How a construction worker impaled on the job was saved by EMS workers

PATERSON, N.J. – It was the type of freak construction accident that most emergency medical responders never come across in their entire careers.

A worker had fallen through a roof and landed about 18 feet below, in a semi-fetal position, impaled on two metal rods of rebar that were 4 feet long and 1 inch thick.

One rod protruded from the man’s hip area. The other posed a bigger problem: It had entered the man through his lower right back area, passed through the middle of his body and exited his upper left chest.

Saul Cintron, a captain with the fire department in Paterson, New Jersey, recalled the questions that raced through his mind at the scene of the Dec. 10, 2022, accident: “Is his heart impacted? The lungs? The diaphragm? The intestines? The kidney?” Cintron thought. “It could have been any of those, or none of those.”

Medical workers later learned that the rebar passed through the man’s body 1 millimeter from his heart and less than 2 millimeters from a nerve vital to breathing.

“Any little movement could have been fatal,” said Kevin Webb, clinical coordinator for St. Joseph’s University Medical Center’s mobile intensive care unit paramedics.

The ensuing 47-minute successful rescue of the impaled man by a team of hospital paramedics and emergency medical technicians recently won them the outstanding action award at last month’s national conference on emergency medical services.

'Don't let me die'

First responders said the incident during the construction of a 138-unit apartment building at the site of the former Paterson Armory posed numerous hazards and obstacles, starting with the fact that the man had fallen onto the seventh story, which was a few floors above where the regular stairs ended.

So responders laden with heavy equipment had to navigate rickety makeshift construction site stairs made up of wooden boards that had been nailed together. The 51-year-old man was conscious and alert, even with the two metal bars sticking through his body.

“That was probably the most shocking thing – how calm he was considering what was going on,” Cintron said.

“The only thing he said was, ‘Please don’t let me die,’” the fire captain said.

The EMTs used what is commonly called a jaws of life tool to cut the bar going through the man's hip, they said. But that cutter made the bar move, which would be too dangerous for the rod sticking through his chest.

So, on the second piece of rebar, they employed a demolition saw with a diamond tip, responders said. They were worried the saw would heat up the metal passing through the man’s body, so one of the EMTs sprayed water from an extinguisher onto the saw as it sliced through the rebar, Cintron said.

The other danger was that the man might move while the metal was being cut, so two responders held him still during the process, the captain said.

Once the man was disconnected from the metal in the concrete floor, the EMTs loaded him into an evacuation basket, with sections of the rebar still sticking out of the top of his body. Two EMTs accompanied him in the firetruck’s rescue bucket to keep him stable as it was lowered from the seventh floor to ground level.

'A freak accident':This is how a safety consultant was impaled at a Paterson site

'There definitely was a higher power at work here'

About 30 people played roles in the dramatic rescue, officials said.

“We constantly train for scenarios that are out of the ordinary,” said Paterson Fire Chief Alex Alicea.

The victim, whose name has not been made public, worked for a safety consultant hired by developer Charles Florio, whose building was involved. As part of the nomination for the EMS award, the applicants included a letter from the man, who chose not to attend the ceremony.

In thinking back to the accident scene, Cintron talked about a third piece of rebar that had ripped through the man’s hood.

“It looked like it should have gone right through his head,” the fire captain said. “But it just wasn’t his time. There definitely was a higher power at work here.”