5 Quake Heroes in Buck Helm’s Rescue Honored

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

“Buck,” the man replied faintly.

The voice was that of Buck Helm, a 57-year-old dock supervisor who was trapped under the collapsed Nimitz Freeway in Oakland for 90 hours after the Oct. 17 earthquake that rocked the San Francisco Bay area.

In the days that followed, Helm’s name would become a household word. His first word to Nicola marked the beginning of a dramatic and emotional rescue that was one of the few bright spots in a tragedy that took at least 39 lives.

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

“I hurt all over,” Helm answered.

On Tuesday, the five-member Orange County Fire Department Heavy Rescue Team involved in saving Helm gave the most detailed account yet of the rescue. They told of snaking their way through a small, dark, dusty crawl space left when the top lanes of the double-decked Interstate 880 fell on the roadway below. They pried and cut Helms from his squashed Chevy Sprint, placed him on a backboard and moved him to safety.

The Orange County firefighters--Nicola, Buster DuBrock, Dan Mackay, Steve Shomber and Jim Aldrich--were honored by the Board of Supervisors for what Chairman Thomas F. Riley called their “heroic efforts.”

Helm, who lives in Weaverville and commuted home on the weekends, was reported in serious but stable condition Tuesday in Oakland’s Highland Hospital.

Nicola said when his team first got word of a possible survivor, he thought it might be another false alarm. Team members had spent several days removing bodies and hope was dimming that they would find someone alive.

The firefighter said his adrenaline surged when he reached the car that was no more than 30 inches high and saw Helm’s head just above the window. Nicola used a pen light to look into the crushed automobile.

“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 believed that there was a good chance that the trapped man would live.

Mackay, the rescue team engineer responsible for operating the Jaws of Life, was called to extricate Helm. It took him about 60 minutes, he said, to cut and pry Helm from the automobile. He said he was working in a space that was 30 inches high and 36 inches wide.

“I don’t think I really took time to dwell on it,” Mackay said of the emotion in rescuing Helm. “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,” he said.

Orange County Fire Chief Lawrence J. Holms praised his firefighters for their work in the Bay Area and called them “masters of the understatement.”

Orange County’s Heavy Rescue Team is one of three such units in California. All three responded to the disaster.

All the firefighters downplayed their role in the rescue.

“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.”