Rescue of Davenport woman from building wreckage took hours, amputation

DAVENPORT — Two days after Quanishia White-Berry was rescued from the wreckage of a partially collapsed downtown Davenport apartment building, her wife, Lexus, won’t leave her side at the hospital.

It took a team of first responders and surgeons hours to rescue her. Trapped beneath the rubble at The Davenport, a six-floor building at 324 Main St., rescuers Monday amputated her left leg above the knee to free her.

Just hours earlier, Lexus and Quanishia were sitting in their fourth-floor apartment and noticed a crack above the bathroom doorway.

Lexus snapped a picture, but they both knew something was wrong. Each grabbed one of their two cats to leave, Lexus said. Then everything fell on top of her. Lexus managed to get to the door, but Quanishia was gone.

“There was nothing left but where I was standing,” Lexus told a reporter Sunday night.

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She watched that night as city officials talked with the media. She urged them from the crowd to continue looking for her wife amid the rubble.

In a phone interview Tuesday afternoon, Lexus said that the day of the collapse she refused to leave the perimeter of the downtown area except to change into a fresh pair of clothes friends brought for her. Friends took her to a restaurant, but she couldn’t eat.

She had to stay close in case someone contacted her with updates on her wife.

And they did.

“It was a sense of relief because I had been in the dark for so long, but I said: ‘I don’t feel like she’s gone. I feel like she’s just trapped somewhere. I know she’s just trapped. She’s going to hang on,’“ Lexus said.

She was taken to an access door, where rescuers had entered the building. A blur of doctors, engineers and first responders introduced themselves and gave her updates on Quanishia. They said her wife was conscious throughout the ordeal.

“And she asked, wondering if I was OK,” Lexus said. “The fact that she’s trapped and asked if I’m OK, that’s her character.”

Then, like a game of telephone, first responders reported progress back to Lexus.

“Every time they got any type of new activity, they’d come to tell me that: ‘OK, we’re getting closer and closer. We’re moving stuff,’” Lexus said. “ ‘OK can’t get her now; OK we’re almost there.’”

But because Quanishia was pinned by debris, rescuers told Lexus they’d have to perform an on-site amputation.

“There was a lot of debris and things surrounding her and her legs were pinned down,” Lexus said. “They were able to get one leg out, but the other leg in order to get her out, they had to amputate it.”

They first allowed Lexus a chance to see her wife.

“They gave me literally just a minute, if not 40 seconds,” she said. “They gave me a hard hat, and there were about three or four of them that walked me into the building.”

She said the building was dark, with barely enough of a path to walk in.

“It was a scene that I’ll never forget,” Lexus said. “I’ll never forget that image of the way she was trapped. I just got to say, ‘I love you, you’re OK, you got this. Don’t worry.’“

She was escorted back out of the building before the amputation, but she saw medical personnel administer pain-numbing medication. Then Quanishia was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Lexus was close behind.

Quanishia remained hospitalized and heavily sedated Tuesday, Lexus said. A ventilator was helping her breathe and other tubes connect her body to machines and liquids.

She said doctors were going day by day. They’re still assessing whether Quanishia will need more surgeries or other treatments.

On Tuesday, Lexus was feeling numb, she said, as she tried to process what happened and plan for the next days and months of recovery.

“I have to be strong for her. I can’t think, ‘Why did this happen?’ I can’t go into depression,” she said. “I just have to be strong for both of us and move forward for both of us and just know that she is going to be OK — she is going to heal — and manifest that for her.

“I know how strong she is, because she was down there for over seven hours and she survived, so she can survive anything,” Lexus said. “It’s just the feeling of knowing that she’s hurt, hurts me. I hate to see her in pain. It’s really hard to see her in the state that she is.”