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Local emergency team returns from New York By PAUL FATTIG Seven Rogue Valley residents are returning home tonight after nearly two weeks providing logistic support for the emergency response efforts following the devastating terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. They are members of the interagency 50-member Pacific Northwest Incident Management Team 3. All are federal employees working for the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management. The team was largely based in Edison, N.J., about 20 air miles southwest of "ground zero" on lower Manhattan. Although they did not work directly at the site of the disaster, they provided valuable logistic support for emergency crews already in Manhattan, said Don Ferguson, a BLM fire management specialist from the agency's Medford District. "It was definitely worth it," he said in a telephone interview. "It would have been frustrating for me, working in emergency management, not to be able to help out like we did." Other local residents joining Ferguson on the team include Medford District BLM employees Doug Parker, a staff supervisor; Daria Marlow, a computer technician; and Martin Leu, a data base expert. Siskiyou National Forest employees include Lance Packer, a transportation expert, and Cindy Wedekind, a supply unit leader. Rogue River National Forest employee Eileen Northrop, a procurement leader, is also on the team. Their team was one of three deployed by the Forest Service. Two were sent to New York; the other to the Pentagon. The northwest team was part of nearly two dozen different agencies helping in the relief work guided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Pentagon team is returning with Team 3. The other team in New York will continue to work a little longer, Ferguson said. Although the federal teams are specifically set up to respond to natural emergencies, many of those same organizational skills were needed at the disaster site. For Ferguson, who has more than 30 years of wildland fire fighting management experience, it was his first experience with an urban disaster. In addition to working from the New Jersey side across from the Hudson River, the team also worked at an information center located on a pier in New York City, Ferguson said. "One thing I noticed was that when you get a few miles from ground zero, life goes on in the city," he said, adding that many residents of the Big Apple are trying to get back to the lives they knew before the terrorist attack. Local team members made a point of visiting ground zero to pay their respects. "Our mission was providing logistical support, but we felt it was important to go there," he said of a visit to the site on Sunday. "You are dodging trucks and cranes - it's an industrial operation," he said. "There is a lot of racket, lots of smoke, dust and the smell of chemicals. You have to wear a respirator. It would be very difficult to work there." Ferguson, who was sent to Washington state in mid-July as part of a federal emergency management team after four firefighters were killed battling the Thirty-Mile Fire in the Okanogan National Forest, said that what was formerly the World Trade Center affected him differently than the deadly fire in Washington. "The Thirty-Mile Fire was easier to absorb and incorporate," he said, noting that it was a wildfire whose behavior he understood. "The sight at the World Trade Center site was too big to get around," he added. "It was so baffling, so horrible." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.