Whirlwind Tour
Volunteer nurses from around the country travel to Florida to
assist with hurricane relief efforts

By Scott Williams
December 13, 2004

Mabelline George, RN, BSN, noticed that as she and other nurses entered Tallahassee, Fla., in September to prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Ivan, other people were fleeing the area.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” George remembers asking herself.

Like nurses from other parts of Texas and the United States, George, a mental health nurse in the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, volunteered to travel to Florida to help deal with the fallout from the four hurricanes that hit or brushed the state in a six-week period. She and other VA employees received their regular salaries while working.

Florida hospitals needed extra nurses to help with public health issues, to fill in for nurses who couldn’t make it to work, and to relieve nurses who needed time off to rest or deal with damaged or destroyed homes. But why would George head into a disaster area when others had decided to leave for their safety?

Because she’s a nurse.

“I’ve been there,” says George, a native Houstonian. “Being in Houston, I’ve been involved in hurricanes and I know what it’s like to not be able to get to work and the patients still need you. If I could go somewhere and give someone some help, I was happy to do that.”

To make it easier for nurses from other states to volunteer, the Florida State Board of Nursing granted temporary licenses to out-of-state registered nurses with active licenses. The Department of Veterans Affairs asked for volunteers from its 176 medical centers around the country.

At least 12 Texas VA nurses traveled to Florida along with VA nurses from around the country and nurses from nongovernment medical facilities. There, they were joined by other health care workers along with people skilled in engineering, safety, security, logistics, and administrative functions needed to run a health care facility.

Friends in need

Beulah Hadrick, RNC, MSN, a nurse executive at the Houston VA Medical Center, says she, too, volunteered to travel to Florida to help out. “We were just glad to provide some assistance because you never know when it’s going to be your turn,” she says.

Hadrick, a VA nurse for 24 of her 28 years in nursing, left Houston Aug. 24 to help out after Hurricane Charley hit southwestern Florida. A reservist who previously has been called up to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Hadrick spent 10 days in Sarasota, Fla., at a nursing home that had been converted into a special-needs shelter.

“We had a lot of patients that were displaced and they had some medical problems,” she says. “They were not acutely ill to be in a hospital but may have had care in the home.”

The center had two floors with 60 full beds on each floor. Like other nurses, Hadrick worked 12-hour shifts and took little time off. Unlike some areas, the nursing home where she worked had both electricity and running water. It also received more beds to accommodate new patients as well as medical supplies and equipment.

Physicians were available to write prescriptions and a nearby pharmacy delivered medicine to the nursing home/shelter. Although most patients required only basic nursing care, some became ill enough to be transferred to a hospital.

Hadrick says many patients didn’t want to leave the shelter and one woman with whom she had bonded asked her to go with her to see how much her home had been damaged. The woman wound up in a skilled care facility when she discovered her home had been destroyed. Patients and residents were grateful to those who came from other states to help, she says.

“They were really appreciative when they saw us and asked us where we were from,” Hadrick says. “They would just express their sincere thanks and ask if there’s anything they can do for us.”

Tony Barrera, RN, MSN, a nurse manager for the West Texas VA Health Care System in Big Spring, worked in Sebastian, Fla., on the Atlantic Coast from Sept. 7 to Sept. 16. He worked in a shelter at a Sebastian high school, treating the “walking wounded,” three-quarters of whom were aged 70 or older.

Barrera, 46, who has been with the VA since 1985, says many patients were suffering from shock, depression, denial, guilt, and anger.

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.”