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> MSU News
Pair that met at MSU organize tsunami relief
January 19, 2005 -- by Carol Schmidt, MSU News Service
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| Bozeman lawyer Brock Albin, right, at work in the tsunami rescue effort in Thailand. Albin and Dr. Robert Lame Bull McDonald of Browning , friends who met at MSU's Indian Club a decade ago, are partnering to form a relief effort for victims of the tsunami. Photo courtesy of Brock Albin and the Youth Imperative. |
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Bozeman -- A friendship that began 15 years ago in the Indian Club at Montana State University has resulted in a multi-cultural relief effort for victims of the Pacific Rim tsunami disaster.
Brock Albin, a Bozeman attorney now living and teaching in South Korea and Dr. Robert Lame Bull McDonald, an emergency room physician at the Indian Health Service in Browning, have organized a an emergency medical relief mission that is soliciting donations and volunteers. The two are also working with Robert Free of Seattle, an Indian rights activist whom Albin and McDonald met while they were in college. The trio has formed Emergency Air and Ground Lift and Evacuation Service (the E.A.G.L.E.S.) team to provide immediate medical relief to the tsunami survivors. Albin, who is the founder of Youth Imperative, is also forming a group of volunteers who will precede the group to the Pacific Rim, provide services to youth, families, and communities with EAGLES then follow up with building efforts after other volunteers return to their homes.
Ironically, Albin and his family, including wife Maria, kids Keifer and Quianna and his parents, B.R. "Bud" and Ann Albin, were vacationing in northern Thailand during the Christmas break when the disaster struck. Albin said that he and his family felt the hotel shake Dec. 26 when the earthquakes hit that resulted in the tsunami. He said that the family was vacationing in northern Thailand because the hotels in the area of Phuket raise their rates during Christmas.
"It was a decision that probably saved our lives," Albin said. McDonald, who has experience providing emergency medical services to remote areas of Indian reservations in the U.S., was asked by the World Health Organization how soon he could be deployed to help with the tsunami rescue work. McDonald immediately thought of Albin as someone who could meet him and help him with the effort.
"Brock and I have remained close friends and in fairly close contact since we met at MSU," McDonald said via e-mail. "I thought he was in Korea when the tsunami hit. I also had a gut instinct that he would want to join me to volunteer in the disaster. When I contacted him about it, he said, 'Dude, I'm here.'"
Albin said that he and his family immediately flew from northern Thailand to the southern part of the country when they learned of the magnitude of the disaster.
"When we learned what had befallen and was befalling the Thais, tribes people and foreigners in the Phuket area, we changed our vacation plans and traveled to Phuket Dec. 30 forming a Youth Imperative volunteer team," he said. The Albin family spent three days in the hardest hit areas of Thailand, including Phuket, Kao Lok, Phangnga and Rachi Island.
"When we arrived we saw the most complete destruction any of us had ever witnessed," Albin said via e-mail. "But, we also saw the most uplifting show of kindness and assistance. Thais and foreigners worked together to do what they could to help the less fortunate."
Albin describes one village that they visited that was missing 4,000 of its 4,500 residents.
"We also visited the morgues where volunteers helped identify bodies," he said. "The odor was nearly overwhelming. I can smell it still though I've been gone from there for more than a week."
McDonald said the first part of the effort, spearheading medical assistance, will be immediate. Donations will be needed to buy medications, ointments, school materials, building tools, mosquito tents, malaria pills, typhoid and other injections, water purification tools, materials to entertain children and dry food. Also needed are bandages, shovels, batteries, mosquito repellant, sunscreen hats, backpacks, gloves and rubber boots. It is more practical to buy the supplies overseas than airlift them from the U.S.
Albin is coordinating a complete relief party focused on helping communities rebuild through the Youth Imperative, Inc., a Bozeman-based non-profit that he organized in 1995 to provide international relief and legal professional and human rights services to youth. The Youth Imperative team will leave about Feb. 1, contingent on Albin generating donations to fund the party. Albin is seeking a volunteer teacher, mental health professional, doctor nurse and a couple of lawyers, all of whom will be unpaid. Albin said while the team will likely be based in Thailand, they might also work in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. He estimates that the organization will need about $1,000 per volunteer to pay for rescue materials and supplies. Persons wishing to volunteer with Albin's Youth Imperative, McDonald's E.A.G.L.E.S. or learn more about Albin and McDonald's efforts, can do so through the organization's website at http://youthimperative.us/. Persons wishing to make donations can do so by sending them to Youth Imperative, Inc. c/o First Interstate Bank, P.O. Box 1890, Bozeman, MT 59715.
McDonald said that while the disaster may seem very far socially and geographically, our wired world has shrunken the globe.
"Montana is a finger tip away from anywhere in the world," McDonald said. He added that he first learned about e-mail more than a decade ago while working in Dwight Phillips lab doing neuroscience research. "Now with the internet anyone from Montana to Katmandu can be in touch instantly and become aware of world events. It is then up to the individual to get involved."
Contact: Brock Albin, youthimperative@yahoo.com
Hi-Resolution Image or PDF Available:
| [View or Download] | 1. | Bozeman lawyer Brock Albin, right, at work in the tsunami rescue effort in Thailand. Albin and Dr. Robert Lame Bull McDonald of Browning , friends who met at MSU's Indian Club a decade ago, are partnering to form a relief effort for victims of the tsunami. Photo courtesy of Brock Albin and the Youth Imperative. |
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