High-Tech Hunt for Survivors Still Takes Shovels and Resolve

They are armed with sophisticated training, the latest fiber-optic cameras and a suite of pneumatic saws and drills that can slice through rebar and fallen walls. But in the arduous search for victims in the rubble of fallen buildings, what rescuers find most useful are the basics: shovels, pails and strong backs.

“Sometimes, it’s just a man on his hands and knees, picking out pieces of concrete,” said Leo Ibarra, a search expert with the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Pico Rivera-based urban search and rescue squad. Ibarra helped search for victims after the Northridge quake, Hurricane Iniki on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and the Oklahoma City bombing.

Thousands of highly trained urban search and rescue experts, including about 200 from California, are now crawling over the wreckage of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, fiercely hoping--like the rest of America--they’ll find survivors.

“We have to assume there are survivors until we find out otherwise,” said Larry Collins, a Los Angeles County fire captain and urban search and rescue expert who is now helping at the Pentagon. “There can be no delays in rescue.”

Experts say the first 24 to 48 hours are crucial for finding survivors.

A 19-year-old Seoul clerk survived 16 days after the store she worked in collapsed because of faulty construction in 1995. She had a scratch on her leg. A 27-year-old Hyatt hotel cook survived 14 days in rubble after a 1990 earthquake in the Philippines that killed 1,650. In 1985, an 8-day-old infant emerged hungry but unscathed from the rubble of the Mexico City hospital where she had been born the day before a massive earthquake.

But those are rare exceptions. In general, people can survive three days without water, but those who are injured and bleeding will usually succumb after a day. Inhaling dust can also take a toll.

Cell Phone Emerges as a New Rescue Aid

Besides digging tools, searchers employ trained dogs and fiber-optic cameras that can be inserted into small crevices, what rescue experts call “potentially survivable void spaces.”

A newly emerging rescue aid is the cell phone.

Since the attack, accounts have surfaced of survivors making cell phone calls from within air pockets in the rubble.

Frequently, however, people can call out but cannot tell rescuers where to find them. In most cases, emergency crews can do little unless a caller can pinpoint his or her location.

A call does serve one important purpose: “Most of all,” Ibarra said, “it gives us hope.”

Beyond that, the best that 911 officials can do is try to gauge a caller’s general vicinity using a cumbersome, time-consuming triangulation process. That technique analyzes a phone’s signal strength at the three nearest cell sites and determines the distance from each. Rescuers believe the lack of better positioning information causes life-or-death delays.

Since 1996, rescuers have been hoping that mobile phone companies would install better technology, but the improvements have been delayed.

Even the proposed improvements would have been of little help in Manhattan; the new devices have a range of only 50 meters at best and transmit no altitude or depth information.

Rescuers can also use detectors that locate signals broadcast every 30 minutes by cell phones that are on. The signals do not, however, tell rescuers whether the person carrying the cell phone is alive, and they stop when the batteries run out.

As officials scrambled to activate their emergency rescue system, three urban search and rescue teams--from Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange counties--flew to the New York area. The teams, which act as special Federal Emergency Management Agency task forces, flew to New Jersey on Tuesday evening, departing with caches full of tools from March Air Force Base in Moreno Valley aboard three C-141 transport planes. They were escorted by fighter jets to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

What they face is jarring for even the most hardened of rescue workers. “At the time, Oklahoma [City] was big,” Ibarra said. “Compared to what I see on TV in New York, it was a dent.”

Rescuers were confronted by streets filled with up to two feet of soot and debris, fallen steel beams, and sidewalks littered with shoes and briefcases. The rescuers, many with combat experience, frequently compared the scene to a war zone.

The huge loss of life among New York’s firefighters added a deeply personal burden for the rescuers, both the native New Yorkers and their out-of-town colleagues. Many of those now working in the wreckage are close friends and colleagues of those presumed dead, including Ray Downey, chief of special operations command of the New York Fire Department, who is one of the leading figures in rescue strategy and was due to retire in a few months.

Collins and Ibarra had worked side by side in Oklahoma City with Downey and many of the New York firefighters who remain missing. “New York firefighters--God bless ‘em--they’re aggressive. Their first impulse was to get to the top floors, rescue people, and put out the fire,” Ibarra said.

Each squad includes two structural engineers who check on the safety of the building being worked on and help secure structures so that rescue personnel can enter safely.

At the Pentagon, some firefighters were crawling through more-intact parts of the building and were beginning to remove bodies and body parts under a full honor guard. But a good part of the building near the crash site remained off-limits as engineers worked to replace damaged supports and used a wrecking ball to remove hanging debris. “There’s going to have to be extensive shoring operations and delicate dissections of the building,” Collins said.

In both rescue settings, he said, “safety is the biggest problem.”

“The object is to rescue--not be a victim,” Ibarra said.

The most dangerous obstacles are buildings still on the verge of collapse and the loose, overhanging pieces of concrete that firefighters call “widow-makers.”

That danger was underscored Wednesday afternoon when hundreds of rescue workers were evacuated from the area around the Trade Center after what was left of the South Tower collapsed and a gas leak threatened to start yet another fire.

‘A Numbing Effect Comes Over You’

The grueling rescue efforts go on around the clock. Teams work 12-hour shifts. Between taking care of tools, showering, eating and traveling to and from the site, workers are lucky to get five hours of sleep a night.

They generally work for a week before being replaced, but can work longer. The Los Angeles County squad spent 10 days in Oklahoma City. Work at the World Trade Center could go on for weeks.

The rescue workers can get by without much sleep, and they shrug off the shoulder aches. The hardest part by far is the emotional toll. “You’re hoping to find someone that’s alive, but in most cases they’ve perished,” Ibarra said. “A numbing effect comes over you.”

Still, they answer every call that comes--and can usually be geared up and ready to go in six hours. Ibarra was disappointed that his squad did not get tapped immediately to help in New York. The eight FEMA teams based in California rotate; some must always stay behind in case of a disaster here. Ibarra’s team will probably leave for New York in about a week to relieve the California squads now on duty, he said.

“We just want to help,” he said. “We want to do what we’re trained for.”

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Times staff writers Elizabeth Douglass, Thomas H. Maugh II and Dave Wilson contributed to this story.