more emergency volunteer worker updates...

[lagilman]

Our team has arrived in New Orleans. Getting here was not easy. We had to get through the worst of the storm as it was making its way through the Gulf sections of Mississippi. We spent and hour or two at road side hotels several times during the trip, standing and sitting in interiors meeting rooms and the like. We have seen extensive damage in Mississippi. The flooding that they have ended up with is almost unreal: entire neighborhoods under water; people being rescued from rooftops. The wind was just as punishing, blocks and blocks of power poles and their lines snapped in half or gone altogether.

People are saying that New Orleans was lucky, and certainly there isn’t near the damage her that was first predicted while Katrina was still over open water and aiming this way. Lucky, though? I’m not sure that’s the right word.

We will be staying in a local emergency shelter set up for the many search and rescue teams in the area. We are the first from outside the state to be in this city. The National Guard and the local search and rescue teams have been here all along. The area where the shelter is is still accessible. There is water in the street but it’s no deeper than a foot or two. That’s not the case everywhere, though. Several of our guys have been out of boats already, surveying the damage with some of the local teams. I went with them on the initial survey and I can tell you that there are parts of this city that were catastrophically damaged. Parts of an area known as the 9th ward are more than ten feet under water. There have been many rescues of people who were stuck in there homes and on their roofs. Many boats are being brought in from more north of where we are, but the particular highway they were navigating is completely flooded. To battle this obstacle, the boats were launch on the flooded highway and the rescuers reported here in their boats. A nursing home had to be evacuated when it was flooded out.

The emergency operations center and local emergency teams are being asked by the press what the casualty count is; the answer continues to be that we don’t know yet as we can’t get into all the areas necessary to know the answer to that question. The truth is, though, there are dead here. We’ve been asked not to give numbers or details yet. But there are dead here and there are sure to be more that we, or others, haven’t yet found. Real numbers won’t be known for days. It may take that long to get to all the areas that are currently inaccessible.

It’s not as bad for the city as whole that everyone feared and thought it would be. For some, though, they will be going back to find that they have no home. Some will be going back to reunite with relatives who chose to ride this out and their relatives will not be waiting for them. That, I’d say, is bad enough.

We have encountered some people out on the streets. It’s just not smart to do this. There are live wires down and more debris and obstacles than I can tell you about. The water continues to rise as the rain still falls and the tide still comes in. People who are out walking around are in considerable danger. Statistics say that more people die after the storm than die during it.

It’s been a long day and our team is tired. There’s no time for that, though. We’ll sleep in shifts and believe it or not, there will be boats going out throughout the night trying to survey what they can, determine as best they can where we need rescuers, where we may need recovery personnel, and where the greatest need for medical personnel is. The Red Cross is here already. Soon they will be able to administer services to the people who will surely need them.

All of this in a city that was “lucky.” Those people in coastal Mississippi got the worst of it. They’re going to be hurting there for weeks and for months. I’m not sure how long we’ll be here; long enough to make a difference and lend a hand. And on our way home we’ll check in with Emergency Ops in Mississippi; if they need anything, we’ll be there. It’s a small sacrifice for people in so much need.






“But how do we get there?” has been the question of the morning. People in the emergency ops center slept for a little while last night, but the questions of how to get to all the people who still need help is what’s on everyone’s mind.
When daylight breaks here, the press will be watching helicopters rescuing people from rooftops and large numbers of rescue boats headed out to the hardest hit areas East (and now West, since the levee was breached late yesterday) of this city. Waters are STILL rising in places and many, many people are unaccounted for; this is to be expected, though, as there is no electricity and no phones. The numbers that we have are sure to come down, just as the number of dead is sure to go up. The press is no reporting (although you’ll notice that no one “official” will verify it for them) that the storm has killed 55 people. I’ll tell you this…that number is wrong.
The residents of this city are a mixed-breed of sort. Looters have been arrested (unbelievable, right?), people are partying in the French Quarter (life goes on, I guess), others are tired and still scared (who can blame them?). Everyone wants to go back and see his house. Not happening. There are extremely large areas of the city (mostly outside the city --- remember that people think New Orleans IS the French Quarter, but that isn’t so… this place is huge and encompasses a large area) that are completely underwater, along with those neighborhoods that the press have shown you where houses are water-logged up to the roof-lines. It’s going to take a long, long time before there is visible land for some people to walk on. These houses will never be lived in again.
Roll call’s in a few minutes; it’s time to get out there and fight the good fight. Have a nice day and a big cup of Vienna coffee for me. I’ll write again this evening.



If folk are still interested, I'll continue as I get them.