Digging Through the Rubble

Senior Airman Jason Humes maneuvered around bodies to reach a 25-year-old woman. She'd been trapped in the rubble of a Port-au-Prince university for seven days. He was one of four pararescuemen who took shifts talking to her and supplying her with fluids. Thirty-one hours later, Airman Humes and his teammates rejoiced as she was hoisted from the rubble. She sang as her backboard was extracted from the collapsed building while her rescuers cheered and clapped. It's one memory from his efforts in Haiti Airman Humes expects to cherish for a long time.

"I spent two hours in that hole," he said. "She was talking in French to us, and anytime you got around her to see where she was pinned, she'd grab you by the arm to thank you. She even kissed one guy on the neck. We were mainly monitoring her medically, making sure she was still alive and checking her level of alertness. We were switching IVs and getting medication into her while we were coming up with a plan to get her out. I don't think we would've gotten her out without the tools we brought to the table."

Airman Humes and other pararescuemen, called PJs, from the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron from Hurlburt Field, Fla., lived out their motto, "That Others May Live," in Haiti. They were sent to Haiti's capital city to set up a casualty collection point at the Toussiant L'Ouverture International Airport. Once the casualty point was established, the PJs worked with the Fairfax County, Va., Task Force Urban Search and Rescue Team to find and rescue survivors.

"They didn't know what a PJ was until we told them what we do," said Master Sgt. Keith O'Grady, the lead pararescueman for relief operations in Haiti. "They said we're like four different team members for them - someone to make the hole, another to climb in the hole and medically stabilize the person and someone else to pull the person out and transport them."

The pararescuemen moved into Port-au- Prince at dawn with the Virginia task force. They took the special operations medical and surgical team to the U.S. Embassy in a Humvee and a trailer and helped transport seven critical patients.

For the next 36 hours, the teams worked in assigned areas to locate and rescue trapped survivors. By mid-afternoon, they'd rescued seven people from places like the Caribbean Market, Hotel Montana and a university in Port-au-Prince. A rescue can take eight hours, sometimes much longer.

"It's tedious, hard work, and really dangerous to climb in and out of these holes of collapsed buildings," Sergeant O'Grady said. "There were some pretty big buildings that collapsed. It was amazing that there could still be people alive in some of them."

PJs train annually for rescues like these. They've rescued a mannequin from a demolished fourplex and practiced going through concrete with their tools. But nothing prepared them completely for Haiti.

"It prepares you for the techniques, but not for the mass-scale destruction we saw in Haiti," Airman Humes said.

Master Sgt. Paul McCarthy helped the 23rd STS PJs as a medical technician after follow-on medical forces arrived.

"Initially, we didn't do a lot of medical care just because we didn't have the resources and supplies," Sergeant McCarthy said. "We were mostly focused on search and rescue, trying to find people who were trapped, getting them out, providing whatever care we could for them and getting them sent somewhere that could give them more definitive care. It took quite a bit initially, not to try to go out and help everybody you saw because a lot of people needed help. We tried to stay focused on our mission."

Sergeant McCarthy assisted in transporting one woman after a 28-hour rescue. The woman had major crush injuries and dehydration, but her rescuers soon learned their efforts to save the woman's life were far from over.

"We did an hour-and-a-half transport to try to find a suitable location to transfer her to," Sergeant McCarthy said. "The Haitian hospital we took her to refused to accept her and doctors said she'd die if we left her. We provided care for her until we got her to the surgeons. The next day she was transferred to an American hospital in the Dominican Republic, where I heard she's doing quite well.

"It was pretty rewarding, just to be able to get those people out of those buildings," he said. "Some of them were still in pretty good condition. We just had to get them rehydrated, treat their injuries and they were able to just walk away."

Rescuers saw much that was hard to deal with. In some cases, doctors had to amputate limbs before the person could be freed. But, what disturbed Airman Humes the most was working around the dead while trying to reach survivors.

"We could have four or five (bodies) in an area where we were trying to rescue someone," he said. "You didn't want to do anything that would compromise them, but you also had to be concerned with your safety and the person you were trying to save. We only came into contact with a body as a last resort. Dealing with the bodies during a rescue effort was probably one of the hardest things we saw in Haiti."

The PJs saw more than their share of misery. There were many they couldn't save. But there were uplifting moments, like the one shared with the world on international television of the marathon rescue at Port-au-Prince University.

Airman Humes said the thing he will always remember is how the survivors emerged from the rubble, singing and expressing their appreciation.