One Day Until Deployment: MTF Commanding Officer discusses upcoming deployment

By U.S. Navy Capt. Tim Hinman, Commanding Officer, USNS Mercy Medical Treatment Facility

Tomorrow the USNS Mercy Hospital Ship will depart for Pacific Partnership 2012.  In addition to my hospital staff and the military sealift command civilian mariners, we will be joined by shipmates from Destroyer Squadron Seven staff, other military services (foreign and domestic), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  As commanding officer of MTF USNS Mercy I am very proud of our incredibly capable crew and platform. We look forward to contributing our part through medical diplomacy on this very important mission.  I look forward to forming new and renewing existing relationships, providing and developing capacity, and increasing interoperability and the ability to respond in crises.

Now in its seventh year, Pacific Partnership has become the largest annual humanitarian civic action (HCA) mission in the Asia Pacific region. Pacific Partnership is focused on building enduring relationships by working through and with host nations, partner nations and NGOs to enhance our collective ability and capacity to respond to natural disasters.

This year’s mission is aptly themed, “Preparing in Calm to Respond in Crisis,” and we hope to help all our host and partner nations do just that.  We have been asked by Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, along with our numerous partner nations, to work with together, exchange information, and help us all plan for unknown contingencies in the future.

I am particularly looking forward to going beyond what we have done in the past as part of our exchanges.  For previous missions, surgeries have traditionally been performed by U.S. and partner providers aboard Mercy. This year the mission will provide opportunities to integrate host nation providers into performing surgeries, both on the ship and ashore, as a true exchange of expertise and practice that will greatly increase medical capacity and further solidify these relationships.

In the military and especially in the medical community we often talk about global engagement and building partnerships.  I can personally think of no better way to do that than these types of missions.  Medicine is a universal language and has the ability to cross cultural divides and change lives.  This ship is bringing together specialties across the full spectrum of what military medicine has to offer and as we embark on this journey, I’m confident we will take full advantage of what opportunities lay before us and collectively build a brighter future for those whose lives we are honored to touch.

Days Left Until Deployment: 4 – The following is a test of the helo crash alarm from the flight deck – disregard this alarm

USNS Mercy flight deck personnel take part in an aircraft fire drill

USNS Mercy Rescue Swimmers Take to the Pools

Five Days Left Until Deployment and these Guys Decide to go Swimming

Supposedly everyone looks cool in a wet suit – and that must be especially true if that person is a Pacific Partnership 2012 Search and Rescue (SAR) Swimmer.  Today PP12’s SAR swimmers spent the morning at the pool practicing life saving skills, “So that others may live.” 

 

USNS Mercy Deploying for Pacific Partnership 2012

USNS Mercy Deploying for Pacific Partnership 2012.

Practice Makes Perfect

USNS Mercy participates in fire and life boat certifications conducted by the Coast Guard April 25 in preperation for Pacific Partnership 2012.

Days left before deployment: Six – “Automated data processing isn’t automatic.”

While supply department continues to work their magic, the ship’s Automated data processing (ADP) division is busy making a different kind of magic – they make the connections that make work and life in a modern world possible – and it’s not as easy as ADP makes it look. 

Hi there my name is Joshua Harris.  I am a Network Engineer and have been working aboard Mercy since 2007.  After that many years, I must either be crazy or enjoy jumping through flaming hoops and emergent IT problems that come with trying to give everybody what they want.

My department is responsible for all of the computers, radios, phones, pagers, the ship’s TV station and more than 40 different medical IT systems.  We try to keep everything up 100% of the time.  We also work hand-in-hand with the crew upstairs in Radio to keep all of our satellite connections working and manage all data communications to our teams ashore while we are on mission. 

If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is – in fact, yesterday we delivered 5,623 emails, transported 192,603 web pages, completed 1,212 phone calls and performed five test video teleconferences with Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet and CISCO systems  –all as  a part of a little thing I like to call, “Tuesday.”

Around the ship I am best known as the “computer drop guy”… if you want a new computer, I am here to hook you up.  Just this week we installed 20 new drops for everything from Blood Analyzers to GPS Synchronized clock displays in the operations center.  That means pulling cable through parts of the ship most people don’t even know exist.

My typical day begins before dawn to make sure the ship’s 480 computer drops and 385 fiber optic trunk lines are working properly.  That way, when everyone comes into the office, they can sit down, check their emails, update Facebook, surf the “interwebs” – and sometimes even do a little work.  

We are less than a week from deployment, and there is still SO MUCH work to be completed.  It always seems like everything comes down to the wire (IT pun intended), but in the end, we pull together as a team and get the job done. 

IT work aside, being a part of this humanitarian mission and seeing all of the hope and happiness that the crew and NGO volunteers bring to the other side of the world is very humbling.  It really makes me appreciate just how good we have it back home.  I’m truly proud be a part of the IT team on board the Mercy,  to be a member of Pacific Partnership and to do my part to make it all happen!

