Islander Hernandez still connected with recovery efforts in Surfside
Although he’s back home now, retired Urban Search and Rescue Medic Joe Hernandez still finds himself deeply connected to his South Florida Task Force team as recovery efforts on site at the Surfside condominium collapse wind down.
“They are finding intact bodies still laying in their beds — it’s been difficult,” Hernandez said last week. “They are now starting to put faces with names and when they gather their belongings the responders make the connection of the surviving families describing their loved ones. The connection is very strong.”
As of Monday, 95 of the 97 confirmed dead have been identified, according to reports from the Associated Press.
The process of recovery and cleanup, Hernandez said, is painstakingly slow, as the teams rotate in 24-hour shifts to move the 40 million pounds of concrete. Podcasts on PTSD are going strong, he said, adding that the crew continues to surround his fellow teammate who lost his 7-year-old daughter in the collapse.
When the event turned from rescue to recovery, the crew is more aggressive in the use of equipment to remove larger pieces of concrete, he said.
“They’re not so meticulous, and concerned about creating a cave-in, so they go about it a little bit differently,” he said.
At this point two mindsets are common among rescue workers, he said. The first is to question whether there are still survivors buried under the rubble, and the second is the nagging thought that too much time has gone by for anyone to have survived, who has not already been found.
“We have not gotten any type of reaction back from the sonar, listening, canines, visuals-nothing has come back as far as the possibility of anyone being alive.”
Now, Hernandez said, they will do post-surveillance of the disaster team members to see how they are doing after the incident. One thing he admitted he’d like to see is a question-and-answer period between surviving family members of the Surfside collapse victims and rescue workers, as he has an inclination toward education. His business, Disaster Medical Solutions (DMS), is contracted to do all the education for the federal and state Department of Defense teams.
Although his work on the scene is finished, he said if he has to talk to anyone that needs him, he is 100 percent available.
According to Hernandez, “Some people run out of the way of danger and some run toward it — thank god for those people.”