My Little Brother ... on 9-11-01

 Those first two days down at Ground Zero were physically, emotionally and mentally draining. Despair was everywhere but there were uplifting moments such as the residents applauding us. Additionally, there was a truly inspiring event. On the pile in the remnants of the Twin Towers, I had encountered a childhood friend who lived up the block from me in our neighborhood on the outskirts of Philadelphia. His name is John Chovanes and I had not seen him since we both graduated high school in 1982. Upon seeing him, I was dumbfounded as to what he was doing there.

John is a doctor and when he heard about the attacks, he jumped into his car and raced up to New York. At check points along the way, he told the police officers that he was a doctor and he was coming to help. He worked his way down to Ground Zero and aided in the rescue of two police officers trapped in the rubble. What John did was truly heroic. I was there because I had to be, he was there because he volunteered - courage above and beyond.

Police work tends to attract those of a cynical nature; and if you are not cynical in nature, you soon will be. It is just the nature of the beast. However, even for the most cynical of us, when people like John come to the aid of their fellow man for no other reason than it is the right thing to do, one tends to become a little less cynical and for that, I thank him.
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... Dr. [John] Chovanes told me that the patient still trapped in the debris was reported to be in severe pain and gave me a supply of morphine sulfate to administer if the victim proved stable enough. The other patient, Officer Will Jimeno, had been treated and successfully removed prior to my arrival.
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When I returned to the top of the hole, Dr. Chovanes and I discussed McLoughlin's condition and the severity of his pain, and we agreed that we needed to give McLoughlin morphine for the pain. Dr. Chovanes drew the morphine out of the tubex with a straight needle and entered the hole to administer it.

When Dr. Chovanes resurfaced, we met and established our treatment plan. We had to be prepared for certain contingencies in the event that the rescuers could not get McLoughlin out, if he became unstable or if the scene became even more unstable and dangerous. For any of these possible events, we realized that we would have to be prepared to do rapid bilateral amputations of his lower extremities high on his thighs.

Dr. Chovanes began to develop a plan to do an emergency amputation while I needed to develop a plan to keep McLoughlin from bleeding to death with only the equipment and supplies that I had in my medical pack. Triangular cravats were the best materials I had for tourniquets, but Dr. Chovanes was certain the cravats wouldn't be effective in stopping bleeding from severed femoral arteries. We had to find a better method to control arterial bleeding. We searched through the other equipment and supplies that we had on hand and located the pliers of two Leatherman utility tools. We decided to use these as forceps on the arteries and secure them with electrical tape if amputations became necessary.

Dr. Chovanes' plan for the amputation was to use a cordless Sawzall reciprocating saw. He said he would lightly sedate McLoughlin with Valium and morphine. This was a risky medical option for sedation, because of the CNS and respiratory depressive effects of these drugs. If McLoughlin were to stop breathing, there would be no way to secure his airway because he was laying prone, and we wouldn't be able to administer Narcan during the complicated extrication in which many rescuers would be lifting him up the 45-degree angle steel beam.

Throughout the night and into the next morning, Dr. Chovanes and I rotated into the hole to monitor McLoughlin's condition and administer morphine. We had to re-establish IVs several times because the patent lines would occasionally be pulled out during the digging of dust and rubble that entrapped him.
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Within the hour, McLoughlin was freed and extricated on a backboard.

The rescue team pulled McLoughlin onto a nylon stretcher and then into a Stokes basket, and carefully dragged him up and out of the hole. Hundreds of rescuers passed him, hand-to-hand, to a waiting ambulance.