September 12, 2005

Hello, from the Gulf Coast! I am sitting here in the gymnasium of the Coast Episcopal School in Long Beach, Mississippi. There is a palm tree – I am not sure if it will every stand vertically again, but there is one. I am about brain dead – we have been seeing patients steadily all day long – 4 doctors from Duke University Hospital and 1 Nurse Practitioner from Oxford, Md. We have open air conditions – the end wall behind one basketball net is pretty much gone, the two long sides of the gym are open at the top by design. There also seem to be some open spaces in the roof, covered by this ubiquitous blue tarp material. We do have fans. I think that the steel beams make this structurally sound.

Yesterday, we drove the motor home past a hundred miles of trees snapped in half, church steeples awkwardly standing upside down in the ground – whole roofs in cow pastures, miles and miles of brush piled truck high next to the hiway. Then we got into the area really hit by Katrina.

The area right along the Coast in Pass Christian was a goal of a very early morning sortie by a Physician from Starkville, MS, Grace, a psychiatric nurse practitioner from Duke, and myself. We managed to get past the two national guards with our passes. The goal was Dr. Brandon’s sister’s home. Or what was left of it. The house was on the Gulf along a scenic road – Huge live oaks were seriously trimmed, but standing. The houses did not fare so well. The house we were looking for had been built in the 1700’s initially. It was gone. A patio lay clean swept, with an intact 18 karat gold trimmed bowel sitting in the sand beside it. The pool was filled with old timbers – 12 x 12 pine heart beams and other old lumber jumbled 20 feet high. Family photos and Mardi Gras beads hung on the boards like Christmas decorations. We stood, totally silent.

Next store to the back of this site was Mr. Landron, rocking away on an ancient rocker that was probably not as old as he is. His home is behind thick bushes, with two vehicles drying in the warm, humid air. Mr. Landon had stayed home for this hurricane, and for every other one in his adult life. He reported that his 100 year old home had done well. It is built 27 feet above sea level, is set on 4 feet of concrete block – that’s 31 feet above sea level. He only had 2 feet of water in his living room. Said it came in fast, and took about an hour to leave.

We then took a walking tour of the area – not seeing another soul until we got back into the truck to go back to the medical site. Each house had a marking that indicated it had been searched, when, by which group, and if dead bodies were found inside. We saw no animals. We heard and smelled gas. We understood why they were not letting people back into the area – None of the homes on the water were intact. The roads were washed away or undermined. On Second Street, there were power lines down, the gas line apparently broken, trees, and debris too thick to pass through.

If you want to feel loved, go as a volunteer to a disaster site. Everyone is thanking you for being there. If you arrive with a mobile home so packed with supplies you can’t sleep in it, there is a kind of awe. We opened the back door – a gasp – "we just ran out of dog food" – well, you people of Talbot County had bought hundreds of pounds of dog food! (you don’t remember shopping? Well…you did) Our clothes were packed by size, sex, and type. Out shoes were packed by size and gender. Our toiletries were organized by type. Our medications boxed by body system, and there was more –3 bikes in good shape, diapers, formula and Rick, the battery-operated pump and mattresses got special treatment. You got gold stars, Talbot County, and Holy Trinity packers for your work!

Now inside Coast Episcopal School, an H-shaped, one- storied building, everything was also organized – it was like walking into a Walmart where no money changed hands. People were greeted at the front door, and registered, helped to find a box or bag to fill, and then they set off – ladies clothes were hung or neatly stacked in section A, men’s in another hall, Children’s in another section. Food was artfully stacked by someone who must have been a retail designer. Everyone was calm, happy and smiling. Trucks arrived at the back door from all over the country, and their contents walked out the front door with people a little less stressed because basic needs were beginning to get met.

The medical clinic - If you want miracles, this is one. Six days ago, a Registered Nurse, the wife of a pastor whose church disappeared with Katrina, decided that medical help was desperately needed right here, right now. Jennifer Knight got a few people to clean out the damaged gym at the Coast Episcopal School, sent out a few emails, and put up cardboard signs on the road announcing a free clinic. Jennifer opened the clinic four days ago, two volunteer Virginia physicians found the clinic right after she opened. They saw 300 people that day and at least that many every day since. Since then medical personnel and supplies have just appeared at the clinic.

On Friday, day three – a team from Duke University appeared looking for a site to help. Their long story will be told in another email. They had trauma physicians, pulmonary specialists, fabulous nurses from the ER, Life Flight, Obstetrics, and the Operating Room, two pharmacists, a respiratory therapists, and a psychiatric nurse practitioner. They turned the place blue in their matching scrubs, and made a commitment to stay, organize, and help get more medical personnel and supplies to the clinic. That’s where we have landed.

One more quick story to tell….Sara needed med refills this morning, and interspersed her medical history with details of staying in her attic with her husband until the water dropped to only 2 feet in their house. They then crawled out a bathroom window, and waded to a neighbor’s. Now living in a shelter, she had worked with a woman from Charleston, SC to find the pets of people who were staying in shelters. Shelters will not let people keep their pets with them. The lady from South Carolina had brought a horse trailer with dog cages down to rescue the pets. She offered to keep them on her farm, find them foster families or get the pets adopted. No euthanasia. 22 pet owners signed their dogs over to Sara, and she was telling me the exploits of going out to the abandoned house to find the pets, and entice them into the pet cages. Most were close to starving, but had stayed with the house, waiting for their owners to come home. So Ali, and Phyllis, you have dogs on order.
Susan Delean-Botkin, CRNP

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