When disasters devastate entire countries, such as the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12 and the 8.8-magnitude disaster that hit Chile on Saturday, the world reels in shock but millions react with aid.

Lakeway resident Sandy Larson, RN, has been at the forefront of disaster relief and humanitarian efforts as a registered nurse working aboard hospital ships.
When Larson read about Project HOPE’s need for qualified nurses to work onboard the USNS Comfort off the coast of Port-au-Prince, she signed up immediately for a three-week volunteer rotation.
The Comfort had been in dry dock in Baltimore, Md., when the earthquake ravaged Haiti, but the U.S. Navy ship and its crew were called into duty and set sail Jan. 16. The ship primarily supports overseas military operations, but its secondary mission is to provide a full hospital service for other government agencies involved in the support of relief and humanitarian operations worldwide.
As the 894-foot Comfort sailed to the Caribbean as part of Operation Unified Response, workers outfitted the ship in transit and 26 volunteers, including Larson, flew on a military cargo transport Jan. 27 from Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida to Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince with a brief stop at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Before the Comfort moored, helicopters began flying patients in for surgery and treatments.
Within two hours of arriving onboard, Larson’s group began a grueling cycle of relief. She worked 16 shifts of 12 hours each.
“I quickly realized it would be sleep and work,” Larson said. “It was exhausting for everybody, no doubt.”
The 1,000-bed floating hospital ship took on 700 patients initially and continued taking up to 100 new patients each day to treat in eight operating rooms.
Project HOPE volunteers who supplemented military personnel included medical professionals with experience in surgery, neonatal intensive care, pediatrics, post anesthesia care, intensive care and physical therapy.
As a critical care nurse for 26 years at Seton Medical Center Austin in its intensive care unit and several decades, Larson is no stranger to working on international relief projects and hospital ships.
She feels that she has been blessed with good health and skills that have been of value to these missions.
“I firmly believe that to whom much has been given, much is expected,” she said.
She served on a couple of short-term, land-based missions in Panama and in 2007 she served a month on GRT Africa Mercy harbored in Liberia. Larson also was familiar with the USNS Comfort from a Project HOPE humanitarian mission last spring for six weeks in the Caribbean, including a stop at Haiti.
“I had been ashore two or three times there, so I had a pretty good sense of what I was getting into. I knew it was going to be a way more intense scene than I had been a part of in the spring,” Larson said, adding that her three-week rotation was her first nursing mission to support disaster relief.
She learned that flexibility was the key word.
“You have to be able to go with the flow. In that kind of a setting, you have to give up some of the rules and regulations that work under here in the States,” she explained. “You’re doing the most for the most patients that you can at the time.”
The hospital ship took a steady stream of patients who were airlifted by helicopter and occasionally transported by small boats.
“There was a continuous flow of that kind of activity,” she said.
Larson recalled seeing lots of cases of amputations, head trauma, fractured legs and arms and spinal injuries.
She noted that few doctors onboard had treated patients of typhoid and tetanus.
“That was interesting for about everybody. Very few of the physicians had ever encountered that because we just don’t see it in our modern medical setting,” she said.
Gut-wrenching stories became part of the daily routine.
“The human grief was really overwhelming at times. We took care of many people of all ages who had lost their total families. They were the lone survivors,” she said, fondly remembering one patient who had lost her parents and five siblings when their family’s house collapsed. The woman, who had a good command of English, escaped with major facial fractures and unable to speak after receiving treatment wrote notes and letter of thanks to Larson.
Amid the disease and trauma, doctors also delivered a few babies onboard.
One expectant mother had suffered a fractured pelvis, and she and her baby were extremely ill when they came onboard. Doctors didn’t expect the baby, dubbed Isabella, to survive after delivering her prematurely at 6 1/2 months and taking her off a breathing machine.
“She just started breathing on her own and started thriving. She went home with her mother,” Larson recalled. “Baby Isabella is the miracle baby of the ship.”
The story was one among many that lifted spirits and morale on the ship.
“There were definitely some bright spots,” Larson said. “People got over the hump, when we didn’t know if they would make it. They did survive and ultimately get better.”
The scope of Project HOPE’s mission and collaboration with Navy personnel astounded her.
“When you think about it, it was just unbelievable what the end result was because it was a huge, huge undertaking with so many levels of people involved,” Larson. “It was a very high level of care for the situation. To work at that level for three weeks was plenty.”
The ups and downs and long shifts did fatigue Larson who is semi-retired, but she gained a greater understanding of tragedy on an epic scale.
“I deal with death and dying on a regular basis in what I do … but when you add that level of not only the injuries but also people who have lost several or all of their family members and have no home to go to, it puts my whole world into a different perspective,” she said. “It makes me incredibly grateful.”
Although she was ready to come home, she took several memories with her of Haiti’s unwavering faith.
On the eve of the one-month anniversary of the earthquake Feb. 12, the ship’s chaplain and an interpreter hosted a service of remembrance and hope in the ship’s mess hall that included hymns and prayer.
“Everybody came — all the patients who could make it – along with the Red Cross and Project HOPE. It was packed to the brim, shoulder to shoulder. That was a hugely powerful experience. There weren’t so many dry eyes at the service,” Larson said. “It was such an example of their strength. [Haitians] are used to very, very hard lives, and they have very strong spirits. That was a wonderful way to end our mission.”