Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (81 page)

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Authors: Samantha Power

BOOK: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
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Annie Vieira de Mello and her two sons, Laurent and Adrien, had not yet received word of the attack.They had spent a hot afternoon at the Personnaz family lake home in France, where she and Vieira de Mello had vacationed so often when their sons were young. As they returned to shore and moored the boat, Annie saw her sister-in-law’s mother rushing toward the dock.“There’s been an attack!” she screamed. “Something has happened to Sergio!” Annie rushed past her and raced in her car to Massongy. Laurent and Adrien followed in the car behind. They frantically turned the radio dial in the hopes of receiving news but could confirm only that the UN headquarters in Baghdad had been attacked. When they reached their home, they turned on the television and saw the monstrous pile of rubble under which their father was buried. The crawl at the bottom of the screen gave them hope. It said their father was injured in the explosion, but that he had been given water.
 
 
After leaving Loescher in von Zehle’s care, Davie hustled back to the gap where he had spoken to Vieira de Mello. But in the short time he had been away, the opening he had cleared had half-filled with mud. Mud was not something Davie expected to find in parched Baghdad, but he saw that Iraqi concrete was made of cement on the outside and clay on the inside.The bomb blast had shredded the concrete and caused the water pipes to burst, so the clay and the water were blending together, forcing the survivors and rescuers to worry about mud slides and suffocation as well as further structural collapses. Vieira de Mello’s voice had grown faint. “Jeff, I can’t breathe,” he said. Davie, slowed by the narrowness of the space, began removing the mud and rubble from the hole. After around ten minutes,Vieira de Mello’s voice became clearer. “I can breathe,” he said. “I can see light.”
 
 
Davie emerged again from the gap.The Americans brought small shovels, around a foot long, which were almost useless in prying away slabs of the wall and ceiling. But most soldiers were preoccupied with security, which, unlike rescue, was what they had been trained for. Colonel Mark Calvert, a squadron commander in the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment, put in place an impenetrable cordon around the building. The security he established around the site, using 450 men, was airtight. What was missing were professional rescue workers and equipment, which were what Vieira de Mello and others trapped needed. “We came to the fight with what we had,” recalls Calvert. “But were the tools adequate for the fight? No way. We just weren’t trained or equipped to rescue people after that kind of attack.”
 
 
For around an hour Pichon joined Davie in attempting to clear rubble from the gap. Davie continued to speak with Vieira de Mello, mainly to keep him conscious and to try to pinpoint his location. “I am facing a large flat object,” Vieira de Mello said. “It’s dark,” he said. “My head and one arm are free.” He asked for water, but Davie could not reach him to provide it. Vieira de Mello repeated, “Jeff, my legs,” many times. He also asked constantly about the members of his team. "Jeff, the others . . . where are they . . . who is treating them?” he asked. “Where is Carolina? . . . Where are Gaby and the others? Please look for them. Please don’t leave them . . . don’t pull out.”
9
 
 
William von Zehle had been an EMT since 1975. He knew from past rescue missions that the best way, and often the only way, to extract trapped people from collapsed buildings was from the inside. After briefly speaking with Loescher at the rear of the building, he had gone inside and arrived at the edge of the collapse on the third floor. Overlooking the pit of rubble, he felt as though he were standing on a balcony of a motel. He had a radio, but it didn’t get reception, so he used his cell phone to telephone Scott Hill, his commander. “Tell my wife and kids I love them because I might not be coming back,” he said. Hill was taken aback.“Roger that,” he said. Von Zehle took off his flak jacket and prepared to enter the shaft.
 
 
He used the rebar rods poking out of the shattered concrete as hand grips to lower himself down. The rubble was so unstable that as he leaned against the debris, it frequently gave way beneath or beside him. He knew that one of the gravest risks to those trapped below was that, in his attempt to reach them, he would unleash a mini-avalanche, killing them all.
 
 
After von Zehle had ventured down around fifteen feet, the hole widened slightly. When he reached Loescher at the base of the shaft, he saw another man to Loescher’s right and his own left. This man had his back to the center of the shaft. He was lying on his right side. His right arm seemed to be pointing downward, as if he had been attempting to break his fall. His legs were buried in debris, and he seemed to be boxed in between two slabs of concrete. One slab faced him, while another slab lay several inches above him. Are you okay?” von Zehle shouted. “I’m alive,” the man said. “I’m Bill,” von Zehle said. “What’s your name?” “I’m Sergio,” he said.
 
