‘Hey, partner, what’s your name?’ ‘Buck.’ : ‘Where do you hurt?’ ‘I hurt all over.’ : Buck’s Rescue : Heroism: ‘The crowd just went wild’ when Orange County team cut Helm from his squashed Chevy, placed him on a backboard and moved him to safety.

“Hey partner, what’s your name?” Battalion Chief Charles A. Nicola whispered.

“Buck” was the faint reply.

The voice was that of Buck Helm, 57, a dock supervisor who was trapped under a collapsed part of the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland for 90 hours after the devastating Oct. 17 temblor that rocked the San Francisco Bay Area.

That first word to the Orange County firefighter marked the beginning of a dramatic and emotional rescue that was one of the few bright spots amid the death and devastation in Northern California.

“Where do you hurt?” Nicola asked the man.

“I hurt all over,” Helm replied.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Nicola promised.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday honored the five-member county Fire Department’s heavy rescue team, which aided in Helm’s rescue.

After receiving commendations, the firefighters--Nicola of Corona, Buster DuBrock of Naples in Los Angeles County, Dan Mackay of Yorba Linda, Steve Shomber of Alta Loma in San Bernardino County and Jim Aldrich of Buena Park--gave the most detailed account so far of their rescue.

They told of snaking their way through a dark, dusty crawlway left when the top lanes of the double-decked Nimitz--Interstate 880--fell on the traffic below. They called for a hydraulic prying device and other tools to cut Helm from his squashed Chevy Sprint, placed him on a backboard and moved him to safety.

Helm, who had commuted from the docks to his home in Weaverville on weekends, was reported in serious but stable condition Tuesday in Oakland’s Highland Hospital.

When the Orange County team first got word of a possible survivor, Nicola said the members thought it might be another false alarm. There had been a series of such reports, but all had proved false. After spending several days removing bodies from the rubble, firefighters were becoming less hopeful of finding someone alive.

Nicola said his adrenaline surged when he reached the car, which was no more than 30 inches high, and saw Helm’s head just above the window. He used a penlight to peer into the crushed auto.

“The dashboard was pretty much intact, and the steering wheel was down on his lap, but there was some play in it,” Nicola said.

“I asked him to take a deep breath, and he did. It hurt him, but he was able to do it.”

When Helm moved his legs, Nicola said he began to think there was a good chance that the dockworker would make it.

Mackay, the rescue team engineer who operates the hydraulic jaws, was quickly called. Mackay said it took about an hour working in a 30-inch-by-36-inch space to free Helm. All told, there were about seven firefighters and paramedics working in the confined area.

It was not until Helm slid from his concrete trap that the emotion rolled over his rescuers, Mackay said.

“I don’t think I really took time to dwell on it,” he said. “I really had tunnel vision. My assignment was to go in and extricate him. It really did not hit home until we slid him out.

“Then the crowd just went wild. It was incredible. It was then that I realized what had happened.”

Orange County Fire Chief Larry J. Holms called his men “masters of the understatement.” He compared the area they were working in during the rescue to the space under a line of folding chairs.

But the men themselves downplayed their role.

“We were really just a small part of it,” Nicola said. “It really honors everybody who was involved. . . . We couldn’t have done it without all the team effort.”

About 1,500 career and volunteer firefighters work at 45 county stations serving unincorporated areas of the county and some cities that contract for services.

The department’s heavy rescue team is one of three such units in the state; all three responded to the quake disaster.

Besides that team and equipment, the county also sent 29 mental health workers and 15 building officials to the affected areas.

The Bay Area temblor was not a first for members of the Orange County team. Nicola and Shomber, a captain, were part of a group dispatched to Mexico City after the Mexican earthquakes of 1985.

In Mexico City, Nicola said, rescuers worked in places even more confined than on the Nimitz Freeway.

The firefighters who ventured into the narrow opening to extricate Helm said Tuesday that they did not think about what would happen if another major earthquake occurred while they worked, even though there were several smaller aftershocks while the rescue was under way.

“We hoped we would bring someone out alive, and it came true,” Aldrich said.

“It was fantastic,” said Buster DuBrock after receiving his commendation. “I’m going to use my favorite word-- awesome !”