Next stop Haiti for L.A. County rescue team [updated]

An elite Los Angeles County Fire Department search and rescue unit prepared to fly to a devastated Haiti Wednesday night to aid victims of the magnitude 7 earthquake, helping fulfill President Obama’s pledge that “we stand ready to assist the people of Haiti.”

The 72-member heavy rescue team, called California Task Force 2, is one of two U.S. disaster teams now being rushed to Haiti to aid in quake recovery efforts. The L.A. County team is expected to fly out at about 9 p.m. Wednesday en route directly to Haiti. The other team, from Fairfax, Virginia, departed earlier Wednesday afternoon.

“It’s really an honor that we’re recognized as being ready, able and trained to respond to these disasters,” said Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman. “It’s nice to realize that our sphere of helping can be so far-flung.”

The Los Angeles County unit includes firefighters, paramedics, heavy equipment operators, search dogs and canine handlers, communications and logistics specialists and hazardous material experts. In addition to County fire personnel, the team will take structural engineers and three emergency-room doctors. The task force is packing more than 27 tons of medical and rescue equipment.

The L.A. team’s expertise includes rescue and recovery operations under fallen structures—like the thousands of collapsed and partially collapsed buildings in and around the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The team won’t know its precise mission until it hits the ground Thursday, Freeman said.

The task force has a rich history. In addition to local disasters, such as the Northridge earthquake in 1994, the task force was dispatched to Oklahoma City following the 1995 bombing, New York City after 9-11 and the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Overseas, the task force flew to Sri Lanka in 2004 to aid victims of the Indonesian tsunami. A small unit took rescue equipment to China to dig out of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake

Firefighters who want to join the team must take training courses on their own time—on top of their normal duties. The department maintains a practice center with concrete debris at its Del Valle training facility near Santa Clarita. “Two years ago,” Freeman said, “we actually had United Nations experts visit us for two days to certify us for urban search and rescue.”

How long the Los Angeles team will remain in Haiti isn’t yet clear. Traveling with food, shelter and other equipment, the team can operate independently even under the worst conditions. “They are self-sufficient for 14 or 15 days,” said county fire Inspector Steve Zermeno, and can be resupplied again to extend their stay.

The L.A. and Virginia teams are heading to Haiti at the request of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supplies economic, trade, agricultural and health assistance overseas, as well as disaster aid. Freeman told the Board of Supervisors that the federal government will reimburse the county for the mission’s cost. Despite the deployment, plenty of search and rescue workers will remain behind to respond to local disasters, he said.

As the L.A. County team assembled its equipment at a county fire facility in Pacoima Wednesday, county officials coordinated timing and logistics with the federal government. The task force will depart by military transport from March Air Reserve Base, near Riverside.

[Updated 1/14/09]

Flying through the night, Los Angeles County Fire’s urban rescue and recovery task force arrived safely Thursday morning in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince. Once on the ground, leaders of California Task Force 2 met with disaster relief officials to receive briefings and coordinate activities.

In Los Angeles, County Fire Chief Freeman expressed confidence the task force, with its specialized training, will be able to extract victims from collapsed buildings and save lives. “Based on the media pictures we’ve seen,” he said, “there are a lot of people trapped not too deep in the concrete rubble that we’ll be able to reach successfully.”