“Something’s wrong,” 24-year-old Quanishia “Peach” White Berry recalled saying, just moments before her Davenport, Iowa building collapsed around her. “I just felt it in my soul.” Peach and her wife, Lexus, were preparing to leave their apartment after they noticed cracks start to appear throughout their unit. As they rushed to reach the door—their cats in hand—the building came crashing down around them. “I was so scared,” Peach said. “I was like, ‘what just took place?’” Peach, who fell several stories, found herself trapped under debris. She yelled for Lexus, who safely remained a few floors up, navigating through the rubble. First responders didn’t reach Peach for hours. When they did, she was weak and becoming unresponsive. That’s when trauma surgeon Dr. Calvin Atwell made a decision. “Let’s get her out of here,” he said. “We knew that she’d been trapped for six hours, and we knew that she wasn’t going to survive much longer.” Atwell used a knife and a power saw to amputate Peach’s leg in the midst of the wreckage. She was rushed to the hospital afterwards. Nearly two weeks later, she’s thankful for Atwell’s tough decision. “I’m looking forward to healing and getting good treatment, good care,” she said. “I’m already seeing myself walking again.”
