What's it like inside the rubble finding victims.

The other day I talked with a reporter from a local TV Station. She called me and asked me what it was like to respond to earthquakes and other disasters and find people with my search dog(s)?

My response was as follows. Since 1972, I've worked the Tualatin city floods, in 1973, numerous fires, floods, hurricane, tornados, as well as the Mt St Helens Eruption, support roles for 911, Katrina, Haiti, and responded with our search dogs to Northridge, SF, Ca quakes, Oklahoma City Bombing, Philippine quake, Hurricane Mitch Honduras, both of the 1999 Turkey quakes. 16 major disasters around the world.

To say I have a bit of experience in finding dead and live victims is an understatement.

When you approach a collapsed structure, you hear silence. You may hear people talking, some people crying or screaming (usually family member survivors looking for their loved ones that are still trapped in the rubble).

You may hear machinery pulling the heavy rubble away from the scene.

You smell the dead decaying bodies, open sewage, some structures near you smoking from the fires started from the quake. Then you crawl deep inside the voids searching for the living. All the time praying that an after shock doesn’t send the structure down on top of you and your search dog, killing or pinning you both instantly.

It’s an eerie feeling crawling through the destruction going from one dead body to the next checking for signs of life.

In the Turkey quake when SAR Dog Valorie found the little girl alive after the little girl had been buried for 10 days, I know I was shocked.

SAR Dog Val had alerted on this one specific area with a live alert. We dug and tunneled for 8 hours. Started at around 0600hrs. and at around 1545hrs. SAR Dog Valorie started whining loudly and barking. We were crawling 30’ (3 stories) down through the rubble and had just found a woman’s dead decaying remains with rats eating on her body. The smell was horrible.

My headlamp showed the ceiling about 3-½ feet from the floor. We crawled over the dead woman and I could see with my headlamp SAR Dog Valorie’s tail wagging as she was barking. This only means one thing. A live alert.

So I gave SAR dog Valorie the command to “Show me”. She stood her ground and barked again still wagging her tail. I crawled over to where she was near a crushed bed and have to tell you, I was shocked to see two little eyes wide as could be, staring back at me.
SAR dog Valorie was licking the little girls face and the girl was scared and using her hands to push my search dog away. The little girl didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Turkish.

There was a college kid that was an EMT who was right behind me. He spoke Turkish and English and served as my go between with the language barrier issue. Anyway he said something to the little girl and we couldn’t hear her. She was protecting her eyes from our headlamps as she had been pinned for 10 days by the collapsing rubble with no food, light, or water. It was 100 degrees outside but down where we were it was around 80 degrees. She was in shock and I could see her legs were pinned and crushed by the collapsed concrete.

I asked Ethen my support person to tell the little girl, ”We were here to rescue her”. She kept asking for her mother. I asked Ethen to tell her that her mother hadn’t survived and that I was sorry. To hold on as we were going to get some medical help. Then Ethen spoke to here in Turkish then I asked him to crawl up to the surface and bring back a doctor. After about an hour, Ethen returned with a doctor from Doctor’s without Borders. He was from England. A large guy like myself. I saw that he had a hard time crawling through the confined area, as there wasn’t much room for any of us.

We spoke briefly on the situation. I gave him the little girls vitals, pulse, respirations, temp. blood pressure and injuries that I could see.

He petted SAR Dog Valorie who was happy that this little child was alive and prancing around. I had to ask SAR Dog Valorie to be quiet so we could hear each other talk. (The doctor and I).

Anyway we had no morphine, nothing to numb the little girl. She was already in shock. We were able to establish an IV of Ringer’s. I had already tied tourniquets around each of the little girls legs.

Then the doctor using my leatherman saw blade cut both of the little girl’s legs off to free her from the concrete. I’ve seen amputations before but I must tell you this was emotionally challenging. I was holding the little girl with one hand and Ethen was holding her still as much as possible while the doctor did the amputations.

During all of this the poor little girl was screaming from being in so much pain. My SAR Dog Valorie was trying to protect the little girl and trying to get close to her. I was holding Val with my free hand.

Then an aftershock hit. It only lasted about 1 minute. But I could hear the whole structure we were in shifting and settling around us. That was nerve racking.
We finally pulled her free around 1730hrs. I remember a huge crowd had been waiting for us outside the rubble. CNN had a camera crew and watched as we pulled the little girl from the rubble.
She was whisked away and I heard later she had survived. The crowd was cheering. I sat and held Valorie my search dog in my arms and just cried.

All these years of training, testing, work had paid off. This wasn’t the first person I’ve saved with my search dogs, but I will say this was the most emotional rescue I worked in many years. Anyway the reporter from CNN was patting me on the back and I told him that it was my search dog Valorie that deserved the credit not me. Without her sense of smell, I never would have found this girl.

Throughout the rest of our remaining days in Turkey we found a total of 13 more victims alive. 71 dead. These are images you never forget.

You hear their screams, you smell the death, and you see the look in the victim’s eyes.

My prayers go out to the victims, the searchers, their search dogs in New Zealand.

Are we going to New Zealand? No I told the reporter who called. I’ve sent in a letter to the Embassy asking if they need assistance and they responded, “no, not at this time.”

Which is good as I’m financially broke like everyone else with this economy, and couldn’t have been able to afford to pay for my air fare over there anyway like I’ve done on all the other rescues we’ve responded to. The reporter asked me, “Doesn’t the airlines donate the flights?” I just laughed and responded. Nope.

We donate our own money, our own time to respond internationally and well as locally to most of the disasters.

That was the end of our interview.

Harry Oakes.


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