FireRescue magazine's Technical Rescue Web column
Thank You, Haiti Rescue Responders
By Harold Schapelhouman

As the national (and international) urban search and rescue (USAR) task forces return from Haiti, they deserve our thanks for a job well done. They performed difficult jobs under extremely difficult conditions, and they did so in representation of the United States of America.

Although the situation in Haiti, particularly during the first days after the quake, was dim and grim, and will continue to be so in some ways for many, many years, the USAR teams gave hope to Haiti and the rest of the world through their selfless and courageous acts of pulling victims from the rubble who otherwise would have never seen the light of another day. Each remarkable rescue was cause for a small celebration in what will most likely be one of the worst natural and human disasters of this decade and of our time.

Life & Death
To put it simply, the Haitian earthquake created a disaster within a disaster. Haiti is a struggling nation in many respects, with buildings, homes and other poorly constructed structures without building safety codes and proper infrastructure. As a result, the Haitian death toll may exceed 200,000. There are also 250,000 or more injured and 600,000 now homeless. (By comparison, the 1970 Bangladesh cyclone and 1974 northeast China earthquake killed up to 300,000 people each, while the most recent disaster of our time, the Indian Ocean tsunami, killed more than 220,000 people.)

If there’s a positive side to this catastrophe, it’s that responders from the United States and other countries performed more than 133 live rescues in Haiti. That number may seem small in comparison to other disasters given the scale of the event, but to those of us who understand the complexity, difficulty and danger of de-layering structures to unearth and find entombed victims, it’s something that the technical rescue community should be proud of and learn from.

Less than 5 percent of buried victims fall into the entombment category. Professional rescuers with technical knowledge and skills are required to successfully perform those types of rescues so that the secondary effects of crush and compartment syndrome don’t spoil initial victories and lead to the victim's eventual death due to lack of proper medical care.


A Change in Disaster Response Strategy
The Haitian earthquake challenged the United States’ existing response system, which is monitored via the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), or USAID. That system has designated two of the 28 national USAR task forces as International Response Teams: Fairfax County, Va., on the East Coast and Los Angeles County on the West Coast.

For the Haiti incident, however, two U.S. task forces would have been inadequate, so an additional four national task forces from Florida, Virginia and New York were deployed to Haiti, with four more on standby in Ohio, Texas and California. A rotation model was developed to help sustain operations among all 28 national task forces similar to the model used during 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

In response to the additional task forces deployed to Haiti, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had to set a limit, similar to that followed by California, on how many task forces could leave the country. In the end, FEMA established a rule that no more than 10 of the 28 task forces could be out of the country at any given time.

Setting that rule helped reinforce a belief held by many that a second federal task force equipment cache is needed and warranted by each federal task force in this country. The second cache would primarily be used for training, but could also be deployed by local agencies during an emergency if the primary task force was deployed elsewhere.

Note: The idea that 10 task forces could leave the country at once should also remind all of us that there’s still unfinished business in this country regarding the proper resource typing and the development of a comprehensive national mutual-aid system for the U.S. fire and rescue community.

Despite the fact that we haven’t pulled all the federal, state and local pieces together into a national framework, the good news is the United States can release a significant number of technical rescue assets and still have adequate coverage via federal, state and local technical teams. That’s important in a post-9/11 world for two reasons: we need to have the ability to handle multiple major events in this country, and we also owe it to the 343 firefighters and law enforcement officers who lost their lives at the World Trade Center to finally finish this work, albeit almost a decade later.

FDNY Deployment
I couldn’t help but smile when I heard that New York’s task force (NY-TF1) had deployed and was being led by Joe Downey, son of the legendary Ray Downey who lost his life attempting to save others when the second World Trade Center tower collapsed on 9/11. Ray was an icon in the rescue community and one of the fathers of the national USAR program. The journey taken by NY-TF1, which has enabled them to move beyond 9/11 and deploy to Haiti, has been a long and difficult one. I’m sure Ray was looking down and smiling at both his son and the team.

On the Sidelines
As always, it was hard for me and many other rescue professionals to be on the sidelines here in the States during this incident, but it was rewarding to listen in on some of the conference calls or read the daily situation reports or articles about what was going on.

I’m excited and interested to learn what search and rescue techniques worked well and which did not, or what tools helped or hindered operations. Beyond the glory of the rescues, that’s what will be most important to the rescue community. That kind of knowledge allows us to improve our craft, hone our skills and learn from each other as we continue to ratchet up and perfect our preparedness, response efforts and capability here at home.

In that regard, Haiti became an opportunity to not only to show our compassion and capability as a nation, but also a “testing ground” for our response system, the task forces and the individuals who were deployed and they all passed with flying colors.

Thank You
To all those who responded, we thank you for your service, tireless effort, unbelievable achievements but most of all, we welcome you all safely home!

Harold Schapelhouman is a 28-year veteran firefighter with the Menlo Park (Calif.) Fire Protection District. At the start of 2007, he became the first internally selected fire chief in 21 years for his organization. Previously, he was the division chief in charge of special operations, which includes all district specialized preparedness efforts, the local and state water rescue program, and the local, state and National Urban Search and Rescue Program (USAR).

Schapelhouman was the task force leader in charge of California Task Force 3, one of the eight California USAR teams and one of the 28 federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS/FEMA) teams.

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