Q&A: UCLA search and rescue team doctor back from Nepal quake disaster

Hours after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal on April 25, Dr. Atilla Uner, a UCLA associate clinical professor of emergency medicine, got the call to assist in a search for survivors as a member of the California-based Urban Search and Rescue Task Force USA 2. Deployed by the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, the team consisted of 52 firefighters and paramedics and six search dogs from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, as well as three civil engineers and two physicians. Uner, who also helped in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, spent 19 days in Kathmandu and the village of Charikot helping with rescues. Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s Dr. Nichole Bosson was the second local doctor. UCLA Newsroom senior writer Judy Lin talked to Uner for this edited Q&A shortly after he returned home last weekend. How did your deployment unfold? We got called Saturday morning [April 25, the day of the earthquake] and assembled in Pacoima with our medical supplies, drills, search cameras, gasoline, generators, radio equipment — tons and tons of equipment. We also brought along enough food and bottled water for three weeks, including food and water for the search dogs. We flew out of March Air Reserve Base [in Riverside] early Sunday afternoon on a C-130 military plane; 31 hours later we arrived in Kathmandu. What did you find when you arrived? I’d seen nothing like this before — collapsed buildings an...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news