SEATTLE - Like so many rescue teams who leave Western Washington and returned with stories, the team from EMPACT Northwest returns with video evidence of just what a magnitude 9 quake and tsunami can cause.
Words don't suffice. The pictures don't even do it justice, said Sil Knoblich.
Knoblich is normally an Emergency Room Technician at Puyallup's Good Samaritan Hospital. But she feels the world's attention shifted too far to Japan's nuclear problem, and away from the dire human need in the disaster zone.
The government is having a hard time reaching these areas, news media isn't in the areas. It's really kind of overshadowed the real need the Japanese people have, she said.
The EMPACT team was there to help assess what those people need in their assigned areas.
A 14-to-15-foot wave came through Ishimomahu, where we were, and literally just washed houses and cars and people away, said Kelly Melton, a Bothell firefighter.
Melton shot a lot of video, and inone clip, she's the one on camera helping a woman trying to save her family's wedding album.
Everything there is dirty, it's covered with mud. And she was using these dirty, black mud-covered gloves to wipe everything off, and I sat down with her and started cleaning it up, and we don't speak the same language and she just kept saying 'thank you so much, thank you so much,' and it was all I could to keep from becoming emotional helping her. Because it was all she had left, said Melton.
The water was actually waste deep as it came through downtown, said Armadeus Davidson.
Davidson works with the Gig Harbor Fire Department and is the team leader. He knows that we in Western Washington face many of these same risks. He says there are lessons to be learned from the staggering images of the Japanese disaster.
