Posted on 07/09/2005 6:50:58 PM PDT by Desert_Girl
LONDON, July 9 (Reuters) - Retrieval teams working deep underground to recover bodies after the London bomb attacks are battling ghastly conditions that one expert compared to a "foetid drain."
The work was so mentally challenging that each member was receiving special training and support, a leading psychologist said on Saturday.
"What they are in now is essentially a foetid drain with danger, with body parts, with ghastly circumstances. That is a very, very hard duty," James Thompson, senior lecturer in psychology at University College London, told Reuters.
"These are conditions that would defeat ordinary civilians but these are people carefully recruited for their personal stability, given intense training and working in a mutually supportive team," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.netscape.cnn.com ...
foetid=having a heavy offensive smell
It must be awful. Some British subway lines are very, very deep, and I'm sure ventilation is a problem. Somebody on another thread posted that one of the biggest problems right now was - rats. Pretty ghastly. I read (in the Spanish press) that the Brits think there are at least 20 bodies in that train.
. . .important not to forget; but we cannot diminish another's pain - better to only share it; not contrast it by 'scoring'. . .when remembering our own.
Pain and suffering; individual or collective, is just that. . .pain and suffering.
Wouldn't be so hard if you psychologists hadn't spent the last 50 years purposely softening society to become medicated therapy-loving pansies.
As so often; reality beats any fiction of the grotesque. . .
A few days after 9/11 I was given the opportunity to do my job in the midst of a huge number of burned and mutilated bodies. I didn't think I'd be able to do it, but I jumped in--the indignation of what had happened enabled me to transcend any second thoughts I might otherwise have had--and found that, unpleasant though it was, one got relatively used to it in a short period of time. Neither I nor any of my fellow workers suffered any lasting effects, and we didn't have the benefit of psychological counseling, which I think is highly overrated in situations such as these. Human beings are remarkably resilient.
I can't even imagine what it must be like. Any body removal from a violent event is horrible enough without the difficulties that a subway or tunnel, collapsed buildings or a body of water (the airplane crash in the Everglades comes to mind) adds to the situation. Prayers are being said for all involved in such dreadful but necessary work.
Hear hear!
Now it's going to be catch-up time for free nations before we can squarely face off with all those miserable savages.
They are. Particularly if they have some sort of motivating principle - patriotism, faith, etc. I think most psychological counseling is nonsense in situations like this. People need to talk, but they need to talk to each other, and this usually helps them survive and even gives them a "survivor" identity. Look at the Brits who survived the Blitz.
And I've never been able to figure out just how this "psychological counseling" is supposed to work. Reminds me of a Three Stooges episode, where Moe has his toes stuck under a collapsed car tire. After nearly cutting his foot off, Larry and Curly finally get him loose. The first thing Larry says is, "How was it, Moe? Pretty heavy?"
I have not been able to get these people in the last train car out of my mind. Those who died instantly were perhaps the lucky ones. Those injured and waiting for help that never came...oh, my God, how awful.
And then the rats.
Dear God help those who go down into that abyss to recover the remains. Give them the strength and endurance they need. Let them keep their equilibrium. Amen.
That's about it. My daughter is a police officer, and they get all sorts of "counseling" after major incidents. She told me a study had revealed that people who didn't go for counseling actually did better than those who had gone to it.
Among the people I repeatedly pray for at the WTC were the people who were trapped after the buildings fell. Some people obviously lived for some time under the rubble (they found a staircase with a number of bodies under it). There was no way of reaching them, and my only hope has been that they ran out of air as soon as possible.
I hate the ideology that lets people do this to unarmed, unaware folks at their desks in NYC drinking their morning coffee - or sitting on the London subway reading their newspapers. It's diabolical.
they better get used to it, since no one but us seems to be taking the war on terrorism seriously.
Wonderful words...share don't compare.
Bravo, Sir. And thank you.
They think she evacuated safely, only to get onboard that bus . . . . .
30 hours digging at GZ on the 12th and 13th gave me bad dreams for better than a year. All gone now though.
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