Staten Island Landfill Search
Katrene Johnson and Morgan
Katrene writes:
“Morgan and I were dispatched to Staten Island a few days after the WTC disaster to search the incoming piles of ruble for DNA samples. Morgan did you guys and me proud. Out of mounds of gritty cement 'dirt' and tangled pieces of metal she located almost two dozen 'samples'.
Her accuracy was 100% on all those we got feedback on.
A big thank-you for the emphasis you two put on the trained indication in your course. Morgan and I followed through on it, and it made all the difference in the rubble. Morgan would indicate by pawing at a spot. I'd move stuff around, examining it. The problem was everything was covered with that gritty, sort of clayey ash/dirt. No bits or pieces that looked like human tissue. And the whole place smelled like a gigantic grave. I'd have to ask her to check and indicate again
every time I stirred up the section she'd initially told me was the place. Bless her heart (and all that training), she'd recheck and indicate again. Sometimes a half dozen times on one source until I could pick it out.
A number of times I just couldn't figure it out. Which stone in the pile of stones? Which soggy, spongy mass in a pile of soggy paper and carpet? When I was really doing poorly she'd reach past me and using her incisors carefully extricate the right piece and hold it until I took it from her
mouth. Blew me away. THAT we had never trained!
Thanks again for everything!
Katrene.
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(above) Hill on Staten Island
where the debris from the WTC disaster was piled. For an
idea of the scale, the pile is about one story high. The bar
of metal to the right in the foreground is an I beam about
two and a half feet thick by maybe 24 feet long. The metal
had all softened and then rehardened. Most of it was covered
with razor sharp burrs from the rehardening.
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More photos compliments of Katrene:
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(above) This is the ship Home Port.
When we arrived on Staten Island we had two choices for
sleeping accommodations. Sleep at the landfill in a tent
Rescue International provided or go home. Later we had a
third choice - Home Port. Sleeping at the landfill was about
as appealing as you'd expect especially on rainy, windy
nights. I was lucky. I live only an hour from Staten Island
so I could go home to sleep. Home Port was a godsend.
Handlers and their dogs could get away from the stench and
constant cacophony of the hill and bunk on the ship. I have
to give Bruce Barton and Rescue International lots of credit
here. RI took responsibility for organizing all the dog
handlers. Bruce kept a steady rotation of dogs round the
clock and managed an unwieldy mélange of dog supplies and
equipment that kept inundating the site.
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(above)
This was
the tent city that went up. Mess tent, First
aid tent, chaplain, the whole shebang. They set it up upwind
of the pile. It didn't help much.
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(above) In this
picture (above) you're looking at the K-9 tent. This was
where we reported after checking in and suiting up in Tyvek
- read sauna suit. We gave our team designation number from
our ID, received a radio and our first load assignment. Our
support person grabbed a bucket and we were off to work. The
K-9 tent was the only human thing actually on site. And the
dogs were the only 'real' things there. Everything else was
shades of gray, black and white. Surreal. Sterile. Even the
machinery was heavily dusted with the gritty gray 'soil'
that held the debris together. The dogs were dogs - solid,
comfortable and real. And they were magnets to the workers
slogging thru knee-deep debris. When we took breaks at the
K-9 tent between loads to rest the dogs and ourselves and
get some water, men and women on the work crews that were on
break or waiting for a load would drift to the tent. They'd
take off their respirators and sit on an upturned bucket
then smile and ask about the dog. They'd glance at the
handler but their eyes would be fastened on the dog. And the
dogs whether they were tired or itching to work would shift
gears - you could see them do it- and walk over to the
seated worker, tail wagging and stand to be petted or
hugged. Our dogs did double duty, search dogs and therapy
dogs.
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(above) In this photo you can see
a typical load that a huge front end loader had scooped out
of the main pile. The loader would dump it and knock it
around a bit to spread it out some. Then about 10 people
with respirators on and rakes in their hands would begin to
sort thru it. As soon as a group of workers entered a
load, a dog and handler joined them and the dog started
casting through the debris. Then there were those huge
machines that were making all that noise. The support person
also carried a white bucket. Each sample that the dog found
went in its own bucket. The support person ran the bucket
back to the FBI tent where forensics specialists ID'd it as
human (or not). The samples were tagged with the dog's name
to track accuracy. For the record, as far as I know, Morgan
was on the money each time we sent a sample back.
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K-9
Specialty Search Associates
