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Only On 2: Construction Worker Impaled By 2 Steel Rods Talks About His Miraculous Survival

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com)  —  If you saw the incident play out on live TV, it's something you would never forget.

And if you saw it on live TV, you'd wonder how the construction worker who was impaled by two large steel rods though his chest is still alive.

It happened on Nov. 1 in downtown Los Angeles.

CBS2's Erica Nochlin spoke to Sergio Pantoja and his attorney in a story that is Only On 2.

Two pieces of steel rebar stuck out of his chest. One of the rods came less than an inch from a major artery. The other barely missed his heart.

Pantoja said he was conscious through it all.

Removing the rebar before surgery would have been deadly. The medical director said that the time it was a miracle he even survived at all.

Pantoja spoke out Wednesday night, the first time he's talking about his ordeal.

He's not sure he will ever be able to comprehend what happened. At 28-years-old, he suffered a blow to his head, six staples in his chest, six fractured ribs and now he's also missing 2/3rds of a lung.

"[I'm] just happy to be alive," he said.

Nochlin asks him, in disbelief, how he was conscious during the entire ordeal.

"Yeah, hat's what they said," he recalls, "but I don't remember anything."

"He's got retro and anterograde amnesia probably because the incident was so traumatic, but he does suffer from very active nightmares," says his attorney Tina Odjaghian.

His attorney has already filed a worker's compensation lawsuit and that she is looking to explore all legal options for her client.

"I have never seen anything quite this catastrophic, and it really truly is a miracle that he survived," said Odjaghian.

Pantoja says he can't look at the video of what happened or pictures that so many people saw on live TV.

"I choose not to. I don't want to.  I don't want to go back," he said.

He says he would rather move forward than look back. He has the support of his wife and two children, Eli and Adora.

It's not easy on him. He's unable to pick up the children and his wife is his caregiver.

"It's hard for me to get around now, breathing, stuff like that. I can't lift certain things," Pantoja says. "I'm just grateful everyone who was there, firefighters, co-workers, anyone who had to do with the accident and made a difference.

"I'm grateful, lucky, all the above to just be alive still."

OSHA is still investigating the accident.

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