From Store’s Rubble: 6 Come Back to Life

BROWNSVILLE, Tex. —  In the early morning Friday, after hours of frantic digging throughout the night, the first cheer came from the men and women atop the rubble of the collapsed department store.

Minutes later, Maria Eugenia Lire, 37, was gently lowered from the mound of broken concrete, the first of the six to emerge Friday from what could have been their tomb.

For more than 12 hours, workers--sometimes burrowing with their bare hands--had tried to reach her as she and the others cried out for help from beneath the wreckage of what had been Brownsville’s Amigo Store.

The store, packed with shoppers avoiding the deluge outside, collapsed at 2 p.m. Thursday, as a violent thunderstorm swept over the town, pelting it with rain and lightning and flooding the streets. Witnesses said that the three-story corner building began to sway, and, in seconds, dropped as if it had been hit by a bomb.

Wrote Message on Board

Rescue workers who labored in dehydrating heat and cramped quarters to pull Maria Eugenia Lire from the wreckage found that she had written something on a 1-by-8-inch board where she was trapped. It said: “Cristo es el camino,” (Christ is the way).

Through the night and into Friday, the death toll had risen at the disaster site, less than 100 yards from the downtown international bridge to Mexico. It went from eight on Thursday to 15 on Friday night. Police said 47 other people were injured, not including the six who were dug out alive Friday.

Father Thomas Pincelli twice went down into the hole dug by rescuers to comfort those trapped below.

“The hole was extremely small,” he said. “When I first went in, there were screams, and they pleaded with us to get them out. We asked them not to lose hope, that there were a lot of people working up here to free them. I could see their hands coming from the rubble and two firemen were trying to get as deep down as they could to get liquids to the people.”

Father Pincelli, of Our Lady of Gadalupe Church, left a rosary with one of the women, and he said it seemed to calm her. When he returned, he placed three rosaries and a crucifix in the hands of others who remained trapped.

“They just kept pleading with us to get them out,” he said.

But the next rescue was hours away. Because the sun was already turning hot, even in the early morning, workers erected a yellow-and-white canopy over the dig area. And then, almost immediately, came the second set of cheers as a paramedic clutched a small girl, Laura Acosta, in his arms and climbed off the heap. It was 8:55 a.m.

Pamela Downing, a spokeswoman for the city, said later that the time between the first and second rescue had been so long because the 2-year-old’s head was wedged between two pieces of concrete.

“If we had hurried, we might have decapitated her,” she said.

Hauling Away Debris

Down the street, Ramon Barbosa was waiting in line with a string of dump trucks, ready to haul off debris. He and the other volunteers had already been doing this for 16 hours.

“We’ll be here until they don’t need us,” he said.

At 9:16 a.m., there was a third cheer. Nine-year-old Jorge Lire, Maria Eugenia’s son, was lifted from the wreckage. He had a broken leg. Exactly 20 minutes later, a heavyset woman was brought down from the pile of twisted steel and broken brick. The police said she was Rosalinda Silva de Davila, 46, of Monterrey.

There were two more sets of cheers on Friday morning. One was when workers pulled up Yvette Lire, Jorge’s 13-year-old cousin. The last was when an 8-year-old named Denise Carrera was rescued.

The pocket of the living had been cleared and rescuers did not know where to turn next. Dogs trained to sniff out humans had no luck in the rubble. Navy experts, brought in to use sensitive listening devices, could detect no human sounds in the debris.

“We didn’t find anything,” Downing said.

Frank Pakuszewski, the manager of the Amigo Store until he retired two years ago, stood and watched the crews and the volunteers and the heap that had once been a major part of his world.

‘Reputable Builders’

“The happiest 17 years of my life I spent there,” he said. “I don’t know how it could have happened. The people who built it are very reputable builders.” He said he had talked with the brother of owner Bernard Levin earlier in the day. Miraculously, all 10 employees at the store survived.

As morning crept into afternoon, and hope of finding anyone else alive grew slim, those in charge of the rescue work decided to use heavier equipment to remove the debris.

Dr. Peter Plantes, who was in charge of medical operations at the site, said his main concern now was for the rescue workers, who were being limited to 30-minute shifts in the muggy, 90-degree heat.

“We have to keep these people from getting heatstroke,” he said.

In the background, the big machinery started to rumble and volunteers waited to help.