 
Although Vieira de Mello had not been visible from the top of the shaft on the third floor, he was so close to Loescher that the two men could nearly have touched hands.Vieira de Mello had been carrying on scattered conversations with his rescuers on the outside, but it had taken a tremendous strain to be heard. Now able to speak more easily to von Zehle, he asked if anybody had been killed.Von Zehle said yes but did not know who or how many.“I’m not going to get out of here, am I?” Vieira de Mello asked. “Don’t worry,” the rescuer assured him. “You have my word:We’ll get you guys both out.”
 
 
Von Zehle knew the predicament of both men was dire, but he had managed more severe rescues in the past. He telephoned his superior officer on his cell phone again. “I need rope, lighting, morphine, reinforcing rods and four-by-fours to hold the debris up, and screw jacks,” he said. In his four months in Baghdad he had tried to help get the fire department up and running. He knew firsthand that the department did not have the supplies he needed. “I hope the army engineering folks have them,” he said to himself.
 
 
The attack had occurred in the sector of Baghdad under the control of the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR). But the ACR consisted mainly of war fighters and had only one company of light engineers. As a result, after the attack it turned to the First Armored Division’s engineering battalions, based out at Baghdad International Airport, which operated heavy engineering equipment. These combat engineers were in Iraq to build base camps, bunkers, roads, airfields, and bridges. But the equipment they used for construction could also be used for rescue and recovery operations. The 1457th Engineering Battalion, based out of Utah, which had wheeled rather than tracked engineering equipment and which prided itself in serving as the army’s 9-1-1 unit, had been designated as emergency first responder in Iraq.
 
 
True to form, when the attack on the UN occurred, Major John Hansen, the operations officer with the 1457th Engineering Battalion, dispatched two separate contingents to the scene. One group, with the 671st Bridge Company, had spent the day bolting and extending a portable Maybe Johnson bridge across a river that was a ten-minute drive from the Canal Hotel. Hansen directed half of the men at the bridge, around fifteen soldiers, to UN headquarters to assist with the rescue. He told them to bring with them the heavy equipment they had been using to push the bridge across the river. The bridge company arrived around an hour after the explosion, but they were directed toward securing and clearing the outer perimeter of the Canal complex, not toward assisting the ongoing rescue efforts. They used a backhoe (a tractor with a large bucket on the front) to clear out the UN’s SUVs, which were burning and smoldering and which had been scattered widely by the blast.
 
 
Hansen had also instructed a platoon of combat engineers at their airport base to saddle up and make their way to the scene of the explosion. This took time, as the platoon did not have designated equipment sets ready to go.The gear they packed included suits and gas masks to ward off nuclear, biological, or chemical fumes; pioneer kits, which contained axes, pickaxes, saws, ropes, round-mouthed shovels, square-mouthed shovels, crowbars, rigging devices, and hand tools; a half-dozen dump trucks; a tracked vehicle with one big arm known as a hydraulic excavator, so big it had to be moved on a flatbed truck; and several small emplacement excavators, which were lightweight all-wheel-drive high-mobility vehicles with digging arms, chain saws, jackhammers, and a hydraulic rock drill attached to a hose.The 1457th combat engineers did not arrive with this equipment at the Canal Hotel until approximately three hours after the blast, and even then they were not directed either to the rear of the building or inside, where their mobile equipment might have been of use.
 
 
Von Zehle needed more than equipment. He also needed help. At six feet two and 180 pounds, he was too big to maneuver in the space between Loescher and Vieira de Mello. He had been able to put an IV in Loescher’s right arm. But Vieira de Mello was not nearly as exposed, and all he could do was to try to pull the rubble away by hand and prop up a few heavier slabs of concrete to stabilize the debris around him.
 
