As they settled in, Jay heard the radio squawk with a Mayday call from Battalion Chief Richard Prunty, an avuncular figure with a white walrus mustache, somewhere below them in the North Tower’s lobby. Chief Prunty said he was hurt, dizzy, pinned under a steel beam. Jay already knew they couldn’t reach him, but he and Lieutenant Jim McGlynn tried to keep the chief talking. Unsure whether Rich Prunty could be heard by potential rescuers outside the stairwell, Jay and Jim McGlynn relayed his pleas for help to anyone monitoring their radio channels. An hour passed. Prunty was slipping away. They
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