I was out of town on business when the gravity of the storm was realized. When I flew home to Tampa Bay on Friday, 4 days after the storm hit I packed my car with all of the supplies that I could (water, diapers, baby formula, non perishable foods etc) and headed out. I had no real plan. I work for a medical software company and I travel every week. We have two hospitals in Ocean Springs and Singing River which are in the Pascagoula/Biloxi MS area. So I headed there.
The devastation was beyond what the pictures from TV can portray. Roads out, bridges out, people wandering aimlessly looking for survivors and loved ones (5 days after the storm). Mile long lines for gas and food being rationed by armed military personnel. It really was unbelievable.
I found a food distribution point there and dropped my supplies. Then for the rest of the day I helped the National Guard and other volunteers load food/water into vehicles as they drove up.
I heard on the radio that the PMAC Center at LSU in Baton Rouge was looking for medical volunteers to help there. Apparently it was one of the centers people were being evacuated to immediately after rescue. I’m originally a nurse, so I headed there. After a 3 hour drive, I arrived in Baton Rouge. By this time, all of the power to that city had been restored and aside from some debris lying around, it looked pretty much like a normal city. I found a church parking lot and slept there in my car (there were no rooms in the city). The next AM, I headed over to LSU where there was quite a bit of work to do. I spent the next 3 days doing everything from basic care to complex procedures. The human stories I encountered are too numerous to go into detail but I can say that I met people who had lost whole families. People came in wet, right from that nasty water with only the tattered clothes they had on their backs. That’s it. Everything else lost. Still they were grateful for just some dry clothes and food. I spent the next three days working here. I also found our company’s sales guy in the area who put me up while I was there. One night after working 12 hrs at LSU, I got back home and heard in the neighborhood that there were 60 out of town firefighters getting in to town. Larry (sales guy) and I went scavenging the neighborhood asking for tents and we set them up for these guys. They were pretty grateful.
After three days there, the patients slowed to a trickle, so they closed down the operation and I was ready to go home. I hooked up with a group of firefighters from St Bernard Parish who had been rotated out of the affected areas for a few days off. They had evacuated their families prior to the storm but stayed to work. Every firefighter in that Parish (133 guys) had lost their house. I drove 3 of them out of Baton Rouge. The first two were close but one guy came back to my house in Tampa. I bought him a plane ticket the next day to get to his wife and two kids that had evacuated to family in West Palm Beach.
Well that was the week in a nutshell. Hope all of our members in that area made it out OK.
The devastation was beyond what the pictures from TV can portray. Roads out, bridges out, people wandering aimlessly looking for survivors and loved ones (5 days after the storm). Mile long lines for gas and food being rationed by armed military personnel. It really was unbelievable.
I found a food distribution point there and dropped my supplies. Then for the rest of the day I helped the National Guard and other volunteers load food/water into vehicles as they drove up.
I heard on the radio that the PMAC Center at LSU in Baton Rouge was looking for medical volunteers to help there. Apparently it was one of the centers people were being evacuated to immediately after rescue. I’m originally a nurse, so I headed there. After a 3 hour drive, I arrived in Baton Rouge. By this time, all of the power to that city had been restored and aside from some debris lying around, it looked pretty much like a normal city. I found a church parking lot and slept there in my car (there were no rooms in the city). The next AM, I headed over to LSU where there was quite a bit of work to do. I spent the next 3 days doing everything from basic care to complex procedures. The human stories I encountered are too numerous to go into detail but I can say that I met people who had lost whole families. People came in wet, right from that nasty water with only the tattered clothes they had on their backs. That’s it. Everything else lost. Still they were grateful for just some dry clothes and food. I spent the next three days working here. I also found our company’s sales guy in the area who put me up while I was there. One night after working 12 hrs at LSU, I got back home and heard in the neighborhood that there were 60 out of town firefighters getting in to town. Larry (sales guy) and I went scavenging the neighborhood asking for tents and we set them up for these guys. They were pretty grateful.
After three days there, the patients slowed to a trickle, so they closed down the operation and I was ready to go home. I hooked up with a group of firefighters from St Bernard Parish who had been rotated out of the affected areas for a few days off. They had evacuated their families prior to the storm but stayed to work. Every firefighter in that Parish (133 guys) had lost their house. I drove 3 of them out of Baton Rouge. The first two were close but one guy came back to my house in Tampa. I bought him a plane ticket the next day to get to his wife and two kids that had evacuated to family in West Palm Beach.
Well that was the week in a nutshell. Hope all of our members in that area made it out OK.
