When The A-Team was at the height of popularity, I was only a baby, yet I still find myself talking about the show more often than I'd like to admit. Right now I'm in Kathmandu for the Nepal earthquake response and again I find myself saying things like, "I love it when a plan comes together!" and referring to ourselves as the A-team. (I've probably also said, "Shut-up fool" in jest to my fellow ETC teammates...)

In big emergencies, it's often the same people deployed in the first phase of the operation. Of our 11-person ETC team - from emergency.lu, Ericsson Response, NetHope and WFP FITTEST - 3 of the team just last month were in Vanuatu, 5 of us were in West Africa for the Ebola crisis and 7 of us were in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan. In fact, LP from Ericsson Response literally came straight out of Vanuatu and into Nepal (he took the opportunity of the layover in Abu Dhabi to buy some clean clothes).

We went to see the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) crew on Friday to see if we could hitch a ride with them to Deurali where the ETC is now providing shared internet services. We ran into Tessan who I first met in South Sudan and then the Philippines, and Per who was in West Africa and the Philippines too.

Why is it always the same people in these operations? Maybe it's because the IT community is much smaller than other sectors of humanitarian response. Maybe it's because the technical skills required are quite specialist. Or maybe it's just because we are the only ones crazy enough to drop everything at a moment's notice and jump on a plane to the other side of the world, abandoning the concepts of showers, food and sleep for the foreseeable future to help those affected by disaster.

It's always good to see familiar faces in these situations and if you have worked with them before, it makes it much easier to hit the ground running. This team is clearly very experienced and as such, will always make it happen. Just yesterday they were deploying an emergency.lu satellite terminal, with Ericsson Response WIDER in Chautara – one of the areas worst affected by the earthquake. Because of the destruction, there was nothing around high enough to hang the access point from. So what did they do? They made a tripod from bamboo and attached the access point to that.

The crew we have here now, even though from a number of different organisations, is like a little family. We are very close and work together as one team. Or, as I like to call it, The A-Team. 

By Mariko Hall, ETC Nepal