Navy hospital ship Comfort returns from Haiti

NORFOLK

When the Comfort arrived at Haiti's Port-au-Prince harbor Jan. 20, the floating hospital was greeted by a queue of helicopters filled with broken bodies.

Before the anchor dropped, patients began filling the ship. The injuries - singed flesh, bones fractured beyond recognition, discolored wounds - were like nothing the Comfort's medical staff had seen before. Ten days later, they had treated 540 critical patients.

Now, nearly two months later, with Haiti's most critical patients stabilized, the Comfort has returned, this time to a happier greeting. When the Red Cross emblazoned on front of the ship appeared through the fog at Norfolk Naval Station on

Saturday morning, a crowd waved flags and signs proclaiming the crew as heroes.

The Comfort brought roughly 700 military and civilian crew members home. Most had converged on the ship from across the Eastern seaboard in the days after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12. By Jan. 16, the crew of Navy, Army, Air Force and civilian personnel were en route to help. Some arrived later.

The first day lasted 40 hours, said Vice Adm. Adam M. Robinson Jr., the Navy surgeon general. A patient arrived every six to eight minutes. It tested the crew physically and emotionally.

Seaman Apprentice Charles Carroll, a corpsman stationed at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center, tended wounds, gave out medication and tried to keep the patients' spirits up.

Lt. Toinette Evans, from Bethesda, Md., watched patients roll by the ship's blood bank on their way to surgery.

"We saw things I've never seen in my life," she said. "It was rough, to say the least."

The bank used about 373 units of blood, she said.

Lt. Dennielle Matsumoto, a helicopter pilot stationed in Norfolk, got an aerial view of the island while transporting patients and supplies. Her unit flew 320 hours in 39 days, she said.

"It was a life-changing experience seeing the devastation," she said. "You just had to soak it in for just a second and then focus on getting everyone safely where they needed to go."

Lt. j.g. Jill Molt, a nurse from Bethesda, consoled a mother who was on her way to the United States for surgery. She hadn't seen her two children since the earthquake hit.

"I just remember her leaving hysterical because she didn't know where they are," she said. "I tried to reassure her it was the right thing to do."

A team of translators helped patients describe their injuries so doctors could diagnose them. Some Navy translators were natives of Haiti and had family on the island.

Seaman Rony Leger said he didn't realize how important this job was until one patient asked him to go into the operating room with her.

"I didn't think that I had a big impact on a patient until it was time to have her wound cleaned and she didn't want to go to the OR without me," he said. "That's not something I'm used to."

More than 1,400 medical personnel assisted with the relief effort, according to the Navy. Comfort personnel treated a total of 871 patients and performed 843 surgeries. Twenty-nine patients died, said Lt. Courtney Hillson, a spokeswoman for the Navy's 2nd Fleet.

The Comfort stopped taking patients about a week ago, turning care over to Haiti's hospitals now that they've had time to recover.

"It was sad for us to go, but we also saw hope," said Capt. Rodelio Laco Jr., commander of the Destroyer Squadron 40. "Because of that, I think that we were able to go home."

About 200 members of the Comfort crew will return with the ship to its home port of Baltimore on Thursday. A detachment from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 28 also arrived with the ship Saturday.

The amphibious dock landing ship Fort McHenry is scheduled to return today. The ship, along with 357 sailors and Marines, has been in Haiti for seven weeks unloading supplies, providing medical care and security, and establishing beachheads for supplies.

Kathy Adams, (757) 222-5155, kathy.adams@pilotonline.com