Virginia USAR Team Returns From Japan

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. – The Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team is back home from Japan.

It was a bittersweet homecoming for the seventy-four member rescue team who were deployed for seven days in one Japan’s hardest hit areas.

The team found no survivors despite their round the clock efforts.

Images: Fairfax Search and Rescue Assists Quake Recovery

Elizabeth Kreitler helped find earthquake victims in Haiti. She said this mission was much different and much harder.

“You wonder how they could ever pick up. There is just debris and logs and destruction over such a wide area that it’s hard to imagine how they could even start to clear it, because there’s nothing still intact,” she said.

But the team is returning in high spirits. Many say just being there, finding victims, helped give survivors closure.

For family members, the team’s hard work is nothing new. But they say this time around, knowing the ongoing threats of aftershocks and a nuclear meltdown, made them worry more than usual.


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