No one likes mosquitoes

Sailors and civilian personnel spray uniforms with permethrin, an insecticide, to repel insects while in host nations in preparation of Pacific Partnership 2012. Pacific Partnership 2012 is the seventh in a series of U.S. Pacific Fleet humanitarian and civic assistance missions aimed at strengthening regional relationships with host and partner nations, as well as providing natural disaster response training, in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.

Six days until deployment: “THIS IS A DRILL, THIS IS A DRILL”

Today Sailors, servicemembers and civilians working aboard USNS Mercy practiced an abandon ship drill in preparation for the scheduled May 1^st deployment.   The drill is designed to make all PP12 members aware of where to go and what to do in the event USNS Mercy must be abandoned at sea. 

The exercise began with a fire drill followed by the call to abandon ship.  Everyone “donned” (put on) their life jackets and gathered on the flight deck with their designated life rafts. 

Afterward, the members designated to be in charge of each lift raft, known as life raft commanders, conducted training on the proper technique for safely boarding and lowering the rafts into the water.

The drill will be repeated tomorrow, when the U.S. Coastguard will visit to make sure everything is in ship shape and up to code. 

 

Supply Department in Overdrive – DAYS LEFT UNTIL DEPLOYMENT: 13

As this year’s mission commander joins with key leaders in the art of diplomacy at our Nation’s capital, back in San Diego truckloads of supplies are offloaded onto the pier to be lifted by crane on board USNS Mercy.

Petty Officer 1^st Class Eunice Defro is a logistical specialist aboard USNS Mercy.  He is S-1’s leading petty officer. He is also the ship’s Financial and Contracting Officer, and the ship’s lead crane and forklift operator.  You might say he is a man who wears many hats; and today, he is wearing a hard hat. 

When I arrived at work this morning, there were more than 80 pallets of donated supplies for Cambodia waiting on the pier – and behind those were another 20 pallets of Cardinal Health medical supplies waiting to be delivered from the warehouse. 

It all had to move, and it had to move today.  We could either work longer or we could work faster, and daylight doesn’t wait for anyone.  I brought in a second, mobile crane to double our efforts and positioned it mid-ship so I could supervise two cranes at once.  From the pier, to the flight deck, to one of the storerooms, I supervised the pallet movement from up on the flight deck. 

My job is to help prepare and maintain 1000-bed, level III, contingency facility.  We have to be able to be activated within five days – that means ready to deploy.  When the ship is in a Full Operating Status, I man, equip, and train Sailors to be ready to execute wartime, humanitarian and disaster relief missions. 

As Petty Officer Defro orchestrated the movement of trucks, boxes, forklifts and cranes; inside the ship, another Sailor formed the next link in the chain.

 

Petty Officer 2^nd Class Oliver Sicat is a Navy Culinary Specialist aboard USNS Mercy.  He is a member of S-2 (food services) division.  He has served 12 years in the Navy.  His previous duty stations include: USS Essex, USS Belleau Wood, USS New Orleans and Naval Medical Center San Diego at Balboa.  Pacific Partnership 2012 will be Sicat’s 3^rd deployment aboard Mercy. 

Sicat is one of S-2 division’s supply-storeroom supervisors. His responsibilities include maintaining and tracking the inventory of several storerooms of food, along with the deep freezers and large refrigerators, “chill boxes.”

 Hi, I’m Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Oliver Sicat.  This is my blog. 

 When the ship first started getting ready for cruise, we had absolutely nothing in our storerooms.  Every week for the past month, the ship has brought on 50 to 75 pallets of food – and we will continue to bring on that much every week until we deploy.  (Currently the ship has received 209,072.33 pounds of food; trucks continue to arrive daily.)  

When we deploy, my job includes ensuring the galley stays fully stocked with all the food they need to serve the crew. It’s a challenging, but very important job.  Everyone needs to eat.  I absolutely love being a culinary specialist! When you work on the mess line you get to meet everyone on the ship and everyone knows who you are; and that’s a really cool feeling.  I help to make sure people are getting the food they like to eat.  When we are out to sea for months and far away from home, sometimes something as simple as seeing your favorite cereal sitting there in the morning can make your whole day – and that is the favorite part of my job.

I’m really looking forward to this deployment for a couple reasons.  I was born in the Philippines, and raised in Guam – and on this deployment we are getting to visit both!  I’m looking forward to seeing my mom and brother when we visit Guam.   It will be the first time in five years.  But what I’m most looking forward to is seeing my grandma.  My family left the Philippines 20 years ago, and I was very young.  This will be the first time that I have been able to visit her.

My first deployment aboard Mercy was during the 2005 Tsunami relief effort.  It was incredible to see so many people who had lost everything.  All of their possessions had been wiped out – and yet they were all so happy to see us.  They were so happy just to be alive.  My job was as a galley watch captain (kitchen supervisor) working to provide food and water to the crew and patients.  It was a really crazy time.

Our medical teams leave the ship to go out into the country and literally send back entire villages of people that need help.  Compound that with the fact that we only had five days notice to on load all the food, medicine, and other needed supplies.

It was one of the hardest and most rewarding experiences I’ve had in the Navy.  But it really makes me appreciate what we do; being able to help others.  And that is why I believe Pacific Partnership is the best mission in the Navy and I can’t wait to get back out there.