Earthquake: Diaster Before Dawn : Local Firefighters Searched for Victims Amid Ruins

In the tomb that had been the Northridge Meadows Apartments, San Clemente Fire Department Engineer Gary Labrien went searching for life but found only evidence of death.

Using concrete saws and pickaxes, Labrien and a team of Orange County firefighters hacked into the floors of the complex’s second level for views into the bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms of the crushed units below.

So powerful had been Monday’s quake that the structure’s top two floors simply collapsed on the ground units, leaving no other entry but from above.

“We would break open the floor and dig into small areas so that we could see,” Labrien said minutes after emerging from the dust. “It looked like a dump down there. We could see people’s belongings and family pictures. You just hope everybody in the pictures got out OK. . . . There were a few bodies down there, but we couldn’t find anybody alive.”

In all, about 250 Orange County firefighters--some from Laguna Beach, Orange, San Clemente, Aliso Viejo and Los Alamitos--were dispatched to the disaster’s most severe trouble spots. Twelve local strike teams, each with five engines, were routed north in response to the quake. Eleven went to Los Angeles County and one to Ventura County. But work among members of Strike Team 1402A may have been the most discouraging.

By late Monday afternoon 14 people had perished in the apartment collapse--including a 14-year-old boy. The number killed at that one location accounted for about half of Monday’s total death toll.

“It’s all very sad,” Labrien said. “There were a lot of areas that we can’t even get to. It was a mess.”

The work to find signs of the living was so intense that rescuers who had preceded the Orange County team had marked the sites where the dead lay so that the search could continue elsewhere.

Inside the teetering structure, Orange County firefighters were repeatedly jolted by powerful aftershocks, sending some diving for cover with each shake.

“We would yell, ‘Heads up!’ And the guys would pop out of the doors” to the apartment units, said Orange County firefighter Craig Casey, seated on a truck bumper. “When an aftershock hit, we wanted to make sure that our guys were out of any holes. The place was like a honeycomb.”

Orange Battalion Chief Buck Henderson said the complex fell on the bottom floor, collapsing like a “house of cards.” In some upstairs units, Henderson said, entire walls had been ripped away.

“The damage is really bad,” the chief said. “We were cutting holes in the floors. The guys did a dynamite job.”

If Northridge Meadows brought disappointment for the number of deaths, another Orange County team participated in a “victory” only a few blocks away at the Northridge Fashion Center.

There, under the rubble of a three-story parking structure, local Strike Team 1403A aided Los Angeles units in the rescue of a 23-year-old street sweeper who had been wedged in crumpled concrete for more than five hours.

Orange County units helped local rescuers move tons of concrete, using wooden support braces and powerful air bags.

Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Thomas Burau said Orange County units aided in the delicate rescue of the man who had been sweeping the mall’s parking lot when the structure collapsed on top of him.

Throughout the rescue, Burau said, the victim was yelling in Spanish that “he was going to die and he wanted someone to get down there and pray with him.”

“He hung in there until we got to him and that made us feel good,” said the captain, who believed the man had broken bones in his legs.

Orange County Firefighter Dave Gerber said the man’s survival lifted the spirits of those involved in the rescue.

“It as a fantastic feeling,” Gerber said, peeling away a sweaty shirt. “It was a great feeling of relief that he was still alive. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing that you get to do something like this. It was amazing.”

During their drive north Monday morning, the convoy of Orange County fire engines passed demolished strip centers and crumbled walls. People sat on their front lawns and on sidewalk curbs outside the damaged structures. At the Northridge apartment complex, a stream of people walked the sidewalks to get a view of the damage.

“Some of these people actually look unfazed by all of this,” firefighter Casey said.

Said 23-year-old Orange County firefighter Pedro Perez: “When I looked at the damage (at the Fashion Center), it was like looking at that (earthquake) ride at Universal Studios. I was waiting for everything to just fold back to the way it was. I can’t believe this really happened. I know it sounds childish, but you usually see this on television reports about Mexico or someplace in India. But here I am. I’m right here in the middle of it.”