02 March 2011

U.S. Uses “Heavy Muscle” in Hunt for New Zealand Quake Survivors

Members of Los Angeles' USA-2 rescue team use techniques such as "delayering" in hopes of finding survivors.

By Charlene Porter
Staff Writer

Washington — When you hope to find survivors in the rubble and debris of an earthquake-stricken city, you call up the world’s “heavy muscle.”

After the February 22 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, officials called on the international community for help. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) called the Los Angeles County Urban Search and Rescue team for the assignment. When the unit leaves California for an international disaster it’s known as USA 2, and within about 30 hours, the 74-member unit and all its equipment were flying across the Pacific. They’re known as a “heavy” team, one of just a handful in the world.

“That means you have the capability of working through reinforced concrete and steel buildings, like you would see in a collapsed high-rise or a collapsed parking structure,” explained Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Larry Collins. “It means you bring in heavy jackhammers, heavy cutting and breaching tools. It’s heavy muscle coming in,” Collins told America.gov.

The death toll from the earthquake stood at 160 late on March 2, with the expectation that the figure would increase as still-unidentified bodies are added to the total. Some 80 people are still unaccounted for, so authorities fear the event will have taken the lives of 240 people, Christchurch residents and international visitors among them.

As the days since the quake pass, the “curve of survivability” is descending, said a second Los Angeles County Fire Department battalion chief, Pat Rohaley. Still, survivors have been found after as many as 13, and even 16, days trapped under rubble in other quake events.

Collins has been working in urban search and rescue (USAR) since the discipline was first defined in the late 1980s. With skills and techniques developed over years, the “heavy” teams work to find people who are “deeply entombed.”

“If there’s someone still alive somewhere in one of those collapsed buildings, they’ll be found,” Collins said.

Los Angeles rescuers survey a collapsed parking gargage in Christchurch as part of a multinational group helping New Zealanders recover from a Febraury 22 earthquake.

Rohaley told America.gov that one serious challenge for the rescuers in Christchurch is the ground. It keeps shaking.

“We come from California,” Rohaley said, “so we get used to what that feeling is when the ground starts shaking.” The crews are trained to judge the aftershocks and make quick decisions about whether to come off the rubble and retreat to a safer place.

The USA 2 search-and-rescue team will remain in Christchurch until at least next week, Rohaley predicted.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN SEARCH AND RESCUE

Eight international teams are working side by side in Christchurch. Chances are some of these rescuers may have met before — at another earthquake, another landslide, flood, or terrorist attack somewhere in the world. The search-and-rescue teams share an international network created through the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group, which serves as a professional forum and exchange for these emergency-response specialists.

Rohaley says the worldwide USAR network has developed “best practices” on techniques used on a disaster site: stabilizing a collapsing building, the use of search dogs, the use of rope systems for debris removal, etc.

Though many search-and-rescue units exist administratively within fire and emergency response departments, their specialties include more than firefighting. Structural engineers, emergency medicine physicians, paramedics, canine handlers and others bring a broad portfolio of skills to a disaster site.

Collins calls the Los Angeles unit an “all-risk rescue team,” prepared for a wide array of disasters. Collins himself last was deployed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake there. Many of those now in Christchurch, he said, were deployed to Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The Los Angeles rescuers have also joined the effort to find survivors after major terrorist attacks in the United States.

In any international deployment, Collins said, the California rescuers are making an investment in experience and in good will, and are honored to be doing it. They always remember that they are Los Angelinos, and quakes, wildfires and mudslides are common in their city.

“We know that we may need them all one day,” Collins said.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)