Posted on: Friday, December 31, 2004
Pearl Harbor team heading to ravaged region
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
In what's being called the largest deployment of its kind since World War II, virtually the entire Navy Environmental and Preventive Medicine Unit 6 at Pearl Harbor began loading up 16,000 pounds of equipment yesterday before shipping out this weekend for Indonesia and then on to Sumatra.
The exercise is part of a joint U.S. military effort to move relief supplies and personnel into tsunami-ravaged South Asia as fast as possible. The Pacific Command is coordinating the relief effort.
Pearl Harbor's Unit 6 is one of only four such teams in the Navy, and 31 of the unit's 39 epidemiologists, entomologists, industrial hygenicists, lab technicians, environmental health and preventive medicine specialists will be involved in the humanitarian assistance effort.
That team will be augmented by a dozen specialists from other areas, bringing the total team number to 43, said Capt. Gail Hathaway, a physiologist and the officer in charge of the unit.
"We're packing right now," Hathaway said. "Most likely we'll be going this weekend. We have a lot of water testing supplies, we have equipment we use to track mosquitoes. This is what we do all the time."
In addition to the Navy team, members of the Hawai'i Air National Guard's 154th Security Forces Squadron, 154th Wing, received the word they're being mobilized to assist with tsunami relief and recovery. Members could leave as soon as this weekend, a news release said. At least 26 airmen will be on active duty for at least 45 days, under the command of Pacific Air Forces.
According to Commander Fred Landro, a public health doctor who is deputy officer in charge of Unit 6, the task force requested a multi-disciplinary preventive medicine team.
"And we are that team," Landro said, who added that how long the team remains in South Asia will be up to the Indonesian government.
"Our initial orders are for 90 days, but we're anticipating that we'll be there for 45 days," he said. "It's their country and they know what's best. We will tell them all our capabilities, and they will direct us."
Landro said the team will tackle some of the worst conditions in the tsunami-stricken area.
"In Sumatra, the northern province of Banda Aceh is a very, very impoverished area, to begin with," he said. "These people have lost everything they have. The wells have all been contaminated with sea water or with sewage."
He said the team anticipates encountering some of the most grisly scenes imaginable.
Lt. Commander Duane Eggert, unit operations officer, said he expects the experience in Indonesia will eclipse anything he found when he did similar work in Iraq in 2003.
"Even though it's a humanitarian mission, I think this is much worse than anything we had over there," Eggert said. "With this, you're talking all sorts of infectious diseases and dead bodies floating everywhere. Just from the footage I've seen, it's pretty hideous."
Lt. Pete Obenauer, chief entomologist, will be one of the team's most important players because of his knowledge of eradicating flying insects.
"The country is littered with some of the most fascinating insects any entomologist ever encountered," said Obenauer, who has extensive experience in humanitarian relief operations. "We're going into an area with plenty of mosquitoes, as well as mites and ticks. So, there's lots of vector-borne diseases to fight."
Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8038.
