About 40 doctors, nurses, paramedics and pharmacists with the Hawaii Disaster Medical Assistance Team are in New York to assist emergency medical responders who have been helping victims of superstorm Sandy for the past two weeks.
Members of the team began heading to New York Monday morning after they were notified of their activation Sunday.
They were to join forces with an Alaska team.
Hawaii Team Commander Toby Clairmont said Monday that the team members won’t know their assignments until they arrive in New York City.
The incident command center is in Times Square.
He said three task forces comprise the Hawaii team. They may be assigned to different areas in New York or work together.
"We think because this operation is consolidating that we’re there to turn off the lights," Clairmont said. "We’ll probably be there for about two weeks. We’ll probably be the last team there."
Three members of the team in New York work for Honolulu Emergency Medical Services, including EMS Chief Patricia Dukes.
With four busy hospitals closed in the wake of the storm, Dukes said the Hawaii team will be providing relief to the responders who are assisting victims who need medical care, "mostly either in the (remaining) hospitals or in the field units."
She said the team members brought with them lei and ti leaves to share aloha with the victims and responders to "raise their spirits, help them recover from the trauma they’ve had to suffer."
They also brought with them sleeping bags and sleeping mats even though they didn’t know where they were going to be bivouacked.
The other team members from Honolulu EMS are paramedics Marc Moriguchi and Chico Caballero.
Moriguchi has 21 years of experience as a city paramedic.
Caballero also has 21 years of experience as a paramedic, 20 of them in New York City, including on Sept. 11, 2001.
The team has 100 members whose regular jobs are with various county emergency medical services and at hospitals on Kauai, Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island.
Clairmont said team members for the current deployment were selected so as not to disrupt operations for their regular employers.
