A Durangoan worked to bring relief to those suffering from Ebola in Liberia this fall with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Sgt. Erik Stenslien, a technical engineer, was deployed to Liberia to help construct temporary medical facilities.
The facilities will be used to help screen possible Ebola patients.
He is now back in Baumholder, Germany, where those who worked on the facilities are being held in quarantine for 21 days total. When the quarantine period is over, he will return to Grafenwoehr, Germany, where he is stationed, his mom, Amelia Yeager, said.
Liberia has seen more than 3,000 deaths to Ebola, according to the World Health Organization, making it one of the worst-hit countries.
“I was really worried when he said he was going to West Africa,” Yeager said.
But she was reassured when he told her it was the most meaningful thing he had done in his life.
She also was reassured knowing he would be traveling by convoy.
While building the temporary facilities, the Corps of Engineers faced a lack of water and supplies, but they were able to finish ahead of schedule, according to an internal story by the U.S. Army.
Stenslien, a Durango High School graduate, enlisted in 2009 and has also worked in Guam and the Marshall Islands. In Guam, he worked to build a road to a mass grave where casualties of World War II were buried. This was part of an effort to exhume and identify the bodies.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
