Medics from Boston lend a hand to New Orleans in return of Mardi Gras

When Susan Briggs and her crack medical disaster team are dispatched from their Boston base, it's usually to scenes of utter devastation.

In 2003, for example, they left Massachusetts General Hospital bound for Iran and the calamitous earthquake there, tending to nearly 800 victims in 12 days.

This week, an International Medical Surgical Response Team was summoned again. Destination: Mardi Gras.

They're in New Orleans ready to help out, for instance, if revelers fall off the ladders they use to watch the parades.

''I never thought I would be used in this kind of capacity," Briggs, a veteran trauma surgeon, said by telephone yesterday from New Orleans.

Nearly six months after Hurricane Katrina wrecked much of the region, including its hospitals, fewer than 100 hospital beds are available in the heart of the city.

Briggs is running a 60-bed medical ward in a parking lot in the shadow of the city's teaching hospitals, including the iconic -- and shuttered -- Charity Hospital. Most of the ''beds" are stretchers, sitting under a big beige tent. Some beds are in a mobile van.

The most severely ill patients will go directly to Tulane University's hospital, which reopened last week.

The makeshift ward that Briggs is presiding over will handle more routine injuries: abdominal aches, chest pain, and broken bones.

''People are happy Mardi Gras has come back, because it's a sign the city has come back," Briggs said. ''But they're also very concerned -- is the city able to handle it?

''I think so. I hope so."

STEPHEN SMITH