The rescue team that struggled for hours to save the life of a girl trapped in a cave last week gathered Thursday to talk about that how that dangerous job went down.
Members of the San Antonio Fire Department Technical Rescue Team said they credit their training and tools with an outcome that left everybody proud.
Robert Vasquez said serving on the elite team is the culmination of a childhood dream and he is happy to be of service. “What we do is we find a way, or we make a way and that's our motto,” Vasquez said.
Team members were underground for almost ten hours, rotating through shifts, to free an 18-year-old girl trapped in the deep recesses of Robber Baron cave in north San Antonio.
Adam Miles said the effort took a lot of crawling. “The area that she was actually stuck in was about shoulder width, so we had to crawl over each other and try and get good spots to break rock to free her,” he said.
Miles said they have trained for situations like this, but this effort was the first time he had to use power tools to chip away solid rock from around a person. “We had to make sure that we were protecting her, making sure she had everything on to keep her safe, as well as trying to get as close to her body to break the rock to kind of get her free and that was difficult, but she was really good,” he said.
Miles said it was a piece of great fortune that the team had just finished a training exercise in the cave in January, so several of the rescuers had fresh experience with the challenges presented.
“A lot of us have been in that cave, trained in there and done scenarios with that before, so some of us were familiar with the cave itself, so we just put that to use and got her out,” he said.
Mario Nerio said he worked outside the cave to make sure those who went below had everything they needed. “We pretty much emptied out this truck,” Nerio said of the heavy rescue vehicle that carries all kinds of power drills and hand tools.
Neiro said they used a variety of large and small tools.
“We had some rotary hammers, which we normally use for big concrete breaking, but we realized that we had to use smaller hammers that we don't normally use to chip away the rock,” Neiro said, adding, “One of the tools we have is called an air chisel and it's normally used to strip away sheet metal from a vehicle, but it worked perfectly for what they had to do with it, because they had to get really close to her.”
Fernando Guerrero said communication between those above and below ground was a challenge because their radio signals did not penetrate the rock, so they ran a hard wire to the rescue site.
“We do have equipment that we did use, technology from World War II, you know, 1930s or 40s that we use, cave rescue phones,” Guerrero said.
Guerrero said he worked underneath the patient, trying to help her up, while other rescuers worked from above.
“When she finally felt free, she stood up on her toes and did not want to come back down. She knew she was out and that was very, very awesome,” Guerrero said.
Justin Anderson said his first ever cave rescue was a gratifying experience. “When the patient came out, I was out of the cave but it was a very happy moment. I'm glad she got out successfully,” Anderson said.
Vasquez said, "At the end of the day, we serve our community. Every one of the guys on this team is extremely dedicated to our community and to each other."