Goodyear Fire Department Captain Dan Freiberg recently returned back to Goodyear after traveling to Ukraine. He was in the middle of the unrest, spending hours in bomb shelters as missiles rained down near the area he served.
Freiberg volunteers with Team Rubicon, a nonprofit organization that utilizes the skills and experience of military veterans and first responders to assist in humanitarian efforts around the world. While in Ukraine, Freiberg worked with doctors and paramedics on his 22-person team to find and treat internally displaced people (IDPs) for physical and mental medical ailments.
Freiberg worked with the mayor of a Ukrainian city to shuttle in IDPs from 15 camps to a medical facility established by Team Rubicon, allowing his team to treat hundreds of Ukrainians.
“My job was to make sure we were using our team to the highest level of effectiveness,” Freiberg said. “We wanted to be in the places where we could make the highest impact.”
Freiberg served as a firefighter in the Air Force before joining Goodyear Fire Department, where he has served since 2007. He has been on nine international trips with Team Rubicon, serving as the team leader on most of them. Along with Ukraine, he has served with Team Rubicon in Africa, Central America and Syria. Freiberg spends his own vacation time with Goodyear Fire to volunteer.
"I can't imagine not going," he said.
While serving in Ukraine, Freiberg’s team spent significant time in bomb shelters while Russian missiles hit their region. Air raid sirens were heard throughout the day and night. “You hardly ever got a good night’s sleep,” Freiberg said.
But Freiberg said the spirits of those he and his team treated was never broken.
“What I noticed about the Ukrainians is everyone’s trying to do something to help protect their country,” he said. “Of course, as humanitarians, we’re neutral, we’re non-biased, and we’re there to serve everybody and anybody. But certainly, the spirit of the Ukrainian people was very obvious.”
Original source can be found here.
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