O.C. Rescue Team Welcomed Back From Oklahoma City : Assistance: Members close the book on a highly emotional experience: ‘The people there were so nice.’ They are greeted with warmth and applause by relatives and friends.

As firefighter Chuck Stein, returning from Oklahoma City, jumped off a bus here Thursday night, he gave a thumbs-up sign to his family and exclaimed, “It’s good to be home.”

Stein, 29, and other members of Orange County’s elite search and rescue team who had spent five days searching through rubble at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building were greeted with cheers and warm applause from relatives and friends.

“It was a great experience,” Stein said, enjoying a long embrace from his wife, Marife. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. The people there were so nice.”

In the crowd was Stein’s mother, Lenore, of Rowland Heights.

“He called me and he was quite emotional,” Lenore Stein said. “He said he had an emotional time there but that the people were so nice. Everything was supplied. Schoolchildren would write special greetings on cards for them and place them on their pillows. I think the experience will change him.”

The team had flown from Oklahoma on Thursday to March Air Force Base. After an extended, emotional debriefing, they traveled to Fullerton Airport in two buses.

The team’s grim work primarily had been to find bodies.

“They had so much emotionality,” said Emmy Day, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Fire Authority. “People are not mentally prepared for finding an arm or a leg, or any part of a human’s anatomy. It would have been unfair to cut short their debriefing, which really was an emotional venting.”

Still, firefighters such as Jim Silva, a fire engineer for the authority, said he didn’t mind, because he and many others found a sense of accomplishment, a closure for the Oklahoma families.

“It was just awesome to find a dead body,” Silva said, “and I know that sounds awful. But to the families, the ones who are waiting, it was appreciated.”

The daily cost for the 62-member team, made up of doctors, civil and structural engineers, firefighters and law enforcement officers, was estimated at $50,000 and will be billed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“When you’re not recovering viable patients,” said authority Chief Larry Holms, “it’s better to have a veteran search and rescue team performing that job than to have more casualties. And just think how important it is to the families to get closure by finding their loved ones.”