 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
| UM physicians assist in rescue efforts at World Trade Center collapse | ||||||||
|
||||||||
| Craig Likness proves you can’t judge a bookman by his cover | ||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| UM physicians assist in rescue efforts at World Trade Center collapse | ||||||||
|
||||||||
The two University of Miami School of Medicine physicians are doctors on the elite South Florida urban search and rescue teams that descended on ground zero in New York after the September 11 terrorist attacks. They worked side by side with dozens of other rescue workers from around the world, all joined together for a common mission: to search for survivors amid the rubble and ruins of the World Trade Center collapse.
As physicians on the teams, Shatz and Cantwell’s job in New York—as it is at any disaster site at which they are deployed—was to provide medical care for any survivors and for the team of paramedics, firefighters, and canines that searched for victims.
“Every disaster we respond to is a learning experience and is life-changing in one way or another,” says Shatz, an associate professor of surgery, trauma, and surgical critical care at the Ryder Trauma Center and medical director for Florida Task Force I, a contingent of 72 Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel and four canines that spent ten days in New York. Shatz and Cantwell have assisted in rescue efforts at some of the worst disaster sites in the world, including the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, and a six-story building collapse in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1996, respectively. But nothing, they both agree, could have prepared them for what they encountered in New York. “I found it totally overwhelming,” says Cantwell, director of critical care medicine in the Department of Pediatrics and medical manager for Florida Task Force II, a 72-member urban search and rescue team comprised of firefighters and firefighter-paramedics from 22 municipalities all over South Florida. The team also includes civilian representatives and a police officer from the Broward Sheriff’s Office. “We had access to news coverage before we arrived, but what we really didn’t realize until we saw it was how big the rubble pile was. It was immense.” Says Shatz, “This was on an order of magnitude greater than anything I’ve ever seen. The only way to describe it is what I’ve heard people say—that if the end of the world comes, this is what it’s going to look like. It was just a huge, huge mass of twisted steel.” Minutes after the two hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers, Cantwell knew she and her team members of Task Force II would soon be dispatched to New York to aid in the rescue effort. “My beeper went off that Tuesday morning,” says Cantwell, a member of the team for seven years. “I just grabbed my bags and reported to the City of Miami Fire-Rescue Training Center.” Her team normally takes a flight to disaster sites, but because all airline traffic across the nation had been grounded that day in response to the attacks, she and the 71 other members of Task Force II spent three days at the former Homestead Air Force Base before they were instructed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to drive to New York. They left in two buses, three SUVs, three tractor-trailers, and a van, carrying with them more than 58,000 pounds of equipment. Once in New York, her mission quickly got under way, as she helped unload equipment and set up a base of operations and medical clinic at ground zero. “The brunt of the work during the week was to actually go onto the rubble pile and search different areas in concert with other teams, looking for void spaces and hoping that if someone were protected by a void, there would be a chance of finding a survivor,” says Cantwell. Rescue personnel were manned with special cameras and monitoring devices, and canines were used to search for anyone who might be alive. Unfortunately, the search and rescue teams found no survivors. “We realized back in Oklahoma City that though our mission was to extricate live victims and keep them alive, the reality is that we get more fatalities than we do survivors,” says Shatz, who also is assistant medical director for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. “But the recovery of bodies is equally important because the victims’ families otherwise would have no closure.” Their teams worked 12-plus hour shifts, sleeping on the fourth floor of New York’s Jacob Javits Center when they were off duty and eating donated food from area restaurants. Shatz calls the firefighters, paramedics, and police officers, who are often the first to arrive at the scene of disasters, the real heroes of September 11. “In the hospital, physicians mostly see people who survive,” he says. “But the first responders out in the field see some horrendous stuff that we don’t ever see in the hospital.” Cantwell calls her experience in New York a wake-up call. “It’s just unbelievable to see the New York skyline without the World Trade Center towers,” says Cantwell. “When something like this happens, you start to think what’s really important in life. We go through so many trivial details and stresses in our lives, and to just think about the magnitude of something like this, it puts things in perspective.” |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
| Craig Likness proves you can’t judge a bookman by his cover | ||||||||
|
||||||||
tereotypes can be hard to live down. Just ask Craig Likness, head of the Archives and Special Collections Division (ASC) in the Otto G. Richter Library. While his department, located on the library’s eighth floor, may not be the most frequented place on campus, Likness says working there is not the reclusive job most people assume it is. “You actually need to be a people person. A lot of people don’t think of librarians in that way, but you spend most of your time working with people,” says Likness, who has been head of the division for a year after working for 24 years in a variety of positions at Trinity University in Texas. Among the most typical interactions Likness experiences are working with students who come to him for instructional presentations, and assisting University faculty and staff, residents from the surrounding community, and distant users who make special appointments to visit the highly respected collections found in the ASC division.
According to Likness, the library’s most popular collection has long been its Pan American World Airways collection. He says his staff receives questions from around the world from researchers, collectors, aviation historians, and other individuals with a special interest in the corporate archives of the Pan Am company. Other actively used collections include those dealing with environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, local journalist Bill Baggs, the Model Land Company, and the history of South Florida. Collections with photographs are also very popular. “Photographic information is highly sought after these days by all types of users, from undergraduates who are interested in developing Web pages to documentary filmmakers producing shows for the History Channel,” says Likness. However, since Likness arrived on campus, the most heavily used materials have easily been those dealing with the school’s 75th Anniversary celebration. “Having arrived only in the last year, to come here and suddenly get totally immersed in the University’s history has been very good because I’ve learned a lot,” says Likness. The ASC division also houses a very impressive rare book collection that is considered among the nation’s best in the subjects of Florida and Caribbean history and culture. Likness says a wide variety of factors are considered before adding a publication to the rare book collection, including the book’s age, publishing history, illustrations, format, subject matter, history of ownership, and any other unusual features the book may have. Works are most often acquired through donations, but some are also purchased. Likness estimates his division currently owns approximately 80,000 total volumes, but he says it’s almost impossible to estimate the collection’s overall value. So, what does it take to direct a department of such size and prestige? “You need to love books as objects,” says Likness. “You need to be interested in the book as an artifact, and its history, its appeal as a special item.” And don’t forget, despite what many people assume, an archives and special collections librarian also needs to like working with people. Says Likness, “As much as I enjoy the books and building collections, it’s really working with people that’s the most rewarding thing.” |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
