Gregory Deighan helped to save Ezekiel T. Wentworth from suffocation, Newburyport, Massachusetts, August 20, 2005. Wentworth, 24, was working with a sealant in an eight-foot-deep concrete cistern that was located below ground under the utility room of a house. The sealant vapors ignited, causing an explosion that was heard throughout the neighborhood. Wentworth was severely burned and lay unconscious on the floor of the cistern. Those responding to the scene included Deighan, 43, data sales manager. Dense smoke filled the utility room and even denser smoke issued from the cistern, access to which was through a hatch in the floor of the room. Learning that Wentworth was inside the cistern, one of the men who had responded entered the cistern by means of a stepladder located beneath the hatch. After repeated attempts, he found Wentworth in the acrid smoke and dragged him to the ladder, then he ascended to the hatch and asked for help. Deighan entered the cistern, and he and the other man hoisted Wentworth up the ladder to the hatch. Other men pulled Wentworth from the cistern, and Deighan and his co-rescuer followed him out. Wentworth required extensive hospitalization for treatment, including several surgeries, of his burns. Deighan was also treated at the hospital, for smoke inhalation, and he recovered.
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