|
“Rita is continuing to make life interesting here in
the Gulfport area (Mississippi). I'm now at the airport
where we're keeping the airplane here, a little place
called Shade Tree Airpark, a private strip. I may have
mentioned it in an earlier post. A very beaufitul spot.
The owner is VERY gracious to us. We have completely
relocated away from Keesler Air Force Base to this location
now. Everyone is staying here, either in tents, in the
hangars, or on the office floor. Shower facilites at
this point are a Flying J Truck Stop down the road where
we can go for showers, and there is a waterhose.
Organization came together very nicely
today. A volunteer named Bobby took the bull by the
horns and helped the team get organized. We have four
doctors here, and, I believe, nine or ten nurses, a
couple of EMTs, and a couple of student nurses. The
teams are divided up: one doctor, and two to four, well
two or three nurses, and possibly a student nurse (I
think) for each team. And, assignments are assigned
based on the doctor. Tomorrow we have one team, actually
two teams, going into the Gulfport area, going to, I
believe, the Salvation Army clinic where they have been
seeing over 400 patients a day and the doctors' needs
filled; they're exhaused. The other two groups are going
up to a little town called Poplarville. It's up close
to Bogalusa. It's actually just on the Mississippi side
of state line, near Bogalusa. They do have a little
airport there, so if needed, we can fly in and serve
them if it comes down to it.
The weather, though, has been a little
unstable. We had two pretty significant rain bands come
over us this afternoon from the hurricane. And they
came complete with winds, thunder, lightning, and heavy
rain. But, it didn't last that long; they were very
focused. Thankfully, there's a large hangar with enough
space in it for the 206 to go into. So, I've elected,
because of the distance from the expected landfall of
Rita, to keep the plane here at Shade Tree, unless things
look significantly different in projected hurricane
trajectory from what they have looked so far. Landfall
looks like it will be on the Texas/Louisiana border,
with the windward side of the storm hitting Louisiana
quite hard. Tropical storm force winds are expected
as far east as Baton Rouge, and this could be a very
serious hit on the city of New Orleans. The dikes, or
levees (we're not in Holland, I guess), the levees are
not really sturdy enough to handle the kind of rainfall
that we could have out of this. So, we could see a re-flooding
of downtown, at least potentially.
We are preparing for some pretty widespread
problems with great influx of evacuees into the Livingston
Parish area again and also preparing to move into the
area of landfall if necessary and requested (both in
Louisiana and in Texas), if we are requested to do so.
One doctor has arrived in the Livingston Parish area,
Dr. Gary Dotson, and his wife arrived. His wife is an
RN, and they started out, they hit the ground running
by visiting the Livingston West shelter.”
“Dr. Dotson and his wife will
go to the rest of the clinics tomorrow and see who is
there, who needs help, and we will be prepared for new
patients to enter as Rita causes them to. That is pretty
much the summary of what's going on right now. We <i>are</i>
actively recruiting to get more people, more doctors
and nurses specifically, down here. We're going to restart
the airlift program that we've had going. We also have
coming a clinic trailer; it's a <i>very nice</i>
facility that has been donated to RAM's use. It's a
mobile medical clinic; we need a driver (a CDL driver)
to drive it down and operate it here, preferrable someone
who would be free to come down and spend a week or two
at a time with us as the driver and preferrably have
other skills to use besides. Obviously, doctors and
nurses will be needed, and anyone interested can contact
the RAM office headquarters at (865) 579-1530, if that
is something that anyone reading this can be involved
in.” |
