Highlights from Day 1: 28 April 2003 Site 1: The apartment building area of Akaruk Despite the usual difficulties which occur at the beginning of any exercise, the first day of Ferghana 2003 went smoothly and the teams worked well. The on-site commanders reported good experiences with the teams assigned to them, which were all very professional, knew how to operate, and performed effectively. On this first day, the operation focused mainly on search and rescue, fire fighting and first aid. One of the fives sites where teams performed was Akaruk, an apartment building area where 40% of the houses had been damaged and 20% had collapsed - including an entire apartment block. In addition, local residents had reported many persons still trapped under debris. The teams arrived at Akaruk at 10:40 am, their priority being to save lives, which, besides search and rescue, also meant: extinguishing ongoing fires ensuring debris does not collapse further making force-entries into concrete to access areas where staircases were not usable anymore The first day in Akaruk saw the interaction of the following teams: Uzbekistan: 1 urban search and rescue brigade and 1 medical team, composed of 40 personnel and 12 ambulances Armenia: 1 urban search and rescue team, composed of 16 personnel Kazakhstan: 1 search and rescue team with 5 search dogs US: 1 technical team of 5 engineers According to the on-site commander in Akaruk, one of the main difficulties was searching one of the basements, where a discotheque was located. It was covered by collapsed concrete floors as well as heavy metal structures. In this very difficult environment, teams mana ged to perform very efficiently, retrieve the casualties and evacuate them to the local hospital. The worse casualties were sent to the field medical hospital run by the Estonian team. The last word of this first day will be for the Armenian team leader. “We might have made some mistakes, he said, but this is only an exercise. And this is what exercises are for: to make mistakes but not to repeat them the day we are confronted with a real disaster situation”