The elite team will join Nepalese and international efforts after a massive quake killed at least 2,400 people and reduced the city's largely wood and brick infrastructure to rubble Saturday.
It remains unclear how many victims are trapped beneath debris.
Randy Bittinger, a spokesman for the Fairfax, Virginia fire departments's International Urban Search and Rescue task force, said 56 team members are traveling from Dover Air Force Base in the east coast state of Delaware to Kathmandu Sunday.
The call to travel came shortly after the 7.8-magnitude quake was reported.
As in all deployments, the group is prepared for a two-week mission. Bittinger told VOA much of the work will be hands-on; the team will rely heavily on their dogs to find victims buried in the rubble.
"Looking at Kathmandu, they have many bricks, not so much reinforced concrete. It's more light entrapment - digging, (and) greater need in my opinion, for canines," said Bittinger, a task force veteran who participated in earthquake rescue efforts in Haiti, Iran and Japan.
Careful to emphasize the differences in each catastrophe - weather, infrastructure, topography, building materials - Bittinger likened the situation in mountainous Kathmandu to the 2014 landslide in Washington state, in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The Fairfax team deployed then as well with their dogs to search for victims after a hillside collapsed, burying a town and killing scores of residents.
Bittinger said several members of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) disaster response team are flying to Nepal with the Fairfax task force.
"We never want to have to do this," he said, "but this is why we train extensively." Victoria Macchi
voanews.com
26/4/15
--
-
Related:
------
GR
FR
DE
ES
IT
RU
EU
US Providing $10 Million to Nepal Recovery ...
ReplyDeleteSecretary of State John Kerry said Monday the United States is providing an additional $9 million in aid for earthquake-ravaged Nepal.
The added funding brings to $10 million dollars the total amount announced by the U.S. since Saturday's quake, which has left more than 3,700 people dead.
The U.S. Agency for International Development statement said the money will be used for immediate relief, including search-and-rescue efforts, and providing emergency shelter, clean water and sanitation. According to a USAID statement, the aid also will go to Nepal's longer term recovery, building on "longstanding partnerships and development assistance."
The immediate aid included activating an elite Virginia-based earthquake rescue team. The 56-member unit deployed Sunday along with several USAID officials en route to Nepal......voanews.com
27/4/15