Rescuers Return With Tales of Futility : Homecoming: Families welcome back weary county search team members.

By ERIC SLATER

April 30, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

PACOIMA — For nine mind-numbing days, Scott Smith crawled through the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City with a machine-like determination to find survivors.

He shredded his leather gloves and jumpsuit in his relentless digging, deliberately ignored the scope of the carnage before him and strained for the sounds of a living child. None came.

Only when he stepped off a bus here Saturday and saw his wife and two young children--both wearing pint-sized firefighters’ outfits--did the Castaic firefighter allow himself to cry.

“Usually when we go to stuff, it was an accident,” he said. “But as much as I try, I can’t make sense of this one.”

Smith and more than 60 members of the Los Angeles County Urban Search and Rescue Task Force came home Saturday, wearied from their task and humbled by its futility.

The elite team, trained to save lives by extracting victims from collapsed and damaged structures, found only bodies--many of them children--as they searched through the concrete remnants of the bombed-out office building.

“It was a tough week and we’re glad to be home, but we’re also thankful we had the opportunity to help,” said Mike Idol, an assistant fire chief. “We just wish we had the opportunity to rescue some live victims.”

Among the first to offer aid to the overwhelmed Oklahoma City Fire Department, the Los Angeles group arrived the day after the April 19 blast with 62 men and women, six dogs and two physicians to help them weather the daunting task.

This team, one of 10 such groups called to Oklahoma, was especially valued because of its earthquake experience: These were the heroes of the Northridge Meadows Apartments, where 16 people were killed in the 1994 quake.

Wearing dress uniforms and multicolored ribbon solidarity pins, they flew into March Air Force Base in Riverside County on Saturday afternoon to a formal, military-style welcome marked by officials’ speeches and brisk, piped-in marches.

“When bad things happen, good people go into action,” County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman told those assembled on the Tarmac. “Today we’re here to welcome back some good people.”

But it was at their home base in Pacoima, at a rundown fire station, that the team received its real welcome. About 150 relatives and friends greeted the men and women with homemade banners, wild cheers and long, tearful hugs.

Many team members said the real trauma had not yet settled in--that they had had a job to do and would mourn later.

“We didn’t spend a lot of time reflecting,” said Capt. Don Roy. “But it took a toll. Children are innocent.”

They said they were consumed by their mission at the demolished federal building--working 12-hour shifts at the heavily guarded site, mindful of potentially lethal, shifting debris, but compelled to go on by those anxiously waiting.

Meals, phone calls home, showers and briefings took up much of the rest of their time, and few got more than four or five hours’ sleep a night.

Often on hands and knees, they hoisted out hunks of concrete, rebar, piping and insulation, literally removing parts of a nine-story building piece by piece--and desperately searching for signs of life beneath each piece.

Some wore their steel-toed boots down to the steel from kneeling so much.

Once, Smith said, the fierce wind blew a chair off the top floor, slightly injuring an FBI agent. Another rescue worker was injured by a falling chunk of concrete.

The team’s families at home, watching day after day of devastating images on TV and fearing for their safety, also suffered.

“I cried a couple times,” said Smith’s 9-year-old daughter, Rachel. “I thought there was going to be another bomb.”

There was warmth, however, in the midst of a wrenchingly cold experience.

The Oklahomans, team members said, took them in. They brought new boots and socks, food and rain gear. Phone calls were free. Residents hugged and thanked them as they trudged toward their hellish workplace.

Each night, the squad members turned over their dirty clothing to townsfolk, and found it cleaned and folded by their beds each morning with a mint on top.

Oklahoma firefighters, many of whom knew victims of the blast, tried to help relieve them of the worst part of the job, they said, often removing the dead victims that the Los Angeles squad located.

Exhausted, they were finally relieved of duty if not the lingering feeling that the job wasn’t done.

“It’s heard to leave Oklahoma,” Smith said, with obvious regret, “but it’s easy to come home.”

Times staff writer Abigail Goldman contributed to this report.