Like the rest of us in California, Schapelhouman and Zsutty woke up on Sept. 11 to the live television coverage of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. They knew by the time of the buildings' collapse that their search and rescue team would eventually be activated. It was the first day of Schapelhouman's vacation.

"I don't just jump on an airplane and try to do something," Schapelhouman says. "I'm a foot soldier in the system." According to Schapelhouman, it is a generally well-oiled system.

Schapelhouman and Zsutty are members of California Task Force 3, one of the 28 teams that comprise the National Urban Search and Rescue System of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Eight of these teams are based in California, and four of the eight remain in the state at all times. The task force is not only a national team but also a state resource operating under the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, and reports to either the federal government or the state depending on where the rescue situation is located.

Schapelhouman is the special operations chief of California Task Force 3, managing both the task force and the logistics division of the Menlo Park Fire District, which sponsors California Task Force 3.

Zsutty is a civil engineer who runs his own business in Willow Glen--Zsutty Consulting Engineers. A member of California Task Force 3 for seven years, he functions as a structural specialist for the team.

Ground Zero is not the first disaster site that Schapelhouman and Zsutty have been called to. Both have been involved in local earthquake and flooding rescue efforts and have traveled to farther reaches of the globe for rescue efforts, such as the earthquake in Taiwan in 1999. Schapelhouman also participated in rescue efforts for the Oaklahoma City bombing.

"We're not the team that's going to prevent something from happening," Schapelhouman says. "When it all comes down, they call us. It's like life at the fire station--it could be a quiet day, or it could be the busiest day of your life."

Though many members of California Task Force 3 had been "seasoned" by previous hands-on disaster experiences, Sept. 11 was, of course, an assignment like no other. New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Guiliani asked them to put together a rapid response task force within the next 24 hours, as 70 percent of the city's emergency vehicles were in use at Ground Zero. The team, split in half and working out of two locations, successfully met the challenge. Thirty-one members went to Fort Totten in Queens, while the other half went to the Jacob Javits Convention Center in midtown Manhattan. Schapelhouman and Zsutty worked with their teams to secure vehicles--including an empty Heineken beer truck and various donated fire rescue vehicles--load them with equipment, and ready them for emergency response. At the same time, the team was cutting lumber to act as support beams for damaged buildings, as well as training in rope rescue, pneumatic shoring and metal cutting.

Then, on Sept. 25, both teams began taking 12-hour shifts in the plaza area of the World Trade Center site. Schapelhouman described the scene as "pretty eerie." It was nighttime, with smoke and debris, shadows and bright lights. Large cranes and other pieces of machinery worked alongside men and women. During their three-hour treks underground, covering a space three to four city blocks long, workers left a trail of Cyalume lights to find their way back out--what looked to Schapelhouman like a "breadcrumb trail."

"As an engineer, we were in the area with the rescue personnel," Zsutty commented. "It was our duty to check an entry into an area. We were basically hand-in-hand with the rescue guys. They looked to us to be their eyes and ears."

The men note the irony of the fact that they are part of a "search and rescue" team that does far more recovery than rescue.

"The idealist and underlying theme of the potential for live rescues and the visions of grandeur in service and sacrifice to a cause are often not proportional to the harsh realities of catastrophic disaster sites, where extensive life loss can numb and overwhelm the most seasoned of veterans," Schapelhouman wrote in an article that will be published in the September issue of 911 Magazine. (The magazine stands for 911 and has been published since long before the Sept. 11 event.)

Photograph courtesy of Harold Schapelhouman Searching for Survivors: Joe Zsutty, a member of California Task Force 3, one of the 28 federal emergency services teams that comprise the National Urban Search and Rescue System, worked in the cleanup operation in New York City at Ground Zero.

Outside of the duties that required him to keep a calm persona during his time in New York, Schapelhouman was personally affected by the tragedy. He lost good friend Ray Downey, age 63, who was deputy chief in charge of special operations in New York City, also for the National Urban Search and Rescue System.

Support systems are important for these men, and Zsutty mentioned that the members of California Task Force 3 are all close friends. The main concern and ongoing issue after the mission in New York has been health-related. Despite high-quality respiratory equipment, 70 percent of the team returned home ill, or developed pneumonia soon after, including Zsutty. There are also financial pitfalls, as much of the team's deployment expenses have not yet been reimbursed by the federal government.

Schapelhouman asks, "Where did the year go? It seems like just yesterday I was in New York." And not. These days he is busy managing training in new techniques and equipment and looking for a larger space to operate from (as the task force's annual funding is expected to increase), in addition to preparing for an upcoming $740,000 grant this October designated for his team's training against weapons of mass destruction. He is also a certified lead instructor and program coordinator for Menlo Park Fire District's Baylands Structural Collapse Training Center, and also teaches fire technology at the College of San Mateo.

Zsutty is back home and working on residential structural work, including remodels, several of which are in Willow Glen.

From his 21 years as a firefighter, Schapelhouman has learned to listen to his senses and to have eyes in the back of his head. "You're not sure what will happen, but you know something will on a daily basis," he states. "I don't think about being afraid. I think about having respect for the unknown."