 
Von Zehle asked Vieira de Mello whether he could move his toes. He said he could. “How about your fingers?” He could. “What day of the week is it?” “Tuesday,” he answered. Von Zehle was satisfied that he was lucid and could be rescued. “Is Carolina okay?” he asked. “Is she your wife?” von Zehle asked.Vieira de Mello grunted yes.Von Zehle was surprised and thought, “I don’t think his wife is here with him in Baghdad.” But Vieira de Mello did not seem delirious. “I didn’t know who this man was,” recalls von Zehle,“but it was obvious he was somebody who was a take-charge kind of guy.” He had many questions. “How bad is the explosion?” he asked. “How many people are hurt?” Because Vieira de Mello never mentioned who he was, von Zehle learned only later that he had been treating the UN head of mission.
 
 
Around thirty minutes after von Zehle had descended into the hole, three faces appeared in the light at the top of the shaft. “Can we help you?” one asked.Von Zehle wasn’t achieving much with his solo digging, but he worried that well-intentioned soldiers lacking search-and-rescue experience would only make matters worse. “Any of you have any training in this?” he asked. Two of the men shook their heads, but one said the words he had been waiting to hear. “I’m a firefighter paramedic from New York City,” the man said.Von Zehle eyed the five-foot-seven, 150-pound man above. It was Andre Valentine, the medic who had been running triage at the entrance to the Canal. “I’m too big,” said von Zehle. “Get down here.”
 
 
At the top of the shaft on the third floor, Valentine took off his flak jacket, laid down his weapon, and put on his gloves. Having already treated the injured downstairs, he was almost out of supplies. All that he had left in his medical kit were three IVs, two vials of morphine, and five bandages. Von Zehle pulled himself out of the pit, and the two exchanged biographical notes. “Well, at least two people in Baghdad have done this type of work before,” Valentine said. Looking down into the dark rubble tunnel below, he said, half-joking, “We should be just fine now.” Von Zehle nodded. “What I wouldn’t do for the right equipment right about now,” he said. It was around 5:30 p.m., more than an hour since the attack. Davie tried to keep Vieira de Mello informed about the progress of the rescue. A U.S. Army medical sergeant named Eric Hartman arrived. “Eric is an expert in this type of recovery,” Davie told him. “He has an expert team and engineering equipment.” Vieira de Mello placed his hope in this new-found expertise. He said he could hear Hartman and called back to him several times, “Eric, can you hear me?” Hartman could not hear him, perhaps because he was turned in the opposite direction or because the noise at the site had grown too loud with the arrival of the helicopters above. "Sergio, we are trying to find a way to you from two directions,” Davie said. Vieira de Mello responded simply, “Jeff, please hurry.”
 
 
When Larriera approached the back of the building, Vieira de Mello’s bodyguards and U.S. soldiers at the base of the rubble attempted to keep her away, roughly grabbing her by the arms and trying to deposit her back behind the cordon rope. She was stunned to see how few people were digging in the rubble itself. Most of the soldiers had their backs to the rubble and were more focused on keeping people away from the crime scene than on extracting those trapped within the pile. Larriera begged the U.S. soldiers manhandling her to start digging. “Let’s use the mangled metal lying around,” she tried. “Or what about your helmets?” As she bent over at the base of the enormous pile, she dug pathetically with her hands. “I thought maybe if I was digging, even if I looked like a fool, they would get the idea,” she recalls. But the soldiers were following orders and continued to face away from the Canal Hotel. Several cameramen filmed the rescue, and she pleaded with them to join in. “Please help,” she shouted. “Don’t film! Help!”
 
 
The closest thing to civilian leadership on the scene came from Patrick Kennedy, Bremer’s chief of staff, who had arrived with Colonel Sabal forty-five minutes after the bomb struck. As they entered the area, Iraqi civil defense corps guards were trying to get in, but the U.S. soldiers who had erected the cordon were trying to keep them back.“I’ve got to get them in,” Kennedy told Sabal. “We trained them. We can’t just leave them out there. This is their country.” Kennedy succeeded in clearing their entry and then ran into Captain Kuhner. "Captain, what do you need?” Kuhner told him: “I need a backhoe, shoring materials to prop up the building, a C truck with a jackhammer on one end, cranes, earth-moving equipment.” Kennedy said he would do what he could. He radioed Bremer’s military aides and requested further assistance.

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