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Schapelhouman
WG resident assists in the New York recovery effort
By Amy Jenkins
On Sept. 19, Willow Glen resident Harold Schapelhouman and 66 other members of California Task Force Three--consisting of firefighters and civilians from Oakland, South San Francisco, San Mateo and San Jose--left Travis Air Force base at 9 a.m. and flew to New York City to help the New York firefighters sift through debris after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Schapelhouman has lived in Willow Glen for six years and is captain of the County of Menlo Park's Fire Protection Unit, in charge of special operations and the Urban Search and Rescue Program.
California Task Force Three is one of eight search-and-rescue teams in California and 28 in the United States. It includes members from 11 different fire departments, and its civilian members are structural engineers, physicians and canine owners and handlers.
"The reason it is not just called Menlo Park, even though we're the sponsoring agency for the team, is that we try to be sensitive to all our participants," Schapelhouman said.
Schapelhouman went to New York as the head of the task force and is also involved in managing all the teams at the World Trade Center site.
The team was summoned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which controls and financially supports the team on the federal level and sends it out when assistance is requested by governmental leaders.
"They were obviously overwhelmed by the events," Schapelhouman said of the New York City officials and crews. "There is a seven- to 10-day window where the team goes in and works really hard, and they beat their guys up, and they need to be rotated out, so we were the second-wave rotation as the first wave came out. You don't want to send everyone in at once."
During its first four days in New York, Schapelhouman's team was part of the Rapid Response Task Force for New York City. The team worked to shore up the collapsed structures.
Since Schapelhouman's team had engineers and technical expertise, New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani assigned it to two locations: Fort Totten in Queens, where Schapelhouman was, and the Javits Convention Center in mid-Manhattan.
Random House Publishing in New York sponsored the team's firefighters by providing 30 volunteers for every 10 of its personnel. The company also gave the team thick 4-inch pads to sleep on, as well as blankets, pillows and bedding, items the team cannot afford to travel with.
"They took care of us," Schapelhouman said of the publishing company. "Before we left they gave us a little send-off with a dinner party, and when we came home they had food for our families and books for our kids."
During the next five days, the team worked 12-hour shifts at the World Trade Center site. Schapelhouman worked the night shift.
"The nights are pretty eerie; it's a little more risky because of the shadows that get thrown by the lights and you can't quite see everything, and there was a lot of fall-through hazards," he said.
The team worked mostly to recover bodies at the site.
"We came in at an interesting time," he said. "We didn't have any misconceptions about the reality of anyone being alive. There's always that potential, but we basically knew on Sept. 23, when we started our operations, that the survivability window was really small."
Schapelhouman has been to four other federal disasters--the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the Northridge earthquake in 1994, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the Taiwan earthquake in 1999--and multiple local events with significant casualties.
"They're never easy," he said of the disasters. "I go in with a specific job that needs to be done, and as a team leader, I'm always fearful of losing one of our own personnel and coming home with guys that are changed by the event both physically and emotionally."
He says the major risk his team members had from the trip was returning with respiratory problems, even though they wore masks most of the time. Their biggest problems so far have included one case of pneumonia and a lot of nightmares and insomnia.
"It feels surreal, like a dream," Schapelhouman said. "It is nice to come back to Willow Glen because my neighbors are great; they helped watch my daughter to give my wife a break while I was gone."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
