POWAY —— Pomerado Hospital nurse Sarah Gordon thought she knew what to expect when she signed on as a medical relief worker in the area hit by Hurricane Katrina. After all, she had done the same thing in India after last year's tsunami.

Even so, the 23-year-old Gordon was caught off guard.

"The destruction and disaster was pretty shocking," she said Wednesday, a day after her return from a two-week stint in Louisiana and Mississippi.

"I think seeing it on the 16 inches of your TV screen doesn't give you any idea of what it really is like and how hot it is and what these people are dealing with and the conditions that they're living in."

The San Marcos resident was part of a four-person medical team sent to the Gulf Coast by the nonprofit International Relief Team and Palomar Pomerado Health. The two agencies teamed up to break through a lot of federal red tape and get medical workers to hurricane-damaged areas in a hurry, after Katrina struck late last month.

Gordon graduated from nursing school just 14 months ago but was recently named nurse of the year at Pomerado Hospital. She had no vacation time on the books at work when the hurricane hit, but co-workers donated some of their own hours so Gordon could go to the devastated area.

She joined Escondido nurse-practitioner Mary Kubota, Pacific Beach physician Tom Kozak and Los Angeles physician Joe Ruderman on a Sept. 14 flight to the Gulf Coast region. The group was the first of several medical relief teams tentatively scheduled to rotate through the hurricane area, under the partnership.

Gordon and her teammates treated evacuees and relief workers in Natchez, Miss., for several days upon their arrival in the region. The group then rented a car and made their way to Gulfport, Miss.

Once there, the team helped staff a mobile medical clinic housed in two trailers set up in the parking lot of the city's main evacuee shelter. Gordon and other medical relief workers spent 12-hour days bandaging people's injuries, dishing out badly needed medications and providing shots to ward off tetanus and disease.

Through it all, Gordon got a close look at the hurricane's devastation. Recalling piles of splintered lumber, broken glass and other rubble everywhere she looked, Gordon compared the scenes to what might be left if a gigantic home improvement store exploded.

Waved into areas closed to the public by National Guardsmen who welcomed the addition of new medical workers, she and her teammates got an eery feeling as they drove along deserted streets and badly damaged homes in New Orleans, said Gordon, who described the city as a ghost town.

The sight of offshore casinos washed up on beaches along the Gulf Coast shore was just as surreal, she added.

"To see a 10- to 12-story building thrown up on the beach —— it's hard to believe what you're seeing," Gordon said. "It doesn't make sense."

She said she found her Gulf Coast experience easier than her time in India in some ways. Treating patients was infinitely easier, for example, because she could talk to them directly instead of through translators, Gordon said.

But the hurricane disaster's close-to-home nature made it harder to deal with emotionally, she said.

"It was much more of a personal experience," Gordon said. "This happened in my own country."

Her shock was mitigated by the humble and grateful attitudes of those the relief workers helped. Gordon remembered giving a tetanus shot to a firefighter who quietly mentioned that he evacuated his neighborhood before the hurricane hit, only to return and rescue 25 people by boat after the area flooded, because "he couldn't just sit."

"It was amazing to hear people say things like that, and it was just like they were saying, 'My shoes are blue,' " Gordon said.

"And then for him to think it was a big deal for me to get on a big comfy plane and fly there and give shots —— I told him, 'That's not a big deal. You're the hero.' "

Good old Southern hospitality also helped her through the long days, she said.

"These people didn't have homes, and they were offering us anything that they had to offer," said Gordon, adding that women who lost their homes came and cooked for the medical workers.

"This was their one chance to be selfish and concerned about themselves, and yet so many people were so anxious about us and helpful. That gave me a new perspective on life."

Contact staff writer Andrea Moss at (760) 739-6654 or amoss@nctimes.com.