Helping: Utahns find survivors as hope wanes

The group left Aug. 30, a day after Hurricane Katrina devastated part of Louisiana and Mississippi. The 28 members of Utah Task Force One, the urban search-and-rescue team made up of members of the Salt Lake City Fire Department and the Unified Fire Authority, drove straight through for two days to Camp Shelby, Miss.

Sandstrom said his team hit the ground on Sept. 1.

"We were given an area and county to go home-to-home, lot-to-lot. We've been doing that every day since," he said.

In many areas, there aren't any "homes" to search.

"In a lot of areas the homes are gone. There's no homes whatsoever," Sandstrom said. "It's unbelievable. It's truly unbelievable. It's just wiped clean. There's not even sewer pipes or anything. It's just wiped clean."

Crews spend 13 to 14 hours a day looking for survivors, although in some cases they find only dead bodies.

Dealing with horror

Procunier, director at Riverton's Broomhead Funeral Home, said she has seen terrible things before and just "learns to deal with it." She was deployed to New York shortly after 9/11 and worked around the clock identifying and providing the casualties proper burials.

If asked, Procunier and Sisson will likely work in New Orleans for about two weeks.

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Deseret Morning News graphic Hurricane Katrina: By the numbers Requires Adobe Acrobat.

DMORT officials provide debriefings for every worker before they can return home to make sure they have dealt with any mental problems or issues the workers might be dealing with after witnessing such devastation.

But debriefings or not, nothing can ever erase such a horrific picture from your mind, Sisson said.

"People are geared in a way whether they can do it or not do it," Sisson said. "But just because you are geared to it doesn't mean you can ever be ready for it. You learn to cry when you need to cry. You just have to release it all."