A lieutenant with the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, Strickland has traveled around the world to help rescue people after natural disasters, including Turkey, Haiti, Iran and, most recently, Japan. How much notice do you get before deploying?
It really depends. We should be able to leave within three hours of being notified. … There are a lot of formalities in our deployment, in the United States offering assistance and the host country accepting the assistance, so sometimes that needs to get hammered out before we leave.
In Japan did you all take any special precautions to minimize exposure to radiation?
Absolutely. When we left for Japan we brought some folks from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Additionally we have a hazmat component on our team, and these guys are highly trained in working with radiation. So we have meters and those guys were monitoring the radiation the entire time we were there, and we were not exposed at all.
You all weren’t able to rescue anyone in Japan. Was that disappointing?
It’s always disappointing because that’s what we’re trained to do. There’s sometimes certain types of disasters that don’t lend themselves to a high probability of survival, and that was probably the place that didn’t. It’s hard to survive water energy of that magnitude.
How do you get through language barriers in all these different places during such tense times?
A lot of times before we leave we try to work on some common phrases, common phrases that are appropriate for the type of work we do. Sometimes we are assigned translators, which is extremely beneficial obviously. And then sometimes we just work on using our hands and talking through our hands.
So you know how to say “rescue” in how many languages?
It depends. Usually it’s in the form of using your hands like a jackhammer.
– Kytja Weir
