In the moments before he was buried alive in hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, steel beams, filing cabinets and toxic jet fuel on Sept. 11, 2001, Will Jimeno, then a 33-year-old rookie police officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, remembers thinking: “Will, what have you gotten yourself into?”

Shaken by the sight of desperate World Trade Center office workers jumping out of windows, Jimeno had been rushing through the shopping mall beneath the twin monolithic skyscrapers with four other officers, focused on helping evacuate survivors.

Then came a deafening explosion as the 110-floor south tower collapsed — followed by a house-size fireball.

“It sounded like the roar of the devil and felt like a million freight trains coming at me,” recalls Jimeno, who was thrown on his back as debris rained down, instantly killing two of his partners, Christopher Amoroso and Antonio Rodrigues, and pinning him in the deep darkness.

Less than 30 minutes later the north tower disintegrated too. Jimeno watched helplessly as a third officer, Dominick Pezzulo, died. Nearby, trapped under a collapsed wall, lay his supervisor, Sgt. John McLoughlin.

“I remember thinking, ‘We’re going to die,’ ” Jimeno tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. Then his thoughts turned to his 7-months-pregnant wife, Allison, and he begged McLoughlin to put out a call on his radio, not realizing it wasn’t working: “Can you let her know to name our baby Olivia?”

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From left: Rescue workers survey damage to the World Trade Center after 9/11; Will Jimeno in 2021.DOUG KANTER/AFP/Getty; Courtesy 9/11 Day
Jimeno and McLoughlin languished for 10 hours beneath 30 feet of debris before two Marines and a civilian heard their shouts and located them.

With the help of NYPD officers Scott Strauss and Patrick McGee, the first responders spent three hours locked in a high-stakes rescue operation, desperately fighting to get to Jimeno. (McLoughlin was removed some eight hours after that.)

“The firemen were telling us to get out because they couldn’t control the fires,” says the now-retired Strauss, 63. “We told them, ‘We’re staying, and we’re getting them out.’ ”

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When Jimeno was finally dragged out, he emerged into a city and a nation reeling and ravaged. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in a series of al-Qaida terror attacks that led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

But even amid the global turmoil, there were signs of hope. In November 2001, Jimeno watched Olivia’s birth from a wheelchair on his 34th birthday — and he’s spent every day since alongside Allison focused on raising Olivia and her older sister Bianca in a world forever changed by that terrible morning a quarter century ago.

“So many people never made it home that day, but I’ve been blessed with a second lease on life,” says Jimeno, now 58. “I’ve been able to watch my daughters grow up, to be there for their communions, their birthday parties, to see them graduate and become beautiful young ladies who have made Allison and I so proud.”

Jimeno with daughter Olivia, who was born weeks after he was rescued from the rubble of Sept. 11, 2001.Courtesy William Jimeno
‘If you fall asleep, you’re going to die’
The day the towers fell started out as a good one for Jimeno, dawning bright and cool. A Navy vet — whose parents emigrated from Colombia shortly after he turned 2 — he was several months into his dream job and had recently purchased his first home in Clifton, N.J.

He awoke early, kissed both Allison’s belly and his 4-year-old daughter Bianca goodbye, then headed to his 7 a.m. shift at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan.

Three hours later Jimeno was fighting for his life inside a cramped smoke- and dust-filled cavern beneath the collapsed World Trade Center complex, with a wall of concrete on top of him and a piece of rebar embedded in concrete wrapped around his left ankle.

“There’s no training for this,” he heard the faint voice of McLoughlin tell him. “This is going to come down to the will we have to survive. If you fall asleep, you’re going to die.”

The two men spent hours in the scorching hot darkness, their bodies racked with pain, fighting the urge to shut their eyes and drift off.

“We prayed a lot, said a lot of Hail Marys,” says Jimeno.

When rescuers finally pulled the half-dead officer free at 11 p.m., he was overwhelmed by the smoldering heap of steel and rubble visible in the moonlight. “Where is everything?”

Jimeno, one of only 20 survivors saved from the wreckage, asked a firefighter, who replied: “It’s all gone, kid.”

Will Jimeno (right) with wife Allison (left) and their daughters in 2020.Courtesy William Jimeno
Rushed to Bellevue Hospital, Jimeno flatlined twice in the emergency room then underwent eight surgeries and spent nearly three months in in-patient care. His left leg is partially paralyzed and some days doesn’t work at all.

“It’s a small price to pay to still be here with my family,” he says. The ordeal also took its toll on his mental health, resulting in explosive rages of anger.

On two occasions he contemplated suicide. “I had to learn how to look at the triggers,” he says, adding, “It was a long, long process.”

By late 2002 Jimeno — whose injuries eventually led to his 2004 retirement from the Port Authority — knew he had to get help for his post-traumatic stress disorder and found solace in the words of a therapist who told him, “You have to learn to live with this. There is no cure.”

Sharing his story, which McLoughlin also continues to do, allowed him to help others process their pain. “Everyone focuses on the darkness,” he says. “But for me, I focus on the light.”

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These days life is full for Jimeno, his wife, who is also retired, and their daughters. “I count my blessings every single minute,” says Olivia, now 24, who works for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Auburn, Ala.

She’s one of millions of young people who grew up with no memory of 9/11, though it shaped her life. Jimeno was an unfailing presence in her childhood — there for every cheerleading competition and volleyball meet, the one who taught her to turkey hunt.

“This is part of my family’s legacy forever,” Olivia says. “Everyone that day [on Sept. 11] has a story, and he’s still here to explain their story for them too.”

When Jimeno looks back, he credits his spirit in the face of enormous loss to a kind of resilience as old as the U.S. itself.

“Hopefully you won’t have to suffer tragedy in your lifetime, but a lot of us will,” he says. “And when that happens, you have to get up, pick up the pieces and move forward.”