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Moving More Than People

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS070723-05
Release Date: 7/23/2007 12:09:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Elizabeth R. Allen, USNS Comfort Public Affairs

CORINTO, Nicaragua (NNS) -- The first month of health care and construction work provided by personnel attached to the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) was only made possible by the successful movement of supplies and equipment.

“Moving freight is essential,” said David Lieberman, Military Sealift Command cargo officer assigned to Comfort. “Nothing happens without it.”

Wooden pallets destined for medical and dental sites are full of supplies, ranging from radiology equipment, exam tables, generators, toothbrushes and teddy bears; to wheelbarrows, power tools and construction supplies, all needed at sites where Seabees assigned to Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit 202 aboard Comfort work.

It’s a lot of cargo to move, and it all has to make it from the ship, anchored several miles off shore, to land.

When cargo travels by boat from Comfort, it gets off-loaded at the boat landing site, then continues further -- sometimes an hour or more away by bus -- to several site locations where medical and construction services will be performed.

“The preferred mode of transporting cargo to land is by helicopter,” said Lt. Andrew Biesterveld, scheduling officer for the Comfort. “It’s much easier to move cargo to the flight deck and stage it on pallets. It’s also easier to group everything by location and have the helo take it all in one trip.”

While transiting between countries, cargo is loaded onto pallets, covered in plastic and brought to the flight deck in preparation to take to land. Here in the rain and heat, the staged cargo awaits a trip by air. Although it’s a complex process to get cargo to where it needs to be, it’s just one more step in the evolution of providing care.

“Moving cargo is not the biggest part--it’s fairly easy,” said Aviation Warfare Systems Operator 1st Class Carlos Hernandez. “It’s ‘vert-repped’ (vertically replenished) to the beach and dropped off, then we come back to get the next set of gear. We situate it so that it’s roughly 2,000 pounds per lift, so it’s pretty easy to take.”

For this particular trip into Nicaragua, scheduled July 19 to July 25, the helicopters have enough cargo that they’ll have to make eight trips to the beach and back, moving roughly 16,000 pounds of cargo.

Along with the tools needed to perform medical, dental and construction work, donations organized by non-government organizations such as Project Handclasp and Project Hope also get flown to shore. Consumables, such as surgical equipment, medical beds with mattresses, exam tables, chairs and tables are examples of some of the items that were loaded onto the ship in the United States to be off-loaded to certain countries.

Comfort is on a four-month humanitarian deployment to Latin America and the Caribbean providing medical treatment to patients in a dozen countries. While deployed, Comfort is under operational control of U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command and tactical control of Destroyer Squadron 24.