Firefighters weary after work on Gulf

By TOM KANE

SHOHOLA, PA — Don Wall and Michael Donovan know destruction. Firefighters from Shohola, they travel to major disaster areas.

By the time they arrived at Bay Saint Louis, MS, just east of New Orleans, most of the water had receded.

After a grueling week working with Mississippi rescue crews on the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, they returned from the Gulf Coast on September 7.

“The magnitude of the destruction is enormous. It’s hard to describe it,” said Wall, chief of the Shohola Fire Department.

“Words fail.”

Wall and Donovan, the fire department’s captain known as “Ziggy,” were at the World Trade Center disaster the first days after September 11, 2001.

“This is far worse,” Wall said.

Showing signs of fatigue on September 8, the pair told the Shohola Township Board about their experience. They spoke of 18-hour days, sleeping in their truck or under the stars and being accompanied by an Army Reservist who carried a submachine gun for their protection.

“We were too busy to notice any looters, but we were told they were around,” Donovan said. They were more concerned about contamination than looters, they said.

“I don’t know how many bodies we recovered,” Wall said.

“I lost count,” he said, adding, “We pulled one body down from a tree.”

When handling dead bodies, they had to wear suits protecting them from head to toe. “The heat was almost unbearable in the suits,” Wall said. “The temperature outside was over 100 degrees. I don’t know what the temperature in the suits was.”

A photo of Donovan, clad in a suit, carrying a body, appeared in a USA Today cover story September 8.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) readily admitted the firemen to the rescue efforts because they had trained in handling hazardous materials.

“I have to admit that they were impressed with our expertise and knowledge of disasters,” Wall said. “They were sorry to see us leave, but we had to return home.”

Donovan called his boss on the trip down and told him he wouldn’t be at work for a week. “I hope he understands,” he said.

“One FEMA worker said to us, ‘You guys must train all the time you’re so good.’ That’s when training pays off,” Wall said.

One of the main obstacles they faced was the mud that coated everything. “There was mud all over everything—the ground, the buildings, the roads, the people. It was so bad that the Army Corps of Engineers had to wash down the streets so that rescuers could drive around,” Wall said. They had to wash their hands often during the day in order to avoid contamination.

“That’s going to be a serious problem—the danger of contamination,” Donovan said. Both had received tetanus shots before they began working.

Another problem is going to be identifying the dead. “We looked for a name off a piece of mail when we pulled a body out of a house,” Wall said. “Bodies floating around are going to be hard to identify. We were told by the authorities that they would have to rely on DNA.”

Both firemen felt that the people of Bay Saint Louis would rebuild their community.

“They worked so hard to clean up. They were determined to salvage as much as they could,” Wall said.

They expressed a concern for the danger of catastrophes at home. “We both feel that we would be able to protect Shohola in an extreme emergency because our firefighters are so well trained,” Wall said. “Our problem is that volunteers are getting tougher to get these days. We have to tell our residents that the dangers are real even up here in Shohola.”

George J. Fluhr, chairman of the Shohola Township Board, said, “We could have a forest fire or a serious railroad spill, or even an airplane crash. We have to be ready for these things before they happen.”