05-SEP-A-13
ON A DATE OF LASTING SIGNIFICANCE IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN DISASTERS, 9/11, WE PAUSE TO REMEMBER THAT ONE DATE AS WE LOOK AT THE ONE WEEK THAT MOST OF THE SURVIVORS OF KATRINA HAVE HAD TO SUFFER
September 11, 2005
We begin this day with the usual mind-numbing routines of multiple roll calls and “getting on the same page staff meetings” with a commemorative moment: we gather around the flag pole to remember the prior biggest American disaster from a direct attack on the nation in New York and in Washington (I a very close observer of the latter) four years ago. Now, we roll out to tackle what we can about the biggest natural disaster in the nation’s history. We will have a lot of both to look back upon and assimilate in our responses to each.
THE GRAND TOUR OF THE 60,000 POUND, MILLION DOLLAR ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY MOBILE COMMAND POST,
OUR COMMUNICATIONS “HQ” AND MY LINK
THROUGH WHICH I MIGHT BE TRANSMITTING THESE PAGES
I got the Grand Tour of the Mobile Command Center here under Captain Mike and his fourteen crew, to see the enormous radio and transmission capability of the Mobile Command Center. I had hoped to send you an email from the “Sony Tuff Books”—hardened PC’s wireless transmitters, but I need an adapter to plug my mass storage device into the USB Port, and will have to await daylight and a chance to do that without the extra effort of holding up the team from our other assigned duties. I was part of the kitchen patrol tonight and we have step by step taken over this whole hospital to police it and convert it form an abandoned trash dump, to a well-looted then organized hotel, and will eventually even have the facility to re-open as a hospital for at least emergency room duty by the time our emergency teams are still here.
I saw all the connections and feeds into the central command with the ability they have through both satellite and cable connections to link anywhere. They are the reason that my cell phone now works well, since they put up auxiliary booster towers. The Captain Mike gave me an extensive interview and I taped the information as well as host pictures of the events ongoing there.
One piece I may have been able to send back to you that was our takeoff photo two days ago. Our group photo has been placed on a blog and that blog has an address you can download to see it: http://aacomccu.blogspot.com
I am going to be sending and showing a large number of pictures eventually, but this may be the first, and you may be able to spot me within my team as we get ready to roll out to cover the day’s events. I will be doing the same today after the short memorial commemoration and then I am going to carry a lot of caries. I mean that. I am packing a serious assault on the dental integrity of every one of the Arkansas National Guard who made a specific request of our team to get them some candy and specifically chocolate. They are sleeping on a cement floor in non-A/C eating MRE’s and what did they ask? I got them an umbrella awning shade for their guard duty out in the hot sun. I brought them a dozen boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts yesterday (“And who does the Doc give it to?---The Fat Boy!” responded the enlisted guy who received it.) But I though they might be eager to join us for the first hot sinner of roast beef served up by a local caterer supplied with the best of FEMA’s vittles which will make each subsequent dinner look like Thanksgiving dinner from here on. No, they made a request for chocolate bars and Snickers, and Milky Ways and as many of the awful confections as I could pack in—and I have done a raid with an arm stretching and belly busting load of the biggest assault on the Arkansas toothpicks of any that could be packed along.. These guys deserve it.
THE MEMORIAL SERVICE MOMENT OF SILENCE
AND A BRIEF CHURCH SERVICE AS WE MOVE OUT
The Memorial Moment of Silence had us standing at attention with the Guard folk playing soldier all at full salute, as a tape played a wobbly version of the “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.” That part was not as impressive as the brief speech by the fireman’s chaplain who made a brief invocation and then a Protestant Chaplain made an even briefer short speech and prayer—and we were on our way.
We rolled in to a team now minus our endocrinologist (make that the diabetics doc) and pediatrician and had two surgeons to deal with the people who came in with a two dozen med list to refill. I had one redneck fellow who had been shot in the back with an assault rifle in an “altercation over hunting” in which his brother was shot in the chest and killed. He has had fragments in his spine and had been paraplegic for weeks, and now came in with an official looking sheet of typescript with the dozen pain meds he was supposed to be on which he had not had filled since five days past. I wrote him up one for Percocet and one other. “No, that is not the principle one I want—I need Oxycontin.” I do not write for Oxycontin and won’t. “Why not? I have been on it for five years!” That is the reason I do not write for it. So, he is the only one who went away disappointed—I can see my DEA number spread through the bowels of lower Louisiana with the likes of such, and I was not born yesterday.
In addition, I saw several good folk who are working hard—and I saw one FOUR GENERATION family and treated each one of them. I met a fellow who was a commercial fisherman before his degenerative disc diseases took him out of action. “What did you fish for?” “You won’t believe it, but me and a buddy fish for alligator gar. It may not be a sports fish but it is what most fish fillet sandwiches are all about. We put out 150 jugs each baited with old mullet at night and pick them up in the morning and half of them will have the big old gar on them—the biggest being about 150 pounds. We would bring them in and someone with a truck would buy them by the ton. I recognize them in the fish fillet sandwiches. They also make interesting things out of the long beaked nose.”
My most interesting fellow was a snap diagnosis from a distance. A big and muscular fellow who was cutting tree limbs off the roof and a big one turned on him and he wrestled it free getting away form the chain saw. In struggling with it, he said he might have banged up his arm. I looked and in one millisecond announced that he had ruptured his biceps tendon. I wrote him up a work excuse and transported him to West Jefferson hospital where he is probably in the OR now getting his tendon reattached.
On return to learn our “policing function” we were assigned to “Clean up the common areas.” That is a lot of geography. My now private room with the mattress on the floor is getting crowded today since four guys will be moving in. There are forty people moving down today by C-130 and the second batch of fourteen who were supposed to leave, missed the flight so that they are returning so we are doubling up everywhere. I will try to send this as a message “attachment” if I can get the very fancy command center to post it back with the email I will try to send you.