Floating hospital USNS Mercy
ready for a real-world mission
By Carlos Bongioanni,
Stars and Stripes
Photo courtesy Department of the Navy
USNS Mercy is ready to deploy to Afghanistan. The floating hospital has not been deployed
for a real-world mission in 10 years. |
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — It’s been a decade since the 10-story,
900-foot floating hospital USNS Mercy has taken patients aboard in a real-world mission.
But since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the ship is in its highest
state of readiness. In mid-October, the ship participated in a mass-casualty drill to
prepare the crew for a possible wartime scenario.
If the United States escalates the war effort in Afghanistan with
mass ground troops, the Mercy is ready to deploy in five days, said Cmdr. Shela Norman,
ship spokeswoman.
Norman, a naval Reserve officer, turned on lights as she passed
through the casualty reception area and into a darkened operating complex. Dim night
lights gleamed off stainless steel surgical equipment in 12 expansive operating room
suites.
Aboard hospital ships, the suites are much larger than operating
rooms in a land-based hospital, Norman explained, because doctors often perform more than
one specialty surgery at a time. The spacious rooms, equipped with state-of-the-art
equipment, ensure wounded troops receive the best care, she said.
Besides surgery, the ship provides a wide range of medical services.
Dental, optometry, psychiatric, physical therapy and burn care units are some examples. It
has four radiological suites with CAT scan, X-ray and ultrasound capabilities. A blood
bank, pharmacy, laboratories, recovery and intensive care wards make the Mercy a
well-rounded hospital.
“Regardless of the illness or injury, we have the capability to
care for just about anything that comes on board,” said Norman.
If things heat up in Afghanistan, and the U.S. military needs a
hospital ship in the area, Mercy personnel want to be there, said Navy Capt. Larry
Sorensen, a Vietnam veteran with 35 years of active-duty service. “I would very much
like to see it pull away from the pier, go out and perform its mission,” Sorensen
said.
“All of us in the military practice things we don’t want to
do — nobody wants to see any Americans get injured. But we stand ready to do our
mission. If casualties were piling up, we would absolutely want to be there.”
Unlike other naval vessels, hospital ships do not have their own
defensive systems. Large red crosses emblazon the white ships’ sides, front and top
to distinguish them from gray warships.
“The white ship with red cross tells people we’re a
hospital ship,” Sorensen explained. “While the Geneva Convention says
you’re not supposed to mess with hospital ships, if you read military history,
you’ll find that hospital ships have been attacked.”
During the World War II battle for Okinawa, Japanese kamikaze pilots
hit the Mercy’s sister ship, the USNS Comfort, and killed two dozen medical personnel
and injured 48 others.
If the Mercy deploys to support operations in Afghanistan, Sorensen
said it would always have a warship near to offer protection.
No other country has floating hospitals, noted Norman. And the two
the United States maintains are strategically positioned on either side of the continent.
The Mercy changed homeports from Oakland to San Diego in 1995.
The Comfort is based in Baltimore.
The recent terror attacks gave the East Coast ship an opportunity to
demonstrate the missions hospital ships perform.
The Comfort received the call to activate Sept. 11, soon after the
destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City. Within three days, it arrived at
New York’s Pier 92, providing logistical support to emergency relief personnel.
From Sept. 15-30, Comfort crewmembers provided 17,000 meals, and the
ship served as a platform where relief workers could sleep, shower, have their laundry
done and get haircuts. The ship’s medical personnel also handled 561 sick call
visits, gave 1,359 medical massages and offered 500 mental health consultations.
Today’s Mercy and Comfort were oil tankers before the Navy
converted them into hospital ships in the mid-1980s. When not activated, they are in a
“reduced operating status.”
On its maiden voyage in 1987, the Mercy conducted a humanitarian
mission in the Philippines and the South Pacific, where the ship’s medical personnel
treated more than 63,000 patients.
The Mercy was activated in August 1990 and deployed to the Persian
Gulf for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. It made the 15,000-mile transit in 30
days.
During the deployment, the ship admitted 690 patients and performed
nearly 300 surgeries. Patients arrive aboard the ship primarily via helicopters, which
land and take off from the ship’s flight deck.
Norman served aboard the Mercy during the Gulf War in the casualty
receiving area. One of the highlights of the deployment, she said, was taking aboard and
treating 21 American and two Italian repatriated prisoners of war just before the ship
began its return journey home in March 1991. It was satisfying to provide comfort that
helped lessen the trauma troops experienced in the battlefield, she said.
When the wounded come aboard, they encounter a ship that is like no
other Navy vessel, she said. The passageways are wide enough to accommodate two gurneys
passing each other. Instead of hatches, which sailors must duck and high-step, the Mercy
has doors that swing open. Wide stairwells with moderate slopes replace narrow
single-person ladders that have nearly vertical drops from one deck to the next.
Those coming aboard a hospital ship might mistake it for a luxury
cruise ship, said Norman, but they shouldn’t get used to the life. The ship is
designed only as an intermediate holding area that prepares the wounded for transition
from the field back to larger hospitals, so patients are quickly relocated to land-based
hospitals.
The two hospital ships fall under the Military Sealift Command and
are part of the naval fleet auxiliary force. While they are on reduced operating status, a
limited crew of civilian mariners and military personnel stay aboard each ship on a daily
basis to ensure they’re ready to deploy in five days.
When at full operating status, each ship’s crew includes roughly
75 merchant marines and up to 1,214 medical personnel who report aboard from a nearby
naval hospital. Depending on the need, each ship deploys with enough personnel to manage a
250-bed, 500-bed or 1,000-bed hospital. The ships activate yearly for engineering sea
trials and quarterly for dock trials. They also participate in various naval exercises to
keep the medical and ships crews proficient in their wartime tasks.
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