Firefighter Assists with Earthquake, Tsunami on Global Level

When the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in March, most local first responders got focused on the possible emergency needs in Santa Cruz County.

But Bob Martin Del Campo, a battalion chief, had to think about the disaster on a global level.

U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Martin Del Camp has tallied 26 years of military service and remains a reservist assigned to do emergency management, essentially assisting the Federal Emergency Management Association with military support.

“I’m not your traditional Army reservist," Martin Del Campo said. "Everything I do is on the home-front."

He got the call around 1 p.m. on March 21 and was deployed to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield. There, he helped coordinate the voluntary evacuation of 2,600 relatives of military personnel stationed in Japan, as well as a few civilian contractors and pets.

The evacuation occurred "because on base in Japan, they started to run out of food, then started to run out of fuel," Martin Del Campo said, explaining that people wanted to wanted to leave the remaining food and fuel for the Japanese nationals.

“We were receiving these folks coming in," he said.

All four branches of the military were involved. They set up a customs agency, had staff checking passports, receiving people and making them comfortable. There was child care for parents, areas for new mothers to breastfeed, changing tables and even pay clerks to make sure people received their paychecks.

Martin Del Campo, who spent 12 years in the Marines before joining the operations side of the Army, was deployed to Travis Air Force Base for eight days.

“It was quite an experience,” he said.

He said they don’t normally deal with missions like the Japan evacuation, although he typically is deployed three or four times a year, to disasters and trainings. Past call-ups included a tsunami in Samoa and Hurricane Earl in Rhode Island.

A federal mandate that regular employers abide by emergency deployments is issued by the Army.

Martin Del Campo, who joined Watsonville Fire in October after being a fire captain in Hollister, said his work with the Army mirrors what he does at the fire department, just on a larger scale.

“Here at Watsonville Fire, we work at a first-responder level. … In the Army, it's more of a regional or, in this matter, a global emergency that we’re responding to," he said, adding that it all amounts to good experience in handling a critical incident.