Posted on 09/28/2005 5:40:07 PM PDT by SandRat
NEW ORLEANS (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) arrived here Sept. 28 at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services and Louisiana government state officials.
The ship, one of the largest trauma facilities in the nation, is preparing to act as an emergency trauma center for New Orleans as its citizens begin to repopulate the Crescent City.
During this mission, Comfort will be under the operational control of Joint Task Force Rita.
“We are looking forward to helping the city of New Orleans get back on its feet and are ready to assist the people in any way we can,” said Capt. Thomas Allingham, commanding officer of the ship’s Medical Treatment Facility.
Comfort has been operating in the Gulf Coast region for nearly three weeks. The ship was activated in support of FEMA’s Hurricane Katrina relief efforts Aug. 31 and sailed from its Baltimore home port Sept. 2. After stopping in Mayport, Fla., to load additional supplies and personnel, Comfort and its crew of more than 600 Sailors, civil service mariners and Project HOPE volunteers, arrived in Pascagoula, Miss., Sept. 9.
During ten days in Pascagoula, Comfort’s medical staff treated 1,452 patients aboard the ship and 376 patients ashore at the Comfort Clinic, a temporary medical facility set up at the city’s Singing River Mall.
The ship left Pascagoula Sept. 20 in order to evade Hurricane Rita.
Comfort is one of two hospital ships in the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command and is normally kept pierside in reduced operating status with a cadre crew of 58 Sailors and 18 civil service mariners aboard.
Navy medical personnel staff the ship’s hospital while the mariners employed by Military Sealift Command operate and maintain the ship’s navigation and engineering systems. When called into action, the ship can be ready to sail in five days. For this mission, the ship was ready to sail in three days.
Comfort was last called to duty for Operation Iraqi Freedom. In January 2003, the ship sailed to the Persian Gulf to provide medical care to U.S. military personnel, Iraqi civilians and enemy prisoners of war.
Navy Hospital Ship PING!
Good post SR. I bet some of these folks will for the first time in their lives get some real high quality medical care!
Perhaps some will see just how great our military folks are, and not go along with the horse manure the demos feed them.
I hope they have experienced maternity ward staff. Every news show I've seen about a New Orleans kid has an unwed mother. No wonder they have so much poverty.
"Every news show I've seen about a New Orleans kid has an unwed mother. No wonder they have so much poverty."
The Algiers Crecent City must be rebuilt. Socialiasm must go fourth. Brand new three car garaged, four bedroom homes for each welfare mother with a half dozen kids, na any welfare mother. And to boot ladies you all will be receiving the car or SUV of your choice and a ten year special certificate good at any service station for free fill ups, to go along with your new and improved special cards to be issued for free food, and clothing, and drug money. I am sure Nagin and Blanco will both have a real warm fuzzy good feeling about all this.
I totally agree with you. Also, I will bet it STILL won't be enough. They will want more even though it will be the finest care they have ever received.
" They will want more even though it will be the finest care they have ever received."
Of course your right. GWB opened the pandora box, word is out.
Why New Orleans? Because that's where the Mississippi river is. No other reason. Other people, in the beaten zone, not of color, feel as much pain but are being ignored.
BTTT
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