05-SEP-A-7
ARRIVAL THROUGH THE HURRICANE KATRINA’S DEVASTATION TO WEST JEFFERSON PARISH ON THE CANLAS AND MISSISIPPI’S WEST BANK TO RELIEF THE BELEUGURED TEARFUL STAFF OF WEST JEFFERSON HOSPITAL
September 5, 2005
I have arrived—against all odds!
I have made it down to Chase Naval Air Base next to MSY Louis Armstrong International Airport, which looks almost identical to Lokichoggio Kenya as I threaded my way earlier this year through the Hercules Airlifters that were dropping emergency relief supplies on Darfur Sudan. Our C-130’s are lined up and the choppers and heavy air tankers are refueling the diverted airlifters, whereas our two emergency relief C-130 Herky’s were vectored straight through in three and a half hours.
Through the curfew, we were escorted by Louisiana State Troopers and two National Guard Humvees on either ends of our convoy as we threaded through the darkened town without power or water supplies and past the strip malls with overturned trucks, all boarded up windows, and almost every tree lying horizontal—and I was kvetching about a single fallen tree in Derwood and a horizontal lie of a Viking refrigerator/freezer.
Governor Ehrlich saw each of us onto the C-130 airlifters and shook each hand on prime time. It was warm and touching but not as much as the hug I got in silence form the exhausted psychiatrist chief of West Jefferson as she came back to choked up to wave her disposable camera to have her photo taken with me—the first one off the bus.
West Jefferson Hospital = WJEF= 29* 57.21 N, and 090* 05.39 N or 973 statute miles from HOME at bearing 43*; I am within line of sight of the deserted downtown 1.3 million population city of New Orleans, formerly home to sixteen hospitals now three, with the others now submerged. I am seven miles from the Mississippi’s major bend in Jefferson Parish, with two hospitals, West Jeff and East Jeff, each with a diminished population to serve, but with fewer hospitals and returning citizens there will be a surge to the flood of returnees who will come to see what is left.
I am bunked in the Fitness Center of the Hospital’s wing where a generator is supplying us—for the moment,--and we will have running water for the duration of that power. We are spread out on cots and sleeping bags, eighty nine strong with mixed physicians, nurses and a few pharmacists and EMT;s. Three of the physicians have come up to me and identified themselves as former residents of mine—two of whom I recognize, and have made some quick friends. I have only limited cell phone coverage, and a limited amount of the charge to be stored. We are in the “inventory stage” of what we have and briefings as we get together tonight to check on the daunting amount of work ahead and the staff here has met us with tears and exhausted hollow eyes as none have been home—if there is a home to go home to.
I am on the job where I need to be, doing what I should be doing—and will give it my best!
Cheers!
GWG