Navy Activates Point Mugu Medical Reservists

The secretary of the Navy activated a 62-member medical reserve unit attached to the Naval Air Station at Point Mugu Saturday morning, ordering the group of physicians, nurses, dental technicians and other specialists to report for duty within 24 hours.

The Navy also called up eight doctors from a naval reserve unit attached to the medical clinic at the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme.

However, nurses, pharmacists, optometrists and other medical specialists in the 59-position Port Hueneme medical unit had not been called to active duty as of Saturday, said Capt. Constante Abaya, the unit’s commanding officer. “I would not be surprised if the whole unit is activated by early next week,” he said.

Abaya, an Oxnard physician, said he received the call at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, with orders for him and other physicians to report to Camp Pendleton by midnight Wednesday for a 90-day tour of duty. One of the physicians in the unit was ordered to report to the Navy base at Bremerton, Wash., he said.

“I suppose because we are doctors, they were good enough to give us a couple of days to confer with our patients and arrange our affairs,” Abaya said.

Saturday’s call-ups in Ventura County were part of the first activation of reservists in California since President Bush signed orders authorizing their use to support U.S. troops deployed to the Middle East.

Pentagon officials said some of the estimated 50,000 reservists to be activated by Oct. 1 may wind up in Saudi Arabia or other Mideast countries.

But the 500 medical reservists in California who received notice Friday night and Saturday will be stationed at Navy bases in California and Washington, said Al Holston, a spokesman for the Navy’s regional reserve headquarters in San Diego.

These reservists will serve at domestic naval bases where critical shortages in medical and dental treatment clinics have developed as active-duty doctors and nurses have been shipped to the Persian Gulf region, Navy officials said.

It is not clear what the ultimate destination will be for 40 medical evacuation technicians who volunteered for duty from the Channel Islands Air National Guard Base next to Point Mugu.

The volunteers are scheduled to report for duty early this week, possibly on Monday, and depart aboard a C-130 Hercules cargo plane to an undisclosed location. The volunteer unit of medical technicians and nurses is trained to stabilize the wounded and transport them safely on cargo planes to military hospitals.

The activation of reservists, although anticipated, came as a rude shock to some of the “weekend warriors,” as they call themselves.

Abaya, for example, is worried that a 90-day tour of duty will ruin his medical practice and put his two employees out of work. As a solo practitioner in Oxnard, he said he does not have partners or an employer to take over.

“I’m kind of up-tight, because I don’t know what I’m going to do with my office, my patients who are supposed to be seen again next week and the next week,” Abaya said. “I have to finish my medical records in the hospital and make sure my shifts are covered.”

Theoretically, he said his medical unit was supposed to stay at Port Hueneme, filling in for active-duty medical troops deployed elsewhere. He had been counting on managing his private practice after hours while stationed at Port Hueneme.

But the orders for him to report to Camp Pendleton have left him feeling helpless. “Maybe on weekends I will be able to go home and see some of my patients who need me,” he said.

Abaya said his orders specify that he will be released from active duty on Nov. 22 if the Middle East crisis is resolved.

“I hope that this conflict will be over soon so we can go back to our normal lives,” he said.

Times staff writer Carol Watson contributed to this article.

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