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Kearsarge, Fleet Surgical Team 8 Prepare for War

Navy NewStand

Story Number: NNS030327-13
Release Date: 3/27/2003 2:22:00 PM

By Journalist 1st Class (SW) Chris Hoffpauir, USS Kersarge Public Affairs

ABOARD USS KEARSARGE, At Sea (NNS) -- A fair definition of a mass casualty scene is "organized chaos."

Recently, USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) conducted two back-to-back mass casualty drills to flex a capability that the ship has not fully implemented.

Stretchers bearing simulated wounded Sailors and Marines were lined up on the flight deck, arranged in a neat line near the island, as hospital corpsmen quickly assessed the simulated injuries.

The casualties are quickly moved, through massive, armored, double doors into the ship's flight deck triage room, just inside the island. The place was a swarm of activity, with doctors quickly performing primary triage, prioritizing patients according to the severity of their injuries and how urgently they needed care.

From there, stretcher bearers move the wounded to one of the ship's battle dressing stations or main medical, via an elevator, for further treatment or surgery.

The stress level among the medical professionals was high. Of course, it would have been even higher were the casualties real. The event was held the day before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Kearsarge is deployed in the Arabian Gulf as part of Task Force 51 and boasts a medical capability second only to the Navy's two dedicated hospital ships, USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) and USNS Comfort (T-AH 20).

Currently, Comfort is deployed in the Arabian Gulf with Kearsarge and is routinely seen in the vicinity of the ship. As a result of its robust medical capabilities, Kearsarge is designated as a primary casualty receiving and teatment ship (CRTS).

"Today was a training exercise for handling a large number of casualties," said Capt. Mary Jean Herden, officer in charge, Fleet Surgical Team (FST) 8. "We purposely overloaded the system to test how well we can deal with a mass casualty situation."

"We wanted to present a realistic situation and expose everyone to the kinds of stresses they would see in a real-world mass casualty situation," Herden added.

Kearsarge's core medical department includes doctors, one administrative officer and hospital corpsmen. The embarkation of a fleet surgical team adds medical command and control, surgical and medical specialty-trained doctors, nurses and corpsmen to the CRTS platform. FST-8 originally left Norfolk aboard USS Bataan (LHD 5) to complete the task of training a task-oriented surgical team for that ship.