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The education and encouragement Mark Weston ’93 received as a military veteran in the ����ɫ��ҹ nursing program is an attribute he applies to this day in his role as commander for a natural disaster medical team in the San Francisco Bay Area who assisted victims of the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California.

Mark is local team commander of CAL-MAT, a new California disaster team modeled after DMAT, the federal disaster medical team he has been a part of since 2001. He recently returned from Florida when he participated in an intense Aeromedical course, believing he would soon after be dispatched to the Bahamas, which was ravaged by Hurricane Dorian.

In the past three years, Mark has traveled to Florida to assist about 700 patients following Hurricane Irma, to Puerto Rico for Hurricane Issac, and to North Carolina to provide medical attention in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.

In addition, Mark has participated in earthquake training exercise for CAL-MAT at Moffet Field and traveled to Atlanta for federal disaster training. Upon his return from Atlanta in July 2018, Mark deployed several of his CAL-MAT team members to provide medical assistance to victims of the Carr Fire in Redding.

The help and reassurance he has offered victims of hurricanes and other natural disasters is a trait he has passed on since his days in the School of ����ɫ��ҹ and Natural Sciences.

“I learned my patience from ����ɫ��ҹ and I learned how to be a good nurse because I had great instructors,” Mark says. “They kept me motivated. They wanted me to be successful … ����ɫ��ҹ did right by me. I needed a chance and ����ɫ��ҹ gave me a chance.”

Mark was looking for a new career when he was led to ����ɫ��ҹ while in Vocational Rehabilitation. He was a Vietnam War vet who was on long range reconnaissance patrol when he was badly wounded at the Battle of Hamburger Hill in 1969. His subsequent surgeries in multiple hospitals created an interest in nursing and a desire to help others.

While attending ����ɫ��ҹ with GI Bill benefits, Mark worked part-time in the Emergency Room at Sonoma Valley Hospital. That evolved into a full time position following Commencement.

“They handed me my diploma at ����ɫ��ҹ and I was just like a new person,” Mark says.

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Mark went on to work at several Kaiser Hospitals as an RN and in the ER at Petaluma Valley Hospital before he was hired by the State of California to investigate complaints and evaluate nursing homes, group homes, and hospitals. After eight years, he retired from that job in 2016, but he remains active with National Disaster Medical Systems (NDMS) Disaster Medical Assistance Team California 6 (DMAT CA-6) based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He lives in Forestville and volunteers at the Military Antiques & Museum in downtown Petaluma.

Mark discovered NDMS following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He was reading a nursing journal and learned that the DMAT CA-6 was recruiting medical professionals. It is a federally coordinated system that augments the nation’s medical response capability. The overall purpose of the NDMS is to establish a single integrated national medical response capability for assisting state and local authorities in dealing with the medical impacts of major peacetime disasters and to provide support to the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs medical systems in caring for casualties evacuated back to the U.S. from overseas armed conventional conflicts.

Since Mark joined the NDMS, he and his DMAT CA-6 team twice has been deployed to New Orleans, where he treated victims at the Louisiana Superdome following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and also Hurricane Rita weeks later. His last major deployment, prior to Florida in 2017, was to Haiti a day following the 2010 earthquake when he and his crew assisted in the birth of three babies and treated more than 1,000 people.

In between, Mark has been assigned to provide medical care for victims of forest fires in the state and west region. He is on call three times a year, usually around the hurricane season, and can receive a phone message, email or text from ����ɫ��ҹ and Human Services and be immediately ordered to be at San Francisco International Airport in four to six hours to catch a flight to help people in need.

For example, when Hurricane Irma was forming in the Atlantic in September of 2017, Mark received an alert and flew from SFO to Chicago to Atlanta where he staged for three days. He waited there for his assignment to perhaps either Puerto Rico, the British Virgin Islands or Key West. Most of his DMAT CA-6 team was deployed to Puerto Rico, but a disaster relief team from Wisconsin recruited Mark. It was flown to Tampa to treat hurricane victims when Hurricane Irma shifted west toward the Gulf coast of Florida.

“We’re very much like the National Guard,” Mark says. “We basically set up a MASH unit. We treat, stabilize, and either street the patients or move them onto a higher level of care.”

Mark also was packed and ready to fly to Puerto Rico in October 2017 to assist in Hurricane Maria recovery efforts. But he choose to stay home when the North Bay wildfires broke out. In November of 2017 Mark sent personnel from his CAL-MAT team to Butte County to provide medical support for victims of the Camp Fire that overwhelmed the town of Paradise.

Mark has been doing this for almost 20 years. He welcomes the overnight opportunity to treat injuries and illnesses ranging from dehydration to heart failure to gunshot wounds.  He has assisted on the birth of 13 children and has spent weeks away from his home trying to help patients get back to theirs.

“And I love it.”