Last Person Rescued From WTC Tells Story

N E W  Y O R K, Sept. 28 -- For 27 terrifying hours, Genelle Guzman expected to die, trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Instead, she became the fifth and last person pulled out alive

Guzman worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on the 64th floor of Tower Two, the second to be hit by a hijacked plane on the morning of Sept. 11.

"When I saw that it became dark and no one came and I am not hearing any noises nowhere around, I said I am not going to make it," she recalled, speaking from New York's Bellevue Hospital.

When the first plane struck the other tower, Guzman remembers an announcement telling workers to stay in their offices. But when the second plane hit their tower, she and 14 co-workers decided to get out and headed for the stairs.

"My girlfriend and I were holding hands all the way down," she said. As they descended, firemen passed them heading upstairs, telling them to be careful.

Guzman asked her friend to help her take off her shoes, and then the building began to crumble around them.

"I told her to hold my shoes then it was like 'boom,'" the 32-year-old woman said. "We fell to the ground. We were thrown together."

Alone, Trapped, and Losing Hope

Eventually she found herself standing in a corner, as more and more debris rained down. When collapse was over, her head was trapped between two concrete pillars, and her legs were pinned by the rubble. She did not know where her friend was.

Gradually, night fell, and Guzman began to give up hope of rescue.

"I am going die here. I am going to see myself slowly die here," she recalled thinking.

She said she asked God to show her a miracle.

"Show me a sign that I am going get out of here," she prayed.

Eventually, she began to hear noises, and she began to shout. Rescuers responded, shouting back, and waving a flashlight, but she was too far buried to see the beam.

Rescuer Reached Her Hand Through the Rubble

She banged one piece of concrete against another, and the searchers closed in on her location. Guzman remembers she reached a hand out through the rubble, and someone — a fireman, she thinks — took it.