Alan Hausman gets notified of building collapses about once a month.
The chief of the emergency response coalition known as the PA Region 13 Task Force said those calls are usually for small wooden structures or barns.
“It ends up being just splinters on the ground,” Chief Hausman said Thursday. “Everyone gets there and picks them off the ground and goes home.”
Wednesday was different. A three-story brick building in the heart of Washington, Pa., collapsed about 9 a.m., trapping a woman beneath thousands of pounds of debris.
But rescuers couldn’t simply jump on the pile and dig her out. The building at 15 N. Main Street was so unstable after the collapse, they had to painstakingly plan every move or risk causing further collapse, possibly killing the woman and those trying to save her.
Chief Hausman said he received a call Thursday from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, and “they said this is one of the most complex [rescues] they’ve ever known to have happened in the state.”
Nick Blumer, a captain and paramedic with the Washington Fire Department, was one of the first to arrive at the scene. He said dust and debris were billowing from the windows and the front door of the building.
He said he realized there was a big problem when he ran up to the second floor and could “see the sky.”
Most people inside the building were able to escape, but a woman and her boyfriend — Megan Angelone and Nate Engott — were trapped.
Mr. Engott somehow freed himself. He was covered in dust and shaken up — but apparently uninjured — when Capt. Blumer and other firefighters reached him. Mr. Engott wanted to stay with his girlfriend, but firefighters made him leave, Capt. Blumer said.
“He was being stubborn ... but he didn’t have a choice,” he said.
After Mr. Engott was taken down a ladder, the next objective was to find Ms. Angelone. She responded to rescuers’ calls, and they were able to deliver IV fluids and an oxygen mask to her.
At the same time, members of the Region 13 Task Force were in the basement, shoring up the structure with poles and lumber.
Rescuers had worked for hours to free Ms. Angelone when Chief Hausman noticed about 2 p.m. that windows at the front of the building were shifting and bricks were falling from the structure. The building was undergoing a secondary collapse.
“If you looked at this building from the front, it was very, very structurally unstable,” Chief Hausman said.
Three air horn blasts were sounded — the universal signal for evacuation.
Chief Hausman said it took about five minutes for everyone in the vicinity of the building to move to safety.
Capt. Blumer had been one of the rescuers close enough to Ms. Angelone to talk to her as the effort progressed. With the captain atop the building and above Ms. Angelone were a doctor from Pittsburgh, a Pittsburgh medic and a medic from North Strabane.
All day, the captain said, rescuers had been trying to comfort and reassure her. Capt. Blumer said they called Ms. Angelone’s mother to let her know she was all right. But when the call for the evacuation came, they had to leave.
“We’d been talking to her since a little after 9, and hours have gone by,” Capt. Blumer said. “We’re talking to her, and she got agitated and we’d calm her down, and she get anxious and we’d get her calmed down. Now we’ve got to tell her we’ll be back. That wasn’t easy.”
Capt. Blumer said he didn’t notice Ms. Angelone’s reaction when the rescuers had to evacuate — he was focused on getting off the roof.
The work the task force had done earlier to shore up the building helped to prevent a much worse result from the secondary collapse. But the building still remained too unstable to continue with the rescue, and they had to come up with a new plan.
They decided to bore a hole through the wall of a coffee shop in an adjoining building.
The rescuers had been using electric chipping hammers, Sawzall reciprocating saws and other power tools before the secondary collapse. Chief Hausman said the vibrations from the power tools had made Ms. Angelone nervous, so they used a hammer and chisel to tediously break through the four-foot-thick brick wall of the coffee shop.
“We did this by hand,” Chief Hausman said. “Taking out brick by brick, one by one.”
Finally, the rescuers reached Ms. Angelone. But she was still pinned by a refrigerator that had fallen atop her. Though the refrigerator kept her left leg trapped, it also was the only thing keeping two floors of the building from crushing her.
Chief Hausman said rescuers then “very carefully” use Sawzalls to remove some wooden beams, placed struts beneath the refrigerator to support it, and used cranes to secure the roof. Then two small air bags capable of being inflated to lift almost 2,000 pounds were placed beneath the refrigerator, the chief said.
But they had to be used carefully, Chief Hausman said, because “if we lift it more than an inch or two, we’re going to change the dynamics of the building, and we could have brought the whole building down.”
Rescuers had to lie flat on their stomachs and, in 15- or 20-minute shifts, hand dig debris out from under Ms. Angelone.
At last, they were able to free her leg from the refrigerator and pull her onto a stretcher. She was taken out of the building and whisked by ambulance to UPMC Presbyterian in Pittsburgh. Chief Hausman said at last check Thursday, she was in stable condition.
With Ms. Angelone and the rescuers gone, what was left of the building remained in its precarious position.
Ron McIntyre, Washington’s code enforcement officer, said it could take weeks or months to demolish the structure. Initial estimates of the cost of the demolition came in at about $500,000, which Mr. McIntyre said would be the responsibility of the property owner, Mark Russo.
Chief Hausman said rescuers knew the danger of entering a crumbling building, but facing that danger to save a woman was what they were trained for.
“We kind of work by a simple motto,” Chief Hausman said. “Risk a lot to save a lot. Risk a little to save a little. [Wednesday] we could save a lot.”
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