After being saved from a frightful underground pit by a massive FDNY rescue effort, all construction worker Joseph Barone wanted yesterday was to go home and enjoy a tall cold one.
“I’m going to have a beer and relax when I get home. It’s golf season, I want to get out on the golf course,” the Lyndhurst, NJ, man told The Post yesterday while recovering from his ordeal at Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Barone had gotten stuck chest- deep in quicksand-like slurry — which is a mix of mud and cement — while working on the Second Avenue subway project Tuesday at about 8:30 p.m.
He was saved thanks to the efforts of more than 150 firefighters, who labored for four grueling hours in the hole 75 feet below East 95th Street.
Barone suffered severe bruising and hypothermia.
“It was f–king cold,” he said. “As soon as I got in the mud, it sucked me in.”
The incident was one of the most elaborate FDNY rescues in recent memory and involved a special pump and firefighters digging through the slurry with their hands.
“The firemen were reassuring me, [saying] ‘You’re coming out of here.’ They said, ‘We’re not leaving you,’ ” Barone recalled. “I just stayed calm. You can’t panic. I’m a calm person.”
He did worry who would provide for his family.
“I was thinking if I don’t come home, who’s going to pay the bills?” he said.
At one point, EMTs medicated Barone to ease his pain. A chaplain was called to the scene.
Eventually, a metal cage was lowered into the pit and used to extract him.
“I got out of the hole and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, everyone is here,’ ” he said.
Despite the harrowing experience, the hard hat was in good spirits while resting yesterday.
“He’s always in a good mood,” his wife, Candy, said.
The construction worker, with 27 years on the job, was concerned about his cellphone.
“I lost my phone and $30 in the [slurry],” he said.