Cleanup after bombings in Iraq has taken on sense of 'normalcy'

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- They're scenes all too familiar in Iraq: shattered buildings, mangled cars, pools of blood. The carnage takes its toll on the landscape -- and those responsible for cleaning up the mess.

There aren't any trained hazmat specialists here. It's the same minimum-wage guys who sweep trash off the streets for a daily wage of less than $5.

"They've gotten used to this," Amir Ali, spokesman for Baghdad's municipal government, said of the cleanup crews. "It's daily routine now to deal with these horrific scenes. All of Baghdad has witnessed destruction."

With so much violence since the March 2003 invasion, Iraqis have the post-blast drill down pat.

First on the scene are civil defense workers who extinguish fires, provide first aid to survivors and carry off the dead. They then spray the site with jets of water to wash away most of the blood.

Then, come the street cleaners, who get no training on how to deal with bombing sites.

Depressing scenes

"Usually at that point, most of the blood is gone," said Ammar Adnan, who supervises a cleanup crew. "If not, well, we have to deal with it. We go in, do it quick and leave -- you don't want that depressing scene lurking around for long."

Adnan, who works part time to pay for his engineering education at Baghdad University and help his parents with expenses, says there is another reason to work fast: Insurgents sometimes plant a second bomb to kill and maim police and cleaners who rush to the scene.

Adnan himself had a recent narrow escape in Amariyah, a mostly Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad.

"We were cleaning after an explosion that targeted a police car and suddenly another boom went off -- it was like a split second between life and death," he said.

None of the workers with Adnan was injured, but not all are so lucky.

Lt. Col. Qassim Majid, spokesman for the civil defense unit in eastern Baghdad, said four of his employees have been killed and three injured over the past two months in follow-on explosions.

"These evil souls do that to inflict more casualties and hamper any attempts at restoring normal life," Majid said. "These men were doing a humanitarian job -- it's nothing religious or political. It's duty and volunteerism combined."

The trained civil defense teams have better equipment and vehicles than in the days of Saddam Hussein. But security is worse now, and the frequency of attacks has strained resources.

"Previously, we used to deal with a fire once a week. Now we deal with at least three explosions a day," Majid said.

His unit has about 800 workers and is responsible for nearly three-fourths of Baghdad. Even a medium-size explosion requires at least 30 civil defense workers, he said.

Scattered body parts are collected by rescue teams and packed in a bag that is carried by ambulance to a hospital.

Hospital officials say the parts are kept in refrigerators until enough are collected for a burial -- but not cremation, in line with Muslim tradition. However, workers at some medical facilities and the Baghdad morgue have complained that bits of flesh sometime clog drain pipes.

Private contractors dispose of blown-apart cars, removing them by crane and taking them to junkyards where metal workers dismantle them. Parts that aren't too badly damaged are resold, and the rest are melted down.

Mohammed al-Obeidi, who sells scrap metal in Baghdad's central industrial market, said he sends workers with donkey carts to junkyards to collect twisted car bodies and turns them into iron bars.

"Those mangled cars, we collect them every day," al-Obeidi said, his matter-of-fact tone illustrating the complacency with which many Iraqis now perceive the daily violence.

It is the low paid, untrained street-sweepers who seem to suffer the most.

Ali, the city government spokesman, confirmed they don't get training or psychological counseling for coping with the horror, but he said all Iraqis have had to come to grips with carnage.

"The psyche of all Iraqis now is disturbed -- whether you work for the health ministry, defense ministry or wherever," he said. "Even if you don't have to deal with it because it's your job, you see it on the street everyday."

Adnan agreed it's all part of the job of his cleaning crew.

"But if I could find a better job, I'd quit this," he said. "It just crushes your soul."