Cummins Family - Katrina

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Comment: Michael this is from a friend in Washington D.C. Aug. 31, 2005 This is a dispatch from New Orleans from Dr. Greg Henderson, a pathologist who recently moved from Wilmington: Thanks to all of you who have sent your notes of concern and your prayers. I am writing this note on Tuesday at 2 p.m.. I wanted to update all of you as to the situation here. I don't know how much information you are getting but I am certain it is more than we are getting. Be advised that almost everything I am telling you is from direct observation or rumor from reasonable sources. They are allowing limited internet access, so I hope to send this dispatch today. Personally, my family and I are fine. My family is safe in Jackson, Miss., and I am now a temporary resident of the Ritz Carleton Hotel in New Orleans. I figured if it was my time to go, I wanted to go in a place with a good wine list. In addition, this hotel is in a very old building on Canal Street that could and did sustain little damage. Many of the other hotels sustained significant loss of windows, and we expect that many of the guests may be evacuated here. Things were obviously bad yesterday, but they are much worse today. Overnight the water arrived. Now Canal Street (true to its origins) is indeed a canal. The first floor of all downtown buildings is underwater. I have heard that Charity Hospital and Tulane are limited in their ability to care for patients because of water. Ochsner is the only hospital that remains fully functional. However, I spoke with them today and they too are on generator and losing food and water fast. The city now has no clean water, no sewerage system, no electricity, and no real communications. Bodies are still being recovered floating in the floods. We are worried about a cholera epidemic. Even the police are without effective communications. We have a group of armed police here with us at the hotel that is admirably trying to exert some local law enforcement. This is tough because looting is now rampant. Most of it is not malicious looting. These are poor and desperate people with no housing and no medical care and no food or water trying to take care of themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the people are armed and dangerous. We hear gunshots frequently. Most of Canal street is occupied by armed looters who have a low threshold for discharging their weapons. We hear gunshots frequently. The looters are using makeshift boats made of pieces of styrofoam to access. We are still waiting for a significant national guard presence. The health care situation here has dramatically worsened overnight. Many people in the hotel are elderly and small children. Many other guests have unusual diseases. ... There are (Infectious Disease) physicians in at this hotel attending an HIV confection. We have commandered the world famous French Quarter Bar to turn into an makeshift clinic. There is a team of about seven doctors and PAs and pharmacists. We anticipate that this will be the major medical facility in the central business district and French Quarter. Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under police escort. The pharmacy was dark and full of water. We basically scooped the entire drug sets into garbage bags and removed them. All under police excort. The looters had to be held back at gunpoint. After a dose of prophylactic Cipro I hope to be fine. In all we are faring well. We have set up a hospital in the the French Qarter bar in the hotel, and will start admitting patients today. Many will be from the hotel, but many will not. We are anticipating dealing with multiple medical problems, medications and and acute injuries. Infection and perhaps even cholera are anticipated major problems. Food and water shortages are imminent. The biggest question to all of us is where is the National Guard. We hear jet fignters and helicopters, but no real armed presence, and hence the rampant looting. There is no Red Cross and no Salvation Army. In a sort of cliche-way, this is an edifying experience. One is rapidly focused away from the transient and material to the bare necessities of life. It has been challenging to me to learn how to be a primary care phyisican. We are under martial law so return to our homes is impossible. I don't know how long it will be and this is my greatest fear. Despite it all, this is a soul-edifying experience. The greatest pain is to think about the loss. And how long the rebuild will take. And the horror of so many dead people PLEASE SEND THIS DISPATCH TO ALL YOU THING MAY BE INTERSTED IN A DISPATCH from the front. I will send more according to your interest. Hopefully their collective prayers will be answered. By the way, suture packs, sterile gloves and stethoscopes will be needed as the Ritz turns into a MASH Greg Henderson

Posted by: Diana at September 1, 2005 07:49 PM

Comment: This is from Betty Jo Brent Boyd. She lives in Greenville MS Sorry for the group letter. All is well with us, but most of the state is really suffering. We have power, water, sunshine, all we need. Katherine Hnes and some of her family are here from McComb, staying in the lake house. Their water is off, but we expect the power to be restored soon. Power at the lake is Delta Electric and they don't have as much damage to deal with today as some of the other power companies. Gary's house in McComb has a tree down, but as far as we know that's the only problem. Power is off there. Randy's family is also without power in Jackson. They have trees down, but fortunately none fell on the house. The Sun Herald has good info and photos at www.sunherald.com. For those I haven't told yet, we have a brand new granddaughter, Sophia Joelle. Little Sophie is the daughter of Gary and Nan, born Thursday before all this calamity. Here is my letter. Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:29:15 -0700 (PDT) I spoke with Jim today and he said they had found all the students they had been looking for in Pine Bluff at a campground. They are staying put as all the campgrounds are loaded to capacity. Of the eleven people that are at his house he thinks only one of them is going back to Austria. He expects that the rest will be there for awhile. They heard from Alice's sister's husband and he is driving a truck up above Lake Ponchitrain at a red cross shelter. He brings in supplies and leaves them at the camp. Since Alice's sister Margaret Ann and her husband are both retired they will be fine on income. Not as good for the other folks as they are out of jobs. Jim said the church is feeding many of the refugees tonight. He said the banks and phones go through Baton Rouge so they can't use credit cards at all and the land lines are sporatic. His cell does not work at all. They do have electricity but may run out of gasoline for the cars soon. This all in about as far north as you can get in Louisiana. Word from Martha is that Judy (Uncle Zeb's youngest)and her family had evacuated. Not sure about her house since Slidell was hit pretty hard. Reply Thanks for all that news. Who are the students? Sounds like Jim & Alice have their hands full. (BJ I sent this to a friend in Washington since he ended up on the family list so even tho you know a lot of it will send it on. "Sorry, I guess you are on my family info list. Jim is my older brother who lives in Bastrop LA which is as far north as you can go just about. His wife is Alice and she had a sister and brother-in-law in Belle Chasse is just across the Mississippi river from the French Quarter. The family is large--3 sons who are married and have children and inlaws. Many of those folks came to Bastrop and Monroe (just south of Bastrop) to wait out the storm. Robert (Alice's brother-in-law) has been volunteering with the Red Cross for several years so he stayed down there. One of the son's has a wife from Austria who works with the foreign student's at LSUNO. When it came time to evacuate