You mentioned that there were areas that were absolutely wiped out and other areas were fine. As you started to go through these areas that were wiped out, did you think you were going to find anyone alive?

Lt. Vaughan:  We kept that in the back of our minds all the time because one thing you learn about this job, either here running calls at the fire house or going on these deployments, nothing ceases to amaze you or surprise you. There are always those miracles that can happen, and while we knew these debris fields that we were looking at, if it was a wood-frame building and it was in the path of that tsunami, it didn’t have a chance. It [the tsunami] completely demolished anything that was wood frame.

If it was still standing, there wasn’t much of it left.

And one of the things it did with these wood-frame structures, it just piled all the structural timbers up and it made a massive field of debris that was several feet deep, sometimes 20-, 30-feet deep in some areas depending on the corners, the lay of the land; how it pushed up and everything settled. The likelihood of finding someone in that, it’s not probable because for all intents and purposes, they probably would have just gotten pulverized, or drowned.

Capt. Knerr: And the survivable voids aren’t there. I mean … yes, there was an earthquake, but then there was the tsunami, and ultimately that was in the areas we were. We [Virginia Task Force 1] can’t speak for all of them [the other international search and rescue teams], but in the areas we were functioning, our main damage was tsunami, not earthquake, which is hard for most to understand.

In an earthquake there are survivable voids depending on how the earth shakes, and how the buildings were constructed, and how they collapsed.

In a tsunami, it’s just a rubble pile, and it’s all pushed together or swept out.

And any water that comes in, and anybody in that survival void, unfortunately will drown.

Capt. Knerr:  [Nodding his head in agreement] Drowned or swept back out. Or as Rodney said, if you’re in all that debris and you are being swept by that water, think about getting caught in a wave at the beach, and getting tumbled at the beach, I mean … most of us probably have done that; you get beat up pretty good.

You get yourself caught in that undertow; now throw a house in that undertow with you.  You are going to lose that battle, and its unfortunate with the tsunami, and we saw in Indonesia; for the most part, people were either, I say immediately, but pretty quickly after the event, were accounted for and OK and their injuries were known, or they were never seen again. I think unfortunately, this is what we’re going to see again is those that have survived have been accounted for. Those that are still missing may never be accounted for.

Yes, I’m sure some were buried in the debris but I’m sure there was quite a few that had been swept back out [to the sea], unfortunately won’t be accounted for.

Was there ever a point that someone just came up to you and said, “Stop. There is no one left to save here,” or that your team said, “You know what guys … it’s time to stop here.”

Capt Knerr: Everyone wants to hold out hope, just like we do. I think we had the reality in the back of our heads that chances of finding someone alive were pretty slim.  However, we hold out hope.

Obviously the population that lives there has even more hope for that. They need that hope, because right now they are already having a bad day. They want to hold on [to] that hope, that chance.

We look out over the debris field and go, “Now, where do we start?” And we also know the rebuilding process. We also know in a week, 10 days, two weeks or so, we are going to be back home with our families.

For them, they are looking at all that debris field, thinking, “Where do we start?” but they don’t have anywhere to go. But that was their life, so yeah, they actually want to hold on to that hope. They want to believe that there is someone alive. So, no, absolutely not.  No one told us to stop looking.

Who makes the decision for you guys to stop and that it is time to come home?

Capt. Knerr: Typically, there are different phases to any mission. There’s the rescue phase – from the onset of the emergency until the government, the affected population, or the affected government declares an end to the rescue phase.

As you can imagine, it’s a real touchy decision that needs to be made.  It’s also a political decision that needs to be made, but it is also a decision that is hard because the population doesn’t want to hear there is an end to the rescue phase, because if you’re looking for a loved one, do you want to hear the government say it’s over?  No, you don’t.

But that call is eventually made and has to be made. So when do they make that call and come to you guys and say, “Thank you. Your job is over”?

Capt Knerr: For us, we do what we are assigned to do. Plain and simple. I mean, it’s not the political answer but we were given three different assignments while we are down there, and we cleared those assignments.

Those assignments being, survey the area; see if there is anybody to rescue; and render whatever aid you can?

Capt Knerr: [Nodding his head in agreement] Search the area and obviously make and effect any rescues that can be made. Unfortunately, there were no rescues to be made in the areas that we were in. We did a thorough search of the areas we were in. Every time we completed an area, we were reassigned to a different area. We did that over the course of three days.

At the end of the three days, in conjunction with and coordination with the local fire brigade down there and the incident commander that was working with us, our services in those areas weren’t needed any more. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.” So at that point, we transferred back up to Misawa Air Base because we couldn’t go much further south based on the nuclear reactor, because the distance was shielding us, and the areas where we would have needed to go, we would have needed to potentially go past where the reactors were and just that wasn’t an option, at least not by ground.

You know there were other teams operating south of the reactor and working in those areas so our assignments pretty much ended after several days of work.

Part 1 – Answering the call

Part 2 – Getting there and finding the unimaginable

Part 4 – The decision to come home

Part 5 – Japanese resiliency and comparing one disaster to another