Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ILDisasterEMT on January 6, 2008 at 11:05pm

By way of introduction, I will say that my name is Steven, I am 34 and work as a substitute teacher, meditation instructor and Emergency Medical Technician-Basic here in beautiful Northern Illinois. The team I belong to is called IMERT (Illinois Medical Emergency Response Team) and our first priority since 1999 has been to respond to human-caused or natural disasters in Illinois. Recently we signed EMACs (Emergency Mutual Aide Compact) with all 49 other states, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Im what they call a Basic Life Support Specialist (fancy way of saying EMT) and we also provide medical coverage for the Illinois Terrorism Task Force and IL-Task Force 1, an Urban Search and Rescue Team. I hope to become a safety specialist with the team within the next year while I also work on my masters in Emergency Management. If youre interested in Disaster Medicine and response, feel free to respond or drop me a line and if you live in IL and think that IMERT sounds like something you might like to get involved in, pay us a visit at . You can apply on line and if you arent an EMT, we always have openings for logistics, commo, transport, safety, etc. The more the merrier. Hope to hear from alot of you soon if youre into this kind of thing, HAZMAT, EOD or other aspects of disaster medicine and management.

Permalink Reply by Chris Gaylord on January 25, 2008 at 12:42am

I use a similar set-up. I've got a Camelbak BFM pack with has one day's worth of uniform items plus most of my toiletry and personal medical supplies. It has one 3 L water bladder in it, and I have a seperate 3 L Camelbak Thermobak (that I wear in the field) that I strap to the outside of the pack.

I've got a rolling duffel with everything else in it. The one I have right now is from Infinity Gear and is a great bag, but is too big to legally take on a plane, so I'll probably be getting a different one soon (thinking about The Beast from True North Gear, which is the maximum allowable checked luggage size).

I'm not sure it's really possible to carry 3 days worth of water. I've got some water treatment pills in my pack for in a pinch, but my experience with Katrina was that bottled water was relatively accessible most of the time.

Permalink Reply by Constantinos (Dino) Bouras on December 5, 2008 at 3:59pm

Hey Steve, a fellow IMERT brother, glad to see you. Been on for a year now, and got my first deployment under my belt in June to Quincy.