Elation and tears piercing the terror
The substation engineer making a difference in disaster zones
Silence… followed by the faint scraping of fingernails against the ribbed edges of a radiator somewhere beneath tonnes of dust and rubble. That was the overriding memory that will stay with National Grid engineer David Jones forever following his brush with the stark extremes of life and death.
The Substation Engineer was one small cog in a well-drilled team of trained rescuers scrambled to the devastation of Turkey’s earthquake zone earlier this year. When he reflects on his tour with the Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters (SARAID UK) operation, it is the total absence of everyday noise, as well as the tears, joy and kindness, that stay with him.
Expletives and a brutal reminder
“The silence was the first thing we noticed. When we left the airport it was dark and there wasn’t much damage in the surrounding areas. But once we got on the bus and moved towards the epicentre everyone fell silent, with only the odd expletive as we got closer. The devastation was far greater than any of us expected, even among people who have been doing this for 20-plus years.”
If that subdued silence was unnerving, what followed within minutes of arriving at the flattened city of Kahramanmaras was a brutal reminder of the reason he was there.
One of the many scenes of devastation that greeted David and his team
“Our advanced listening equipment heard fingers scratching against a radiator. Whistles blew, people shouted 'stop' and the whole search area fell silent”
National Grid engineer David Jones
What was to follow as elation turned to despair as those less fortunate were discovered, was a far cry from five days earlier when he‘d been preparing for his Monday morning shift at a National Grid substation in Sussex, ready to maintain energy to his small corner of England.
Adrenaline pumping
He is just one of an army of engineers trained to identify issues on the electricity transmission network’s 4,500 miles of overhead cables and 300 substations. But when his phone buzzed at 5.30am, his National Grid and emergency rescue training became one. And the adrenaline was pumping. Two major earthquakes that would claim the lives of 50,000 people had torn through eastern Turkey and Syria measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale.
David back in Blighty at the day job
“I knew instantly that my week was about to take a different turn. My day job is to carry out maintenance and fault finding on the high-voltage electricity network, keeping it running smoothly,” he says. "But I’m also part of a disaster recovery volunteer group.
“That’s been really useful in this country with rope rescues, tunnel rescues and confined space working and has helped me write quite a few best practice documents for National Grid.”
Within hours he was packed and on his way to Turkey as part of a 20-strong United Nations-approved team on a mission to 'search and rescue' for victims of the devastating quakes that had levelled entire regions. An engineer in Chailey near Lewes in East Sussex for 11 years, he’s always been encouraged to play his part in the local – and in this case wider, global – community, with the full support of National Grid.
Transferrable skills
He says: “I joined as part of the apprentice scheme and have worked my way up, but since 2017 I’ve been part of SARAID UK.” Once scrambled, the group – the only UK voluntary team to be classified as a light USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) team – left within hours for Adana in Turkey.
Aboard the flight were emergency managers, engineers and paramedics, structural engineering specialists, water and rope rescuers as well as experts in collapsed building rescue, logistics, hazardous materials, communications and technical search teams.
Faintest noise among the rubble
Then it was in at the deep end and the training took over, recalls David. "You take a step back from what’s all around you and you focus on the recovery in front of you and the buildings.”
David began his volunteering work as a member of Lowland Rescue helping on deployments for water emergencies, missing vulnerable people and cave rescues. But nothing prepared him for the devastation in Turkey. Using Delsar – ultra-sensitive listening microphones that can pick up the faintest noise under several storeys of collapsed building – he placed sensors in and around the building, on any remaining solid surfaces.
“We did a 'call and response' by knocking and shouting to see if we could hear someone responding. We heard mobile phones ringing and being answered so we moved the sensors around to pinpoint where the noise was loudest”
David Jones
Silence, then the elation of an unforgettable moment
The faint ring of a phone underground directed the team to where to start breaching the building, using petrol disc cutters, drills, jack hammers, diggers as well as the humble hammer and spade. The team’s ‘360 camera’, which allows them to look and listen into a void in a full circle, located a mother when she suddenly grabbed the lens. The resulting footage has since been shared around the world. She and her son both survived.
But the single most unforgettable moment was yet to come, when silence was followed by elation as the team pulled Ikbal Cil, a 15-year-old girl, from the rubble where she’d been trapped for nearly five days.
“I can’t describe how it felt. There was real elation all around us," says David. "The sense of reuniting a family after such a disaster is one that will always stay with me. It's made me determined to carry on being available, with National Grid’s backing, for future natural disasters."
Until the next disaster he prays never comes, he’s fully focused on his day job, armed with the acquired skills to tackle tasks like confined space working, rope rescue, water rescue, first aid and disaster co-ordination, alongside the fire and ambulance services.
“Obviously I hope I’m never called on again, but we’re still in touch with some of the people in Turkey we helped. They were all so incredibly generous to us despite having very little left, so we gave all our petty cash to them when we left. We looked later and they’d donated it all to the Earthquake Fund.”
