Maple Grove Firefighter Assists at Coronavirus Quarantine Area
Greg Bodin spends most of his days either fighting fires with the Robbinsdale and Maple Grove Fire Departments, or serving as the chaplain at North Memorial Health Hospital.
“Working at a trauma center, I have experience working with people in crisis, and I’ve been at North Memorial for 40-plus years now,” said Bodin.
But whenever a major disaster or health crisis arises, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services sends Bodin to another state. He’s part of the Minnesota-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team.
Earlier this month, he received orders to go to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego to provide medical support to American citizens who evacuated from Wuhan, China amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“We set up, essentially, a hospital clinic setting to care for people,” Bodin said. “So this was a natural mission for us.”
Mass quarantine response a new experience
Setting up a clinic may have felt like a natural mission for the team, but being a part of a mass quarantine response was a new experience.
“The good news is the fact that all of us on our team work in hospital settings or EMS settings,” Bodin said. “So we are, day in and day out, used to working with people who have different infectious diseases.”
After two weeks of working 14-hour days to assess and care for the evacuees, Bodin is now back in Minnesota. But during those two weeks, he used his skills to answer the call of duty.
“I met some wonderful people and I just pray that — my group was the first two weeks — as they reconnect with family and are out, that things will go well in their transition [after the quarantine],” Bodin said.
While Bodin’s mission may be complete, the work is far from over. After the Minnesota group returned home, a team from Alaska replaced them to support the next group of evacuees.
