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Rescuers dug as “many holes as they could” from every possible angle. Both victims, they said, were only 10 feet away – but shovels and gloved hands were little match against the tower of concrete pinning them. While paramedics could not access the victims, their on-site assessment was that both were likely dead or quickly dying.

Meanwhile, the tangle of steel and concrete above the rescuers was shifting.

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The 3,200 square foot concrete ceiling slabs that came down in the Saturday collapse did not smash clean through to the basement. Instead, two floors down they were “caught” by an escalator/stair assembly. As rescuers would later learn, only two steel beams held aloft the basket of debris.

One had visibly bowed and was beginning to slip. The other had broken free — but jammed itself before giving way.

A group of OPP officers kept watch on the twisted escalator for slippage, but after 90 minutes, an engineer’s report finally forced the rescue workers out to plot a new strategy.

“I had to physically remove some of our firefighters,” said the fire chief.

For four days, Elliot Lakers had lit candles, challenged a police barricade and braced for the hour when rescuers would begin carrying out the dozens of dead children, women and grandparents believed crushed by Saturday’s collapse. But amazingly, only two stretchers came out of the Algo Mall Wednesday morning.