This week I'm not going to do much creative work in blogging. I thought it would be inappropriate to talk about my hike in the Sierra Mountains and show you all the nice pictures. I'll do that next week.
Instead I'm posting an email that was forwarded to me by a friend. It is written by Nancy Daniels, Lt. Col. US Army (ret.) She is part of the psychological counseling team set up in San Antonio TX to support arriving refugees from the Gulf Coast.
"Experience from Hurricane Andrew in the 1990’s was that several whole cities were knocked out. New middle class homes had not been built to code and fell on their occupants. It was hard to get assistance in because there were no phones, no electricity, no water, no roads. Storms have a way of wrecking road systems through flooding and debris. Also, if there is enough wind and water, the road bed gets taken right out of the ground.
New Orleans set up the Super Dome and Convention Center as a refuge of last resort for the sick and crippled who couldn’t evacuate. By Saturday night there was enough wind that the airport closed. People who could buy tickets went out on Trailways, but they didn’t really know where to go. Lots of people didn’t have money for more than a few days in a hotel. There were some evacuee centers in Baton Rouge and all around the state. Lots of people couldn’t evacuate because they couldn’t buy a bus ticket and didn’t have a car. There wasn’t any public transport for evacuation near as I can tell. So people went to the superdome. Still others stayed in their homes and rode out the storm. They were just fine for a while after the storm. There was no water, no phone, no electricity by Monday after the storm passed. Then it got sort of hot and sunny and things were looking up by Monday afternoon. People were willing to stay in their homes and endure the hardship until the power and water were back for a few weeks. Then Monday night the levees broke. Tuesday morning people woke up and washed out of their beds. I mean the water just sort of rose up during the night and took people by surprise.
Amtrak tracks are under water. They only run a few trains in and out of there each day. I think the schedule is two trains a day going east and two going west.
Only one route on I-10 was passable. It was hard to get to. Finally they got more roads open.
Yesterday I was at the evacuee center. I heard the stories. Life is kind of messy and chaotic anyway. Disaster preparedness is not foremost on the minds of people who live kind of hand to mouth anyway. One man said he pulled a woman out of the water into a boat. She died in his arms, but it looked like there was really nothing wrong with her. He thought she was just overwhelmed. He was asking for some new clothes since he had been handling dead bodies.
Walmart brought out some clothes and diapers. Everybody needs clothes and we haven’t got laundry facilities. Things run out real fast because there are about 5000 in the shelter in various states of chaos. There are plenty of volunteers, but as with any operation communication is very difficult. Well organized refugee efforts have to unfold over time. It’s not possible to have emergency situations quickly organized. Communication is really a very fragile commodity.
This is a triple decker disaster. First was the grinding poverty. Then there was the Category 5 hurricane that took out 6000 square miles and along with it all infrastructure—(water, sewer, roads, power, phones). Then the levees broke and flooded 80 % of New Orleans. So that’s why things are such a mess.
Buses were coming in every 5 minutes with about 50 passengers each. There are second and third evacuation centers opening all over this city and many others. Everything is overflowing. These people are sick, too. There is a federal agency-NMDS that is coordinating sending folks to hospitals. Only the sickest can be sent to hospitals. They’re full, too.
I have been in disaster planning for many years. It is hard to imagine the reality of something like this. We have never anticipated or planned to manage anything of this magnitude. Ordinarily something this big wouldn’t necessarily have this many survivors.
I am going back to the evacuee center today.
Love,
Nancy"
