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Posted on 09/19/2001 4:00:02 PM PDT by GailA

Cave Explorer Rushed to Ground Zero

By J.M. HIRSCH The Associated Press

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - By the time a second airliner slammed into the World Trade Center, Russell Keat knew his mind was urgently needed.

There would be rubble and wreckage. There would be bodies as twisted and broken as the debris that buried them.

Somebody would need to crawl through it, finding and mapping safe paths for other rescuers to follow. And that is Keat's specialty.

Keat, 40, is a rarity when it comes to search and rescue missions, of which he has participated in hundreds, from airliner crashes to collapsed buildings to people trapped in caves.

He is trained to work underground, to map the crevices, tunnels and holes in the debris that could fall several stories. He makes the search for survivors possible.

``In some ways my whole life was leading up to this,'' he said in a telephone interview from his Grantham home Tuesday.

After the attacks, Keat didn't wait for a call. He grabbed his gear, stopped by the elementary school to say goodbye to his 5- and 6-year-old daughters, then headed for New York.

Though his mission was mapping, Keat went in with 350 pounds of gear, including enough food and water for him to stay with a trapped survivor for up to a week, if necessary.

``We're looking for human life, we're looking to support and evacuate. Or if they're trapped, to stay there with them. Once we can make a life sign that's trapped, we never leave.''

Keat didn't find anyone alive, though he found plenty of remnants of lives.

``You'll pick up a picture that somebody obviously had in their office of their kids or a loved one,'' he said. ``In some ways one of the hugest feelings is a sense of reverence. You are walking in the personal spaces of people and even as you're wriggling through stuff that is awful, this is still their space.''

It was his love of exploring caves that got Keat interested in underground rescue missions. He often works with Shenandoah Mountain Rescue and says his training began even earlier.

``My father was actually an architect with experience in steel in large buildings, so a lot of what I was using was learned as a kid crawling through the guts of buildings as they were being built.''

As part of Keat's mapping task, he watches for signs of trouble, including possible hazardous chemicals that could leak from businesses, such as medical offices.

That information is recorded, at the scene in spray-painted messages on the rubble, and on maps sent back to those organizing the rescue attempts.

By the time Keat and his team finished mapping the pile Thursday, he had endured some close calls, from dangerous precipices to clouds of noxious asbestos dust. He was treated four times for smoke inhalation.

``The worst moment was when we were probing the voids,'' he said. ``I was going pretty much near vertical. I got to the bottom of it and there's this buckled over piece of concrete. I was looking straight down into eight stories of empty.''

But there also were bright moments, as when a member of his team found an American flag. When the team came out of the rubble, Keat's teammate hung the flag on the tower's now fallen antenna.

``For five seconds there while he planted the flag, he was leading the world,'' Keat said of the moment, captured in a photograph that has become an enduring symbol of the attacks.

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