A Grieving Process

"Rescuers have a sort of protector image.  If you ever see what these rescuers do, it's very much that way.  People just sort of fall down at their feet before being spirited away on a backboard."

"I've worked with a lot of [rescuers] who seem larger-than-life - guys who dangle - and it can all get very dramatized.  Because we watch so many movies, we tend to think of things like that as romantic when in fact they're downright terrifying and dangerous."


"If you had put the miners in there, they would have been out by Saturday.  You don't walk away from a site when someone's alive."


"[The public's] expectations are very, very high.  But from a responder's perspective, it has to become more mechanical...  We cannot afford emotion to cloud judgement.  It might look like it's 'All hands on deck and just keep digging' but there is a lot of risk-analysis that goes into it.  People see us doing good.  They see us saving lives.  they don't want the rescue process to end because then it becomes a grieving process."

Those are some of the second-thought voices of people experienced in the business of responding to disaster situations.  And it is terrifying and dangerous when catastrophic incidents occur, whether man-made through neglect and lack of foresight, or natural occurrences when climate or other conditions humankind has no control over, from volcanic eruptions to earthquakes and tsunamis, floods and hurricanes interrupt the normal flow of life.

It is terrifying and dangerous to contemplate the plight of those caught in the path of these natural phenomena, and it is terrifying and dangerous for those tasked with the impossible-seeming job of  successfully coming to the rescue of those directly impacted.  In their professional zeal to be doing the right thing in their response the responders are also placed in imminent danger, little different from that which has caused a disaster that imperils human life.

Without doubt the response to the Elliot Lake Algo Centre Mall collapse was deficient.  Time lapsed, indecision, the logic of ascertaining safety before proceeding aligned with the emotion of fearful restraint to a catastrophic wreckage under which most certainly lay victims and possibly some survivors ensured that a valiant rescue attempt turned into a debacle.  What else to call it with a uncertain interim of 24 hours' response delay?

Twenty four hours when whoever might have been trapped under the rubble might have been saved if rescue had been enacted in a timely manner.  Clearly, the region, the province and the federal government all lack the necessary and orderly proficiency in establishing a set of conditions, processes and technical responses that might kick in when disaster strikes.  Rescue control contemplated the situation reaching the technical conclusion that nothing could be done.

The premier of the province insisted that everything must be done, that rescuers had a societal obligation to "exercise every option, explore every possible avenue" to enable themselves to reach survivors, give them immediate succour, bring them out of further danger and respectfully remove those who may have died.  He contacted the prime minister who responded by offering the expertise of the military, should it be required, to bolster other more localized efforts.

An experienced search and rescue, disaster team from Toronto and structural engineers were thought to be sufficient of a response to ensure that success would result, initially.  The 37 Toronto-based HUSAR team members were joined by ten OPP Urban Search and Rescue personnel and two medics, a chemical geological radiological nuclear response team, and massive pieces of machinery meant to begin methodically disassembling the collapsed building.

"We will push it with this machine backwards, which should cause it (escalator) to fall ... away from the victims on the floor.  Once that settles and we see how things do move on that manoeuver, we'll take a step back to have the engineers reassess and then we will start to move in from the front of the building to begin shearing off the south corner", explained Bill Neadles of Toronto's Heavy Urban Search and Rescue police team.

Residents of Elliot Lake remained on the scene, baffled at delays, enraged at the thought that people they know, personal friends, relatives, acquaintances, hovered below the wreckage in a state between life and death, and death was inevitably winning the battle as those buried slowly lost hope.  The town's mayor insists he had no word from the premier of the province until two days had elapsed after the mall's Saturday collapse.

"We know everyone in this town (of 12,000 residents), so we know everyone in there."  The efforts they were spectators of seemed to virtually everyone to be too little too late.  "If anybody survived after three days in that, good luck", one resident commented bitterly.  This was a town mall that everyone complained about, of its state of disrepair.  Buckets were used to catch water dripping all around the 200,000 square-foot mall.  They could view exposed rusting beams.

"We knew it was going to happen, we just didn't think it was going to be that soon", said one woman who had been working in the mall.  "They said, 'Everything is A-OK'  I pointed up above my cash [register] to one of the many wet spots.  They said, 'Oh, that's just cosmetic damage'."  From inside the mall the rumble of cars parking on the roof could be clearly heard on the inside.

Does that tell us something about architectural engineering, when it is considered a smart thing to do, installing a parking garage above the mall shops and restaurants, not underground?  For that matter, where land is not quite the premium in Elliot Lake as it might be in say, Toronto, why would the mall not have had a bigger footprint, extending the parking garage beside the mall, not above it, for maximum safety?

"That mall should have been torn down a long time ago.  But I can't see why they waited so long until somebody got hurt", observed another resident.  Lawyers for the mall owners say they are "devastated" about the collapse.  Death threats have reached them from some local residents.  The Labour ministry confirms that the mall had a long history of leak and mould complaints.

They had sent out inspectors six times over the past three years to determine the status of an unsafe escalator, leaky roof, mould, leaky pipes.  The lawyer insists "My clients never, never had the view that this created a danger to the public that were visiting the mall"; they had, after all, spent $1-million two years ago on roof repairs and other work.

Litigation pending down the road.