Q&A: The dangers and difficulties of heavy urban search and rescue

TORONTO – As the Toronto Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) team continues work to rescue anyone who may be trapped in the ruins of the collapsed Algo Mall in Elliot Lake, the team has been thrust into the national spotlight after a decision late on Monday night to temporarily abandon search efforts.

Global News spoke with Clifford Leonard Samson, a member of the HUSAR team in Winnipeg about the rescue units, and the difficulties and dangers involved in urban search and rescue.

Global News: What is the first thing the HUSAR team will do when getting to a scene?

Clifford Leonard Samson: There’s initially a re-con team sent in to look at the building or the area that you will be going in to search in and kind of size up the situation to see what type of equipment and how much manpower is going to be needed. In most situations, local resources, local emergency crews, have already attended and kind of done that size up already. Usually when a HUSAR team is called in, it’s because the resources needed are beyond what local emergency people can provide. So that’s when a heavy urban team is called in.

GN: What happens then?

CLS: Well , it starts off with as I said a re-con team goes in, sizes it up, kind of takes a look at what they’re looking at, how much resources they are going to need. And they start putting that into play. The second group that goes in is a search team. And a search team will be comprised of a number of searchers, physical searchers that can use their eyes to look around, dog teams of course, dog teams can go in – they’re a great asset. They can sometimes fit into smaller areas that people can’t get into. They can cross over rubble and things like that they might be too dangerous initially for people to go over. And a dog can give us a sense of whether there are live people on site there.

Then we have some sophisticated equipment of course, cameras, different listening devices that will help us pinpoint an area hopefully where there are survivors present.

GN: Are there any situations that you cannot go into because they are too dangerous?

CLS: Every situation is different. In Elliot Lake, they are obviously dealing with some unique things that they haven’t seen before and they’re having to deal with that. Every search that you go into, is going to have some unique aspects. So throughout your training, you try to, when possible, duplicate as many different scenarios and different types of terrain and environments that you might have to work in. It’s always going to be something different that you’re going into, whether it’s as a result of an earthquake or a flood, collapsed building, everything has its own challenges that a searcher or emergency crew is forced to deal with as they come upon it.

GN: Is there a certain level of risk that rescuers must be aware of?

CLS: Well I think you’ll find that emergency crews initially go in and do whatever they can to rescue people that they can have access to. And that’s the same, you saw that in 9/ 11, and you’ll see that in any other type of rescue. The emergency crews go in and they try to deal with things as they can and rescue as many people as they can.

When it comes to trapped people, every situation is different and the searchers and the rescue teams have to put the skills that they’ve learned and developed to use to save those people. But rescuers have with them, they have their knowledge that they’ve obtained in training, but it’s not always that easy and we have people like engineers that are experts in looking at situations. They travel with the team, and they are the ones that give us the OK.

Search and rescue people learn how to move boulders and cut through concrete to cut through steel to get at trapped people. But you need somebody who’s got professional experience like an engineer to offer us advice as we go along. If you move that, it’s going to move that and things like that.

It’s something that we don’t think about it because we, every rescuer that’s on scene there is going to be the same as any rescuer here. They’re all firefighters or police officers either locally or part of the HUSAR team and that’s their life, that’s what they live for – rescuing people. I can only assume that they are doing everything they can to get at people there, just like we would here. Every rescuer is going to continue on until everybody is found, that’s what our job is and that’s what our goal is.

GN: Is there anything that you cannot prepare for in training?

CLS: I can’t think of any situations. Obviously a person is only as good as the rest of the team and equipment they have. If there’s a heavy boulder that’s on somebody, you have to be able to move that boulder. It goes beyond what people can do on their own. So there are different tools that we have. We have hydraulics, we have different lifting mechanisms, that we put into place. But you have to be able to work in that area and you have to be able to move things and cut through things without risk of creating more damage or a collapse on top of you or on top of the people you are trying to rescue. So step by step, it’s a slow process to move through, to ensure everybody’s safety. Starting with the person you’re trying to save and the rescuers themselves.

You train, but you can never think of all the scenarios possible. It’s just like any emergency service person encounters, day in and day out, they go into these types of things, and they always come across something they have never done before. So you put your experience together with your past training and that’s how you move forward and you deal with the situation at hand.

GN: Are there people other than the search and rescue team that you work with?

CLS: As I said, there will be a team of engineers that are working closely with them, there will also be experts from all of the different gas, electrical companies, things like that, because that all comes into play in a rescue to make sure that people are safe. Engineers play a big part in it of course, because they’ll know the structure of a building, what the faults were, they can look at a partially collapsed structure and tell you that if you are going to move this block, you better shore up this part, because the rest of it is going to come tumbling down. It’s a step by step process where you work your way through, and it does take a long time. It’s not as easy as rushing in, grabbing somebody, and going. I can assure you that that is the first thing done. As time goes on, you are dealing with people that are severely trapped and there is no easy way of getting to them and there’s a process you have to go through.