Air Force, Navy team recall earthquake relief experiences to help Trinidadians

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Vanessa Young
  • Defense Media Activity-San Antonio
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago (AFNS) --  Two members of a joint medical team are sharing their experience from recent humanitarian assistance missions to help Trinidadian officials here plan for and respond to national disasters.

One team member, a Navy captain, arrived in Haiti the day after the earthquake, and was the only military medical planner on the ground for the first six days. The other, a staff sergeant, helped build and staff a mobile hospital in an earthquake-stricken region of Chile as part of an Air Force Expeditionary Medical Support team.

This week, Navy Capt. Michelle Hancock, the deputy surgeon at U.S. Southern Command, and Staff Sgt. Abraham Rodriguez, the NCO in charge of Defense Institute of Medical Operations, are part of a joint service medical team with DIMO, training Trinidadian officials in disaster planning and mass casualty response.

"We like to pick subject matter experts that have recent meaningful experience," said Col. John Cinco, the medical director for DIMO. "We intentionally try to bring in a diversity of (specialties) into DIMO -- nurses, planners, physicians and enlisted from both the Navy and the Air Force -- that mix brings diversity into DIMO that we need to deliver various levels of courses."

When Captain Hancock arrived in Haiti Jan. 13, she said her mission was to develop the concept of operations for medical support for all the Department of Defense forces that came in.
"I literally went out and did site surveys to figure out the best place of employment for these forces," said Captain Hancock, who has a background in emergency planning and emergency preparedness. "Also, I coordinated with the Ministry of Health to figure out which hospitals needed support and which areas needed the most support."

Just as she did in Haiti with U.S agencies, she said she's facilitating efforts between Trinidadian officials during the disaster-planning portions of the course.

"My goal is to have these agencies interact with each other," she said. "It hasn't been a one-way lecture; it's been a dialogue between the different agencies, and we've had quite a few students comment that it's more of a workshop. I hate doing a lecture. I like to facilitate."

While deployed to Chile in support of earthquake relief operations, Sergeant Rodriguez used his skills as an emergency medical technician and a Spanish speaker to help translate for the medical Airmen who were providing care to a region with more than 110,000 Chileans.

As an aerospace medicine technician, his expertise in triage and trauma will come in during the mass casualty response portion of this course, Sergeant Rodriguez said.

Sergeant Rodriguez has been teaching with DIMO since 2003, and he said he's helping the Trinidadians to open discussions to determine how their building blocks of efforts are going to fit together to implement their disaster plans.

"Like Captain Hancock, he's had vast experience with real-life situations," Colonel Cinco said. "He's had some real life humanitarian assistance experience, and that helps with disaster planning because it gives them a very close-up operational view of disaster planning."

DIMO, a training institute assigned to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, is designed to strengthen global medical capabilities in disaster response and health care management through education and training.