Well, New Zealand was still dealing with what they had just weeks before. [Editor’s note: Christchurch, New Zealand suffered a deadly 6.3-magnitude earthquake on Feb. 22, 2011; 17 days prior to Japan’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11, 2011.]

They were [still dealing with the Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquake], but they actually sent a team.

Did they?

They did send a team.

Wow. It’s one of those things you don’t always see covered by the news media.

Yeah. New Zealand sent a team. The United Kingdom … Australia sent a team, as did many others. You know, all of those factors came in to play. I know that politically we have strong political ties with Japan and that we would offer any assistance that they would need, so I anticipated that if they asked, absolutely we would go. But it also comes down to them requesting our assistance and they did.

Now, tell me about getting that call asking for assistance. How soon after you got the alert on your pager did you get that call that you’re going to Japan?

I can’t be exact, but I want to say it was between eight to 10 hours, which seems like a delay but it’s really not. If you look at the time of the earthquake, when it happened there, you know, it was in the afternoon for them so it is going to start getting dark. They only had a few hours after the quake and the tsunami to even start to get a visual on what was going on.

It’s hard to get good information at that point, so, it was that evening for them when they finally said, OK, we will accept international assistance and request the following teams.

So, who gets the call? Does the call go from USAID  (U.S. Agency for International Development) to the chief of the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, to you, Virginia Task Force 1?

USAID makes the request directly to our Program Managers Chief [Robert] Zoldos [of the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department], and Steve Davis for Los Angeles [Fire and Rescue Department]. They make notifications to the fire chief and ultimately we have to accept the mission within an hour of being offered. It is typically implied that we are going to accept unless there is something significant saying we won’t.

So you basically have 60 minutes to say “Yea” or “Nay,” we are going?

Yes. We still have to make our notifications to the [Fairfax County] board of supervisors, on down through the [Virginia] governor’s office to let them know that our resource [search and rescue services] is no longer going to be available within the state and county and that we will be going international.

If they are good with that, then we will go. And like I said, I don’t know of a precedent having ever been set where we didn’t go because of something. You know, if it [request for assistance] comes in, we’re going. And you know we want to go.

Part 2 – Getting there and finding the unimaginable

Part 3 – Radiation concerns and tsunami survivability

Part 4  – The decision to come home

Part 5 – Japanese resiliency and comparing one disaster to another