NURSES HELPED IN 2005 TRAGEDY KATRINA DISASTER MEMORIES LINGER.

Byline: JUDY O'ROURKE Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- When Hurricane Katrina threatened the health and safety of millions in the South a year ago, some local nurses ditched their warm beds and supportive families and made a beeline for the chaos.

A year later, even with photographs in hand, the memory of those days seems unreal. Tumult was a given, but the divide between the haves and the have-nots was sobering.

``As much as I was dealing with it, these people were dealing with losing everything,'' said Michelle Sumner, 28, an obstetrics nurse at UCLA Medical Center who lives in Saugus. ``We diagnosed many people who had no medical care at all. They came from such poor areas, they didn't have the access.''

This was her first foray into disaster aid.

Sumner worked in a makeshift obstetrics clinic at the Houston Astrodome, where 6,000 evacuees took refuge. Many of her patients -- about 100 or so in 10 days -- were young women seven or eight months pregnant who had no prior prenatal care. Seven years in nursing had honed her medical skills, but the best medicine was often lending an ear, a balm for frayed psyches.

``People needed to tell their stories ... of sitting on the roof for 12, 24 hours, waiting to be rescued. Others waded through waist-deep water that had sewage in it,'' she said. ``They had no I.D., no insurance cards, they had to get rid of the clothes on their backs because they were contaminated in the water.''

Pregnant women were concerned about where they would live and how they would care for their children.

Sumner had tried to volunteer with the American Red Cross, but when no one responded to her online request, she contacted the California Nurses Association, which put her on a plane within two days with 25 other nurses. More than 300 members of the group quickly dispersed to 25 medical facilities in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi.

Sumner, who was on unpaid leave, is hooked on rescue work now, and plans to register with the CNA's relief network.

After the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, the group realized that the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders have many rules barring experienced nurses from volunteering on the spot. So after Katrina and Rita slammed into the South, the CNA shipped its nurses straight to the disaster area.

``In these areas, they don't need special disaster training: Disease is disease, illness is illness,'' said CNA spokeswoman Liz Jacobs. ``It's been a real eye-opener, kind of scary. The next natural disaster could come here and there's no plan for us to help, go to the site.''

Doctors Without Borders, a medical humanitarian group that delivers emergency care in more than 70 countries, found after an exploratory trip to the hurricane-hit zone that there was no role for its volunteers there, said spokesman Michael Goldfarb.

Red Cross spokesman Nick Samaniego was not familiar with Sumner's or Jacobs' comments, but said volunteers must be screened and trained in the agency's procedures before they are deployed. After Katrina, fast-track recruiting and same-day training were begun.

Emergency room nurse Ray Spaid, 49, who has worked at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital for 32 years, took the training about five days after the hurricane touched down.

``On my way home ... they asked if I could turn around and go to the airport and leave,'' he said.

He declined, but left for Houston the following day after buying supplies and arranging for his wife, also a Newhall Memorial emergency room nurse, to care for the couples' two young children.

Spaid, a flight nurse in the Air Force Reserve for seven years -- who served in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 -- asked to be sent to a remote location. They plunked him and another nurse in a rental car and dispatched them to Texarkana, in the northeast part of Texas. A week after the hurricane, 180 evacuees were bused to the community recreation center where they worked. It was only staffed during the day.

``All I had was a cluster of pediatric-dosing medications,'' he said. ``All night, I had to figure out how to treat these individuals with pediatric dosages.''

Psychiatric patients and people with high blood pressure were off their medications until the Red Cross procured a fresh supply a week later, he said.

``The next day, the (other nurse) got in the rental car, got on a plane to Oklahoma and went home without telling anybody what she had done,'' he said. She apparently had an anxiety attack, and was unprepared by her work -- for an allergist in a hospice -- for the drama.

``I was by myself. I lost 5 pounds the first week I was there,'' working 18 to 20 hours a day nonstop, he said. ``I held this down by myself. The local medical community would come in and volunteer an hour or two.''

All night long, adults and children would visit his makeshift bedroom -- a closet where he laid out his bedroll. He shared his food with them. Some volunteers chose to sleep in hotels, but Spaid refused to leave his post.

He managed to relocate all his patients to homes, rental units, long-term-care facilities or other shelters, but it was not yet time to return home.

The Red Cross deployed him to a shelter in San Antonio, where again, nobody was covering the nights. He offered to do it if others would work days.

``It was kind of frightening,'' he said. ``It was a mall the size of (Westfield) Valencia Town Center -- converted into a shelter,'' he said. ``As far as you could see were beds, cots, crutches, wheelchairs.''

More than 650 people took refuge there. By day, doctors and nurses from a local clinic oversaw their care. Spaid was on solo duty at night for a week, taking care of hundreds of patients.

He says many suffered from horrible anxiety, and he spent hours listening to their stories.

``They just wanted somebody to talk to,'' he said.

Spaid shrugs off accolades, but says he wanted to experience firsthand what it was like to care for a large number of patients in a disaster setting because Henry Mayo could one day face such a surge if a disaster strikes back home.

judy.orourke(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Michelle Sumner, above, an obstetrics nurse at UCLA Medical Center, worked for 10 days last year helping New Orleans evacuees after Hurricane Katrina. Left, cots filled with evacuees stretch the length of the Astrodome, in this photo taken by Sumner.

David Crane/Staff Photographer