When the World Trade Center collapsed a young office worker was buried alive for 27 hours. As the last 911 survivor found, her rescue story is incredible but the impossible encounter she had in the dark changed her life forever.
Genelle Guzman-McMillan was 31 and working for the Port Authority on the 64th floor of the North Tower. It was September 11 2001 and she had only started her job earlier that year. She was at her desk talking with a coworker when the first plane crashed into the upper floors.
Genelle said the massive skyscraper shook like an earthquake and she saw office papers falling like snow outside her window. I can hardly imagine how terrifying it must be to stand that high up with no real idea what was unfolding. They were initially told to stay put, so she waited with her coworkers and made desperate phone calls to her boyfriend Roger and her family just to tell them she loved them.
When the second plane hit the South Tower their building shook violently again and they knew they had to get out. A group of fifteen of them decided to take the stairs. Genelle and her best friend Rosa held hands and carefully counted the flights as they walked down. They even passed brave firefighters heading up around the 30th floor which honestly just gave them this false sense that they were all going to be okay.
When they finally reached the 13th floor, Genelle stopped to take off her high heel boots. In that exact moment the walls caved in and the entire tower collapsed on top of them.
Genelle was thrown to the ground and pinned under thousands of tons of concrete and steel. Her head was wedged tightly against a concrete pillar and her legs were completely crushed beneath the debris. She was buried thirty feet down and the physical pain soon became absolutely unbearable. I just can’t fathom lying there in the eerie silence that followed waiting for the end. She thought it was a nightmare and she actually wanted to close her eyes and just pass away.
Even though her mother was a faithful Christian Genelle admitted she had rejected that lifestyle and wanted to do things her own way. But lying broken in the dark for hours she remembered her mother’s faith and started talking to God.
We all tend to cry out to God when we are frightened but Genelle felt a deep conviction. She begged Him for a second chance and promised that if He saved her she would dedicate her life to Him. She prayed “God, You know this. I know You can do miracle, from what my mom told me. Testimony of what I’ve heard and seen — I know You can do miracles. Just show me a sign that You’re there. Just show me a sign that You’re listening to me.”
Just as she was about to completely give up a hand reached out and grabbed her free left hand. A man called her by her name and told her his name was Paul. He held her hand and kept telling her that she was going to be alright and that help was getting close.
Paul stayed right by her side until rescue workers guided by a heroic search dog named Trakr finally located her.
When the workers finally moved the concrete and pulled her up into the light 27 hours later, Paul was nowhere to be found. None of the men who dug her out had seen him or spoken to him. He knew her name without ever asking and vanished the exact second she was safe. She firmly believes Paul was the guardian angel God sent just to keep her alive in all that rubble.
Genelle was the last person pulled alive from the destruction that day. She spent a month in the hospital and endured four surgeries to save her crushed right leg. Keeping the promise she made to God, she was baptized later that same year and she married Roger.
She later wrote a beautiful book about her experience called Angel in the Rubble to share her testimony.
Looking back at her 9/11 survivor miracle she says, “I’m truly God’s walking miracle. I would say to people, I don’t like people to say you’re lucky. I say I’m blessed, because it’s all God’s grace.”
Genelle had no hope left and she was completely ready to die down there in the cold dust. But God was not done yet. He worked right in that rubble not only to save her physical life but to reach down and rescue her soul.
It brought tears to my eyes when she talked about the man who called her by her name and stayed with her until the help arrived. This immediately reminded me of Isaiah 43:1 which says: “But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine.'”
When we remember 9/11, our hearts still ache thinking about the people who lost their lives and the families who lost their loved ones. Yet right in the middle of that unimaginable heartbreak, we can see clear examples of how God’s loving hands were reaching out to save certain lives.
Genelle was buried thirty feet down under thousands of tons of concrete where no human being could ever have found her on their own. She was completely alone facing the end of her days. But the Creator of the universe knew her by name just as He knows each one of us. He stepped right into that hopeless rubble and turned a tragedy into a profound testimony of His unending grace.
Genelle’s story also reminds us that no prayer goes in vain. Her mother was a woman of deep faith and like any Christian parent who longs for her children to know God she would have prayed for Genelle constantly. Her mother passed away in 1999 but God did not forget those faithful prayers and tears. He transformed Genelle’s heart during the darkest hours the nation has ever witnessed and brought her to salvation.
Let us remember the families who lost their loved ones during the 911 tragedy and pray that God’s everlasting peace may surround each one of them.
WATCH: 9/11 Survivor Genelle Guzman-McMillan Shares Her Miraculous Story
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