02:51 PM CDT on Thursday, September 8, 2005

Wayne Parry / Associated Press

NEWARK, NJ -- The bathing water is dark brown and smelly. Meals are usually a few handfuls of dry cereal, or a half-cup of soup and crackers. Outside are National Guard troops toting automatic weapons. Inside are hundreds of weak, sick victims of Hurricane Katrina. After a 12-hour night shift, there's no place to sleep except the floor, and not even a private bathroom.

But for two north Jersey nurses who volunteered to help a storm-damaged hospital along the banks of the Mississippi River in New Orleans, the disaster is bringing out the best in people who have experienced the worst.

"They're just beautiful people here," said Marissa Gutierrez, o ne of two nurses from the Summit Medical Group who flew this week to New Orleans to help out at the Ochsner Clinic, where many of the staff lost their homes and have been unable to report for work. Yet others have stayed on, working 12-hour shifts, then sleeping in the hospital because they have nowhere else to go.

"They don't complain, they don't whine, they just keep going and going," Gutierrez said on her cell phone from the emergency room before starting another shift Thursday afternoon. "The biggest thing coming out of this is beautiful people helping each other."

Outside the hospital, it's another story. Floodwaters are right across the street. Buildings -- or parts of them -- are twisted and torn.

"There are dead bodies -- you can smell it in the air," said Lois O'Sullivan of Cranford, another nurse who accompanied Gutierrez on a weeklong mercy mission to New Orleans. "It is just devastation here."

The pair flew to New Orleans early Tuesday morning, and got right to work at the hospital, which O'Sullivan said is operating with about 25 percent of its normal staff. It's still looking to contact many of its workers through its Web site to determine whether they are all right.

The patients just keep coming. Wednesday night, the emergency room treated 150 in 12 hours, admitting 86 of them, O'Sullivan said. The most common ailment is dehydration, among people who have had little to eat or drink in a week and a half.

Others need antibiotics for infections, or tetanus shots for puncture wounds, particularly among rescue workers.

The hospital is operating on generator power but has still managed to do complex surgeries. It also has no drinkable water; the well water in the area is contaminated and discolored.

"We shower in brown water but can't drink it or brush teeth with it," O'Sullivan said.

Bottled water is precious, and is needed for patient-related tasks, so the staff uses it sparingly. A cup of coffee, made with bottled water, is worth its weight in gold, she said.

Food is also rationed for the staff, so that patients get enough to eat.

"In the morning, it's usually rationed dry cereal," O'Sullivan said. "Yesterday for lunch we had half a cup of soup and some crackers, and we were grateful to have it."

O'Sullivan and Gutierrez work the 4 p.m.-to-4 a.m. shift in the emergency room, then try -- mostly in vain -- to sleep during the day.

"We used to work nights, 12-hour night shifts," said the 51-year-old O'Sullivan. "After a while, your body says you're not young enough to do this on only four hours sleep."

But O'Sullivan and Gutierrez, a 48-year-old grandmother from Union, said the disaster has helped them remember what is truly important in life.

"Life is not about what you have; in a second that can be taken away from you," said O'Sullivan, who is also a paramedic who helped out at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. "Life is about love and taking care of people. You understand you should be grateful for each day of life."

Gutierrez said the stream of broken souls seeking help in the hospital makes her want to cry.

"You just have to cry on the inside because you still have to help," she said. "You have to show them you're strong and you're there for them."

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)