Florida Task Force 1 Response

By LOUIE Fernandez

Tools and training: How many times have you heard those words uttered by your training officers in your own organization? We can all remember our own experienced leaders in our department shouting at us constantly about carrying our hand tools and using them properly, not just to prop open a door either. As firefighters, we also train in our various specialties: rescue, ventilation, fire suppression, extrication, and so on. We all have become excited by the newest tool, gadget, or upgrade. But in Haiti, all the Miami-Dade (FL) Fire Rescue Urban Search and Rescue Team had for the first few days of the earthquake response were trusty hand tools: the pry bar, the halligan, the sledgehammer, the pickhead ax, and the flathead ax.

(1) The most common hand tools were used in every extrication. FL-TF 1 rescue specialists worked underneath the concrete slab while another squad got ready to take over. (Photo by author.)

The earthquake that occurred in Haiti on January 12, 2010, would put all of the training of Florida Task Force 1 (FL-TF1) members to the test. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated FL-TF1 to respond to the devastating earthquake in the Caribbean country. Eighty members and eight canines made up the team that assembled for this challenging mission with more than 62,000 pounds of tools and equipment.

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake had occurred in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Although initial news footage did not provide much information, Miami-Dade has a very large Haitian population, and the word spread around our community on how devastating the quake was.

Getting our team to Haiti was not easy. Haiti’s capital airport had only one landing strip and one taxiway, and thus incoming flights were limited. Because of aviation weight restrictions, our equipment cache and personnel had to be carried on three planes. While the task force members and some of our equipment arrived less than 48 hours after the quake, most of our heavy breaking and breaching tools would not arrive for another 36 hours.

CONDITIONS ON ARRIVAL

There was no public safety infrastructure in Haiti for the first few days. Although we were able to set up a base of operations at the U.S. Embassy, everything else we did—including what we ate, what tools we used, how we slept, and where we bathed—was done with our own planning. Our task force is self-sustainable for up to 72 hours. When working as firefighters in our own communities on a daily basis and when responding to disasters domestically, we all come to expect that the second-in unit or that support mechanism will be readily available to us, within reason, of course. In Haiti, or in practically any foreign disaster, resources are scarce.

(2) FL-TF 1 Structural Engineer Greg McClelland directed shoring to be used at the onset of this rescue. [Photos by Captain Ray Bell, Miami-Dade (FL) Fire Rescue.]

The main success of our team was the ability to adapt to the circumstances. Our team had to rely on transportation from the embassy; the largest vehicle available was a 10-passenger van. Instead of sending out 15- to 20-member squads like we do when we have larger vehicles, we sent out eight- to 12-person reconnaissance (recon) teams. Each team had the following:

• 1 rescue squad officer.
• 1 medical specialist.
• 1 medical doctor.
• 1 structural engineer.
• 2 canine handlers.
• 2, 3, 4, or 5 rescue specialists (depending on available space).

(3) Once the shoring was established, rescuers began the extrication process. Note the unstable environment in which the FL-TF1 personnel were working.

Each team carried an assortment of hand tools and supplies, including the following:

• Pry bar.
• Halligan.
• Flathead and pickhead axes.
• Sledgehammer.
• Generator.
• Small breaking hammer.
• Portable lights.
• Fuel can.
• Water and military meals ready-to-eat (MREs).

Our task force sent out four recon teams daily, and sometimes up to six teams left the embassy if transportation was available. We also held a rescue squad in reserve back at the embassy. If a recon team found a survivor in the rubble, immediate extrication began; then the closest other recon team assisted until the larger rescue group arrived with the heavy breaking and breaching equipment and additional personnel. However, the majority of the extrication work was done with hand tools. Hand tools were used more than any other type of equipment for this disaster; and they were ultimately associated with the most successful numbers of survivor extrications from the rubble.

(4) Team members broke through the second floor of the home and were only inches from reaching the children. [Photos by Captain Ray Bell, Miami-Dade (FL) Fire Rescue.]

By nightfall, teams returned, and decontamination of personnel, tools, and canines was the first order of business. Data were compiled from returning squads including GPS, photos, and verbal accounts. This information was then incorporated into our incident command system forms for documentation and historical purposes. New information was then obtained from the United Nations and the U.S. Embassy for our assignments for the following day.

TWO CHILDREN RESCUED

On the evening of January 17, 2010, an eight-member recon team inspected an area around a very popular theatre, the Imperial Theatre, in Port-au-Prince. As we approached the theatre, a Brazilian news crew notified our team that they had heard sounds coming from a collapsed building right down the street. The news crew reported that up to four children were trapped and still alive. There was already a Brazilian search and rescue team working on the theatre, so our recon team decided to advance with the news crew.

(5) The six-year-old boy caught a glimpse of his parents for the first time in days. The boy had just been removed from an area where two of his siblings were trapped with him. One of his brothers had been deceased for at least 24 hours.

Accessibility through the streets was not easy. Rubble was everywhere, and our vehicles were pretty much confined to traveling on the main streets only. Our vehicle stopped about a block uphill from the collapsed building. The Brazilians spoke Portuguese, and several members of our recon squad spoke Spanish, so we were able to communicate quite well. We found a three-story residence that had collapsed. Access to the multistory home was from the roof of the building immediately adjacent to it. Several locals and a lone rescuer from a Mexican search and rescue group were on scene. Immediately our canines went to work; one alerted to a specific area while the other confirmed the presence of survivors. The immediate concern was to reach the survivors as soon as possible, but it also became very obvious how structurally unstable the building was. We requested more team members to support the operation. Close to 40 members worked at the height of the rescue.

We brought in shoring to stabilize the falling exterior wall right above the floor where we needed to work. Although the canines had alerted in the area, our first inspection hole had not revealed any of the survivors. We attempted a secondary inspection hole, but the use of the breaking and breaching tool had caused a secondary wall collapse. We used a smaller 13⁄4-inch hammer drill until we could shore all walls in the area around the alert.

(6) Just minutes after her brother was extricated, this 14-year-old girl was removed from the building as well. Both children were virtually uninjured and treated on scene by FL-TF 1 medical personnel.

Once we made a secondary inspection hole, we could see the survivors. We carved a larger 36- × 36-inch access hole out of the 12-inch-thick concrete slab. We then were able to pass some water, a flashlight, and portions of MREs to three children trapped below the bottom level. As team members continued to remove pieces of the concrete floor, they reached the first child, a six-year-old boy. A few minutes later, rescuers removed the boy’s 14-year-old sister. The third child in the building had already perished several days before; the two surviving children had spent several days in the same void space with their deceased sibling. Finding survivors among the deceased in Haiti was common for our team.

Once we removed both children from the structure, we gave them to FL-TF1 medical staff and then reunited them with their parents. Both children were treated on scene and taken to a Spanish field hospital that had been established nearby. This one rescue operation took about five hours from start to finish. We found other deceased victims in this structure as well, and several were still unaccounted for.

VICTIMS OF PANCAKE COLLAPSE

On the fourth day after our arrival, our recon squad was assigned to search collapsed schools in the capital. Many universities and schools in Haiti were almost all single building sites, mostly four to eight stories high. We saw an eight-story collapsed university with several dozen people gathered around the perimeter—a good indication that there still might be survivors present. We noticed a five-member Mexican search team working there as well and asked if they needed assistance. They quickly said yes.

While working on the school, we received a passionate plea to search for two children trapped in a collapsed home next door. We used canines to search the adjacent house. Unfortunately, we found no survivors. We were briefed by and began to coordinate tactics with the Mexican team. Both teams entered the building and almost immediately were able to hear audible voices of several survivors. The canines alerted and confirmed the presence of several victims. The Mexican team began to work on a single female survivor while we worked on rescuing the multiple live victims in another area of the collapse. Simultaneously the call went out to our base camp for additional resources.

(7) Under international search and rescue guidelines, markings used on structures are different from what rescuers are used to seeing domestically. The markings are as follows: The left side just outside the box is the number of survivors removed, the bottom is the number of possible victims unaccounted for, and the right side is the number of deceased removed. The information inside the box identifies a “No Go” warning and the team identifier, “United States 3,” which was FL-TF1’s designator for this international event. [Photo by Captain Ray Bell, Miami-Dade (FL) Fire Rescue.]

As we waited for additional team members, we continued the search for survivors and removal of light debris. By now several hundred onlookers were present, and the National Police responded to the area for crowd control.

Unfortunately, because of the lack of structural integrity, we were unable to make entry into the building where we thought the survivors were. We repositioned and entered the building from the lower right side to assess the situation. The victims were all located on the second and third floors. Three stories were lean-to and five were pancake collapses (floor on floor). The victims were all 15 feet above the second lean-to and third pancake. By now our other task force members had arrived with heavy breaking and breaching tools. However, the integrity of the building was still extremely unstable; we couldn’t even use any power tools to cut the rebar because of possible further collapse. A large, heavy excavator working across the street was ordered to stop because debris was falling on rescuers and hampering the rescue effort.

As the interior team proceeded to slowly shore and make access, we heard additional victims beneath the debris. The on-site task force safety officer was working closely with our structural specialist to constantly reassess the floors and the structure. In total, the interior teams found five live survivors in between the third- and fourth-floor collapse.

We readjusted the tactics to have two Mexican rescue team members continue to extricate a single female patient while we worked on removing the five male patients. We were able to make a small 16- × 16-inch hole through the third floor with small hand tools. We removed five male survivors from the third floor and then carried them through a 50-foot void space. Each individual survivor exiting the building received medical treatment.

Two recon team members stayed in the building and assisted the Mexican rescue team with the extrication of the female survivor. Teams removed the young girl using a stokes basket with tubular webbing. We lowered her 15 feet to ground level and then horizontally dragged her in the stokes basket through a narrow void space from rescuer to rescuer. We found an unviable patient totally encapsulated in debris and tagged him as deceased. We performed six live rescues in this joint search and rescue effort.

FL-TF 1 has been involved in urban search and rescue since the mid 1980s, when it responded to the Mexico City earthquake. Every disaster has concluded with a common theme: “This was the worst I have ever seen.” Miami-Dade Chief Herminio Lorenzo was part of a contingent to bring supplies to Haiti and went out with one of the FL-TF1 recon teams. When he returned to our base at the end of a shift, he commented, “I have been in the fire service for more than 35 years, and I have never seen such destruction.”

The entire 11-day mission was the most successful in the history of the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System and for the members of FL-TF1—and it also was the worst disaster any of us had ever seen … once again.

LOUIE Fernandez is a 23-year-veteran of Miami-Dade (FL) Fire Rescue and a captain in the training and safety division. He serves as a member of Florida Task Force 1 and of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue’s Incident Support Team. He is the author of The Crisis Communications Handbook and has a bachelor’s degree in public administration and an associate degree in fire science.