A super Sunday for County rescuers in Haiti

Working throughout the night on Sunday, rescuers from the Los Angeles County Fire Department saved three Haitian women who had survived without food or water for five days, buried under a collapsed apartment building.

County firefighters reached the last of the three women—a 31-year-old found trapped on her bed in a tiny pocket below tons of concrete debris—at 7 a.m. Monday morning, capping a dramatic 14-hour operation by the Los Angeles County task force.

The three successful rescues brought to eight the number of earthquake victims saved by the task force since its arrival in Haiti last Thursday on a military C-17. Now dubbed USA-2, the 70-person task force has been divided into Red and Blue squads, each working independently throughout Port-au-Prince to free victims of the magnitude 7 quake.

Sunday’s apartment-building rescue began at 5 p.m. local time when dogs working with the Los Angeles County Blue Squad caught the scent of living victims under the rubble of the three story apartment house. Using saws, heavy breaking equipment, cameras and listening devices, the L.A. County team burrowed through several layers of pancaked concrete to reach the trapped victims.

At 11 p.m., the work paid off. The rescue workers freed a pair of Haitian sisters, 18 and 20. Dehydrated and suffering minor injuries, the women were rushed to a makeshift Israeli-run hospital.

But the rescue operation wasn’t over. Through an interpreter, the sisters said that while trapped, they continued to hear noises made by someone buried below them. The County team renewed their digging through the night.

By daylight, the team had tunneled 15 feet deeper into the tons of rubble. They reached a two-foot-high cavity where an injured but conscious woman lay pinned against her mattress. She too was rushed to the Israeli hospital.

The three rescues capped a very successful Sunday for the task force. At mid-day, the Blue Squad extricated a 30-year-old Haitian woman who had been trapped waist deep in the shattered concrete of a downtown building.

Later Sunday afternoon, Red team rescuers freed a dehydrated 50-year-old woman from a collapsed bank building. “When she came out of the void, she was singing,” reported County Fire Battalion Chief Thomas Ewald, who leads the mission’s deployment support team, which is based in Pacoima and receives frequent satellite phone updates from the team in Haiti.

Things did not go so well on Saturday. The L.A. squad thought they heard sounds of life beneath the rubble at a day care center in the city. Specially trained dogs were brought to the scene but did not pick up a scent. As team members did their best to dig through the wreckage, the tapping sounds stopped. It is still unknown whether anyone actually had been trapped.

The mission to Haiti by the County task force is being fully funded by the U.S. government. Family members back home get updates through a nightly conference call by satellite phone, Ewald says. Thankfully, the news back home has all been good. Despite the dangers, the task force from Los Angeles is in good spirits and has suffered no injuries.

Other members of the task force include emergency room doctors, as well as logistics and communications specialists working to help local authorities improve earthquake response. The task force’s leader is Battalion Chief Terry DeJournett, who is stationed in Malibu when the search-and-rescue task force isn’t deployed.

The team is expected to continue their work in Haiti through the remainder of the week.

In addition, a team of doctors and nurses from Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center arrived in Haiti Sunday and began performing emergency surgeries.

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