Buried alive to test new tech

I don’t have many irrational fears, and those I do have I’ve learned to keep to myself; channeling one’s inner Woody Allen is no way to get ahead at the CIA. But one primal phobia I’ve always harbored is the fear of being buried — whether under rubble, snow or sand — with no way to communicate to anyone on the outside world that I’m still alive.

So when my producers at “TechKnow” told me that my story on a new technology that can help locate individuals buried in disasters would entail entombing me in a rubble pile and using this device — still being tested, mind you — to detect my beating heart, I was torn between enthusiasm and dread.

FINDER (short for Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response) is a first-of-its-kind portable device that relies on microwave radar technology so sensitive it can detect the minuscule movements of a human heartbeat. FINDER can even distinguish a person’s breathing pattern from that of an animal, such as a rat. (Count rats among my irrational fears, by the way. At least now I can scratch off any concern that I might be buried alive with rats and also somehow mistaken for one.)

The craziest part about FINDER is where the idea for it came from: outer space. No, it wasn’t the brainchild of extraterrestrials, but it was born from the same remote radar technology used by NASA researchers to monitor spacecraft.

On the heels of countless disasters — such as 9/11, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami — in which survivors have become trapped in rubble, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was looking for a tool that might enable first responders to walk through a disaster zone and quickly detect unseen survivors. The Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate teamed up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Within a year, two prototypes were up and running. The elite search and rescue teams from Virginia Task Force 1 (VA-TF1) were called upon to field-test the units and provide real-life feedback for the JPL scientists. The results were remarkable. Time and again, “victims” were safely placed in re-created disaster sites where their heartbeats and respiration rates were detected by FINDER.

The government is currently working with vendor partners to manufacture the units on a wider scale, to be used in both military and civilian applications.

In order to test FINDER myself, I traveled to VA-TF1’s training facility in Lorton, Va., a large swath of land that used to house a juvenile detention facility and now is home to several burned-out and partially collapsed buildings in which rescuers can simulate any type of disaster. Unlike my experience of CIA training at “the Farm” in idyllic York County, driving onto the training grounds felt a bit like arriving on the heels of a zombie apocalypse. Beyond the crumbled and scorched structures and a smattering of trailers, there was no missing the huge — and, honestly, horrific — rubble pile in which I was about to be buried.

At first glance, FINDER looked to me like an array of bewildering gadgetry enclosed in a hard beige camera case. But JPL’s Jim Lux confidently explained how it would send out microwaves that could penetrate 30 feet of rubble or 20 feet of solid concrete. FINDER would then interface with an accompanying tablet, which looked just like the pad my kids use for Subway Surfers and Minion Rush. Lux assured me that the device would not leave me forsaken amid the rubble.

After an alarmingly brief safety briefing from a task force member — “It is a live rubble pile, so be careful where you step!” — I headed out into the bitterly cold day and began my climb deep into the mound of concrete, mortar and steel. There, in a broken drainpipe, I curled up and waited.

Meanwhile, two members of VA-TF1 strolled around, one wheeling the lithium-battery-powered device and the other carrying the tablet, trying to find me. I willed my heart to beat as fast as possible, which wasn’t hard.

While increasingly cold and uncomfortable, I was at least confident that I would be saved. Still, it was harrowing to imagine what it would feel like under real post-disaster circumstances. I can’t even conceive of that kind of terror.

A few months after my experience, I immediately thought of FINDER and its lifesaving possibilities when a helicopter team rescued 4-year-old Jacob Spillers in the hours after a huge mudslide hit Washington state. Every search-and-rescuer will tell you that in each of these situations, time is the enemy. Canine teams, listening devices and miniature cameras are deployed in the search for victims.

And yet countless people have survived for hours, even days, trapped in rubble. In 2004, Shahr-Banu Mazandarani, an Iranian woman in her 90s, was rescued after nine days buried in the rubble of her home after the Bam earthquake. After 9/11, two Port Authority policemen, William Jimeno and John McLoughlin, were rescued after being buried near a freight elevator for 13 and 21 hours respectively. And Genelle Guzman, a secretary trapped amid rubble from the collapsed North Tower, was rescued more than 27 hours after the tower fell. After Haiti's massive earthquake, Evans Monsignac, thought to be the longest-ever earthquake survivor, was trapped for 27 days before being rescued. It’s hard not to imagine how many other lives have been lost that this technology could have helped save.

Once I was secure outside the rubble pile, I asked Mark Lucas, one of my “rescuers” from VA-TF1, what is the most heartbreaking situation he’s ever encountered. He described to me the aftermath of an earthquake in a foreign country where VA-TF1 was volunteering, and thus did not have final say or jurisdiction over where to search.

“There was a location where I was sure we’d find a survivor,” Lucas said. “But the priorities of the local rescuers were elsewhere, and we were forced to move on.” Technology like FINDER could make such a devastating situation one that heroic men like Lucas will never have to relive.

To learn more about FINDER, watch "TechKnow," Saturday 7ET/4PT.