Local fire personnel involved in massive search and recovery effort underway at the Palisades Fire

Editor’s note: This recap was current as of early this morning (January 19).

Sixty-two members of California Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Task Force 3 (Menlo Fire) and 10 members from Task Force 4 (Oakland Fire) arrived at the Palisades Fire Incident over a week ago on Sunday, January 12, 2025. Since then, the team located out of Malibu Civic Center has coordinated their search efforts under the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, along with other Search and Rescue Teams that have arrived from around the State.

California Task Force 3 (CA-TF3) is based out of the City of East Palo Alto and sponsored by the Menlo Park Fire Protection District. The combined 55 fire personnel, 17 civilian team members and five specially trained dogs isn’t there to fight fires, they are there to find the missing by methodically, systematically and respectfully searching each of the reported 3,856 destroyed and 624 damaged structures for fire victims.

The last time Task Force 3 was deployed to Southern California was for the Northridge Earthquake in January 17, 1994 — 31 years ago. The team’s most recent deployment was to Hurricane Milton in October 2024, where the Team was assigned to the Pensacola, Florida region.

Task Force 3 was one of the first of the 28 US&R Task Forces in the Nation to use Human Remains Detection (HRD) K9 Teams during the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster in February 2003. Portions of the team searched for the seven NASA Astronauts over a debris corridor one hundred miles long by one mile wide, over an 11 day period.

The specially trained search dogs can take up to two years to obtain certification. The dogs work best when there is little or no wind to disrupt scent, and when debris temperatures are between 45 to 85 degrees, Fahrenheit. K9 Handlers and Search Team personnel first probe each destroyed structure site for debris temperature, potential hot ash pits, sharp metal objects and overhead hazards, prior to using the animals for up to 30 minutes, then giving them a short break. If a find occurs, a second K9 can be brought in to confirm its validity, sometimes along with a trained forensic pathologist.

The Task Force gained valuable search and recovery experience at the World Trade Center Collapse in September 2001 and Oklahoma City Bombing in April 1995. Both of those terrorist events, where only “live find” K9 Teams were predominantly used, necessitated a need for change and the addition of K9 human remain detection capability, but also improved respiratory protections and most importantly, improved decontamination procedures for the dogs and team members that became critical during its deployment to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and every incident since then.

CA-TF3 is sponsored by the Menlo Park Fire Protection District works in conjunction with the California Governors Office of Emergency Services (Cal-OES) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under contract. There are 28 National US&R Task Forces in the United States with eight in the State of California, including LA City (CA-TF1) and LA County (CA-TF2) Fire Departments.

Other Urban Search and Rescue Task Force members from Sacramento Task Force 7, San Diego Task Force 8 and smaller Regional Task Forces like Marin County have also arrived on scene, due to the massive nature of the operational search area.

Task Force 3 is a Bay Area “regional” team with 16 participating fire agencies. Represented on this deployment are fire personnel from Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Woodside, Redwood City, Milpitas, South San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara City, Santa Clara County, San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco, as well as civilian professionals like K9 Handlers, Heavy Equipment Operators, Structural Engineers, Doctors and Communications experts.

As of Sunday, the Palisades Fire had burned 23,713-acres and was 52% contained.

As a founding member of CA-TF3 and the California State and National US&R Response System, I know it takes a special kind of person to volunteer for this type of duty.

Those characteristics start with compassion, require tremendous resilience and always end in humility. The sights, smells and nature of this type of often grim and difficult human recovery work isn’t easy, but the knowledge that these special operators can help people and families start a closure process by locating and returning their loved ones to them is both important and invaluable.

For more information on the Team, please contact Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen with the Menlo Park Fire Protection District at mlorenzen@menlofire.org.

Now retired, Harold Schapelhouman is former chief of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District.