USNS Comfort Returns Home to Baltimore

BALTIMORE - The U.S. Naval Ship Comfort pulled into the Port of Baltimore, Friday, to the cheers of hundreds of family members, friends, and students from two Catholic elementary schools.

For more than two months the Comfort has been at sea providing assistance to earthquake victims in Haiti.
Most of the 200 remaining personnel disembarked from the ship around lunchtime.

Many of the physicians, nurses, and corpsmen elected earlier to disembark in Norfolk during a stop there several days ago.

All ten operating theaters on the hospital ship were pressed into service as the Comfort arrived in Haiti in mid-January.

Petty Officer Emmanuel Anzele said he worked for 30 straight hours as the ship approached Haiti.
The Navy Corpsman is responsible for organizing the blood supply on the ship.

Anzele, who is now an American citizen, was born in the Ivory Coast in Africa.

"Since I speak French... I was also translating [for] the patients," he explained.

The Navy says the Comfort treated 871 seriously injured patients from Haiti, both locals and foreigners injured in the massive earthquake. 843 of those patients required surgery aboard the ship.

In the early days of the deployment, all ten of the Comfort's operating rooms were being used simultaneously.

A skeleton crew will remain aboard the Comfort in Baltimore Harbor.

They are there in the event there is a need for another rapid deployment of the hospital ship.