Lucky 2 Meet Their Rescuers
Photog spotted injured fireman

By MELISSA GRACE
Daily News Staff Writer

The last time their paths crossed, Firefighter Kevin Shea was barely conscious, his battered body lying on West St., a block from where the World Trade Center's south tower once stood.

	Firefighter Kevin Shea lies in ash-covered debris in photo taken by Todd Maisel after he got help that saved Shea.

Amid the carpet of gray that enveloped the area, Todd Maisel, a Daily News photographer, somehow spotted Shea.

Maisel ran for help, grabbing four men — a cop, a firefighter, a paramedic and an unidentified man — who managed to pull Shea, 34, to safety.

Since that day, Shea — who had a broken neck, multiple trauma, loss of part of his right thumb and other injuries — has been trying to find out how he made it out alive. He had no recollection of Maisel or the other rescuers. The last thing he remembered from Sept. 11 was being in the south tower lobby.

Part of Shea's rehabilitation was physical. He would spend weeks at a Long Island hospital, performing exercises that have brought him close to full strength. But the other part of Shea's rehabilitation was mental. He had to know how he survived Sept. 11.

Yesterday, he got his answer.

Shea (left) and Maisel are reunited yesterday.

In a emotional reunion, one that began with backslaps and then bear hugs and teary eyes, the two men met for the first time at Shea's tiny upper East Side apartment.

Maisel, 41, came bearing pictures of the firefighter on the ground, covered with soot and grimacing in pain. Besides the red and orange glow of a fire burning brightly nearby, the color picture is otherwise gray because of the dust that settled over much of lower Manhattan that morning.

'He'd Be Dead'

About 20 minutes after that picture was taken, the north tower came down. "If we didn't get him [out], he'd be dead," Maisel said. "That second building would have got him for sure."

Shea was the only member of Engine 40, on the upper West Side, working the morning of Sept. 11 who lived through the Trade Center attacks.

Doctors told Shea that he had talked of crawling 200 feet through debris, following a thin shaft of light. But he doesn't remember any of it.

Likewise, Maisel didn't know the identity of the man he had helped save.

When he displayed his photographs of the rescue at the Bolivar Arellano Gallery, a studio on E. Ninth St. in Manhattan, a firefighter told Maisel he believed the man in the photograph was dead. "That freaked me out. I thought he was alive," Maisel said.

He said he took Shea's picture down and started asking around. He found out that one of the rescuers was Richie Nogan, a firefighter from Ladder 113 in Brooklyn. Maisel contacted Nogan, who told him it was Shea, and that he was alive.

Once he learned that, Maisel said he "went right back to the gallery and put it up on the wall."

Perhaps most surprising to Maisel was seeing Shea walk.

"He wants to go back [to work]," the photographer said. "I can't believe he's healed. I expected to see him in a neck brace."