equipment in the world was
brought to the scene—tiny television
cameras that could peer into remote
crevices, infrared devices that could
detect body heat.RESCUE FROM THE
RUBBLE
Priscilla Salyers saw bright stars. An
investigative assistant for the Customs
Service, located on the fifth floor, she
had been talking to her boss, Paul Ice,
at 9:02 a.m. when a thunderous, gale-
force roar of wind whooshed past her
head. Then silence. And blackness.
Salyers tried to move but could not.
She sensed a tremendous pressure.
Something seemed to be crushing
her head.
I’m having a seizure, she thought. Is
it a stroke? Am I paralyzed?more than 200 of the wounded to hos-
pitals and managed to treat hundreds
of others. By then, all the company’s
ambulances had arrived, and they
were loading as many as five injured
people into each vehicle.
Eventually, Webster came face-to-
face with the worst dilemma to con-
front paramedics in triage. A young
woman lay before her with terrible
neck and head injuries. “She’s not
breathing,” said one of Webster’s as-
sociates. “You’ll have to call her”—
meaning that Webster needed to tag
her as too far gone to help so they
could move on to assisting people
with better odds of survival.
Webster felt for the woman’s pulse.
She wasn’t breathing at all, but her
heartbeat was strong. Webster knew at
that moment she could not “call” her.
“Her pulse is as strong as mine,” she
said. She would see that the woman
was given a chance.
“Put her in the ambulance and get
her on a ventilator,” Webster told a
colleague. She turned to minister to
others.
She remained at the scene for
12 hours. Later, at home, Webster
fell into the arms of her husband
and their son and daughter. Covered
in soot, she retired to take a shower.
She had managed not to break down,
but when the hot water hit her body,
for some reason all the experiences
of the day cascaded upon her. There
in the shower, she cried uncontrol-
lably for the next hour—until her96 april 2020
Reader’s Digest