Floating Hospital Offers Comfort to New York

Soon after the attack on the World Trade Center, the United States Naval Ship Comfort and its medical staff were ordered from their port in Baltimore, Maryland, up to New York City. CBS News's Dr. Emily Senay visited the floating military hospital in lower Manhattan.

The Comfort has been docked here on the west side of Manhattan since last Friday. Now since that time the staff and the crew of the Comfort have been providing round-the-clock care and services to the rescue workers who are coming up here each day from ground zero in a mission that's being called Operation Noble Eagle.

Though the beds aren't filled with the patients originally expected, the crew of the USNS Comfort has been providing a variety of services to the relief workers who board the ship, whether it be a place to sleep or a hot meal.

"You can see from the looks of the crew when you walk around today that the crew is really into this and really providing a service," says Dr. Charles Blankenship, commanding officer of the USNS Comfort.

"Roughly, in the last 24 hours, we've probably had about 200 workers who actually stayed on board overnight. We've probably got double that number who've just come in to get a meal, a hot cup of coffee, and relax for a while," says Blankenship.

Which, for many relief workers, doesn't include sleeping. This group of EMS workers from upstate New York huddled around the TV for more news after working their 12-hour shift at ground zero.

And despite their mission shift, the Comfort is still seeing patients.

"We're seeing anywhere from 40 to 50 patients a day, in addition to police officers who have fallen out on the pier or firefighters who have fallen out, rescue workers. So it certainly has been steady," says Dr. Steven Oliver, a physician on the USNS Comfort.

And the Comfort is equipped to handle even more.

"We're a fully functioning hospital. We have multiple ORs [operating rooms], a burn unit, several intensive care units, and large wards. We have full lab capabilities and radiology capabilities. So pretty much everything that you can get at a land-based hospital you can get aboard ship here," says Oliver.

The Comfort is actually larger than many of the hospitals right here in Manhattan, and it is incredibly self-sufficient. It can even make its own oxygen. Now the Comfort has a sister ship called the Mercy. These two ships are able to get ready within 5 days to ship out anywhere in the world--that includes staffing it up with doctors and nurses. In this case it took only 24 hours, which tells you about the resolve of the people working on the Comfort.
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