Israeli rescue squad provides trauma therapy alongside search efforts
A week after the collapse of the Champlain Towers South apartment complex in Surfside, Florida, the Israeli search-and-rescue delegation continues to work to find and pull survivors from the rubble.
A section of the 40-year-old building collapsed in the middle of the night last Wednesday, causing at least 16 deaths. Though 147 people are still missing, there have been no rescues since early Thursday.
A week after the collapse of the Champlain Towers South apartment complex in Surfside, Florida, the IDF Home Front Command’s search-and-rescue delegation continues to work to find and pull survivors from the rubble.
Accompanying the IDF in its search and rescue efforts is United Hatzalah, who sent a team of psychological trauma experts to assist all the families, not just those who are Jewish, during this difficult time.
The team consisted of six psychotrauma experts and one therapy dog, who landed in Florida to provide what the mayor of Bel Harbour termed as "psychological first aid," according to the Miami Herald.
One of the unit's responders, Raphael Poch, told the Herald that he and his team have provided aid to a "couple hundred" people since arriving in the country on Sunday.
The 10-person IDF delegation, led by Col. Golan Vach, landed in Miami on Sunday and is continuing to work side-by-side with American and Mexican teams in a search-and-rescue mode. Despite the days passing, they have not shifted to a recovery mission.
A large number of the missing are from Miami’s Jewish community, and before the team took off, the IDF said its delegation’s mission is “to assist in the life-saving efforts by mapping the challenges at the site of the destruction, assisting the Jewish community and supporting the local rescue forces.”
While in Israel, the delegation studied the building and built 3D models of the complex before they replicated the way the tower fell. The building collapsed into four parts, from the center to the sides and then onto itself.
In Miami, the troops also spoke with the families of the missing to understand where in their apartments they could have been when the building collapsed. Family members were also asked to describe what the missing could be wearing, what color hair they have and if they had any tattoos.
The hundreds of rescuers at the sites know where apartments used to be and where exactly to look thanks to the 3D modeling that was done by IDF troops, even if they ran in an attempt to escape when the building started to collapse.
“For example, we would show them a picture of the apartment and would ask, where is the master bedroom situated? Where was the bed inside that room? Where would the person sleep? What direction would their head be?” IDF officer Yuval Klein to the Herald. “Did they have any significant objects in the room? Maybe a statue? Maybe a mirror with a gold ring?”
United Hatzalah has been assisting in bringing about this line of questioning to those they are providing treatment for, noting the IDF tasked United Hatzalah with assignments "which are important” to the search and rescue efforts, considering its methodology.
Klein said that it could help rescuers get a better idea which apartment they are sifting through, who they might be looking for and how many people were trapped within that apartment unit, and it additionally makes family members "feel like they are a part of the search," he told the Herald, which keeps the bereaved victims from becoming hopeless, angry and waiting for results.
"We’re here to make them feel that someone is with them,” Poch told the Herald, adding that for some victims, a hug is all they require, but for others going through acute stress more extreme measures have been used to quell stress and fear.
“You need to know where to look,” Col. Elad Edri, deputy commander of the delegation told The Jerusalem Post, adding that now the Americans know exactly where apartments used to be and where exactly to look for those who may have been inside.
The families are updated twice a day about the rescue operation and as the days pass with no survivors being pulled from the rubble, the families of the missing are not giving up hope that the rescue workers will find their loved ones.
Anna Ahronheim contributed to this report.
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