Woman Hurt in NYC Steam Blast Speaks
NEW YORK --
The fading pink nail polish on Margo Kane's right toes is more than three months old.
It marks the time she has lingered in the hospital - longer than anybody else injured in the July 18 steam-pipe explosion that left her foot hanging by a sliver of skin and muscle. She has endured depression, repeated surgeries and unrelenting pain, and may yet lose her foot.
"You don't do too much," Kane, 70, told The Associated Press as she tearfully recounted her story publicly for the first time. "You just try to survive."
Kane has survived - almost anonymously. From the beginning she has been on the periphery of a disaster centered on two other severely injured victims.
Greg McCullough and Judith Bailey were in a tow truck swallowed up by the eruption of the aging Consolidated Edison pipe, which injured dozens, caused a woman to have a fatal heart attack and sent a jolt of fear through the city.
The towering geyser of steam and mud blew out a huge crater near Grand Central Terminal and flung rock, asphalt, concrete and cobblestones into the air.
Firefighters and others ran around frantically, some trying to rescue people from two disabled buses. Battalion Chief John Joyce was among those barreling toward the tow truck, unaware McCullough and Bailey had managed to escape.
As Joyce approached the truck, he spotted something through the corner of his eye.
It was Kane. She was buried in rubble 20 feet from the crater, in deep shock. Joyce said she was "out of it" and was desperately trying to protect her face as rocks pummeled her.
Her right leg was badly wounded above the ankle, leaving her foot basically hanging by a thread.
"There was nothing left of her leg," Joyce said. "She took a beating. I can't believe she was alive."
Joyce helped pull her out and carried her to another spot, where he handed her off to another group of firefighters who took her to an ambulance. Later he visited her at Bellevue Hospital.
In a bedside interview, Kane said she had ended up at the site of explosion after she left work five minutes early to get her hair cut. A legal secretary at the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, she got off a bus and began walking toward the salon.
She turned and heard a tremendous boom.
"All of a sudden I was flying," Kane said. "I spun around and came crashing down."
Everything was black. There was debris everywhere.
"Stones were falling down on me. I was trying very hard to see," she said. "I really thought the whole city was gone."
Then she looked down. "I couldn't see it," she said. "I obviously didn't have a leg."
Kane and her lawyer, Anthony D. Martine, suspect a hurtling chunk of debris from the ruptured street splintered her tibia and fibia a few inches above the ankle, shearing her foot.
Doctors reattached her right foot using muscle and skin grafts to wrap around the damaged section in a sort of cocoon. They inserted a steel rod in her leg and her small toe was partially amputated.
The ordeal has been agonizing, Kane said. She is fighting multiple infections and it could be weeks before doctors determine whether the leg should be "lopped" off as she puts it.
"They have not given up on it," she said.
Kane is ready to leave Bellevue but her midtown brownstone apartment isn't accessible by wheelchair. She's anxiously waiting for a bed in a care facility, as she wonders whether she'll be able to keep her foot, and whether she'll be able to walk again.
"That uncertainly has made it unbearable for her," said her son, Pier Carlo Talenti, 39, a literary manager for a Los Angeles theater company.
Kane's lawyer has filed a $10 million notice of claim with the city - the first step in suing Con Ed. The utility is the target of at least 20 lawsuits stemming from the explosion.
Kane has changed since the accident, her son said.
"She feels really broken to me," he said. "It's heartbreaking."
