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He and other nurses tried to help as much as possible in dealing with the psychological and emotional devastation caused by the storms.

“[We helped] by sitting down and talking to them and letting them ventilate and by acting as a liaison between that person and the services available through the Red Cross and [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] to get them to check on their houses, their family, and those types of things,” he says.

Barrera stayed in a water-damaged Holiday Inn without hot water and with sporadic electrical service. He says none of the streetlights worked, so a curfew forced him and other nurses to stay in the hotel when not working.

But their hardships paled in comparison to those of residents.

“People would have to wait in line in their cars for four to six hours to get an 8-pound bag of ice,” he says. “Or four to six hours to get gas.”

Giving thanks

Gus Camacho-Del Rio, RN, BSN, a Houston VA nurse for seven of his 10 years as a nurse, says a Gainesville, Fla., woman expressed her gratitude by paying for clothes that a relief nurse had to purchase at a mall. The Gainesville woman recognized her as a hurricane relief worker from a photo in the newspaper and insisted on paying her tab.

Camacho-Del Rio, 38, says he filled in for a nurse who needed time off to attend to personal matters.

Gainesville went without water and electricity and when it was restored, nurses needed time off to take care of their homes.

“One of the things I really admired about them was that, even though they had so much damage in their own homes, they still tried to make it to work as often as they could,” he says.

Camacho-Del Rio says one benefit to his experience was being reminded of how hard it is to work on a nursing unit. His job at the VA for the past six years has been in primary care, which has shielded him from the stress of surgical or extended-care nursing.

“I just hadn’t done it in such a long time I had forgotten how difficult it is to work on a unit,” he says. “You learn to appreciate people more by putting yourself in their shoes. I was able to do that and remind myself what it was like when I was there.”

Bob Finn, BSN, CCRN, a nurse at the Big Spring VA Medical Center and Scenic Mountain Medical Center in Big Spring, worked at South Baldwin Regional Medical Center in Foley, Ala., and then at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, Fla. Both hospitals marched the relief nurses — bags in hand — through their emergency department upon arrival.

“The staff had been there for a week and hadn’t been home yet and they wanted to see the people who were going to assist them,” he says.

Finn says the patients and staff have become like family to him. He has called patients and staff several times and Sacred Heart Hospital offered him a job. Finn, a major in the Air Force Reserves, says he enjoys volunteering and has been on the volunteer list for deployment to Iraq for a year.

Finn and other nurses say they would readily volunteer again. Camacho-Del Rio says one of the best lessons learned from the experience is that you can learn to love people you’ve never met before when you work together under trying circumstances.

“They were so extremely nice that it’s hard to explain,” he says. “You got there and they were so loving and caring. These are people you’ve never met in your life, and from then on, you’re a part of the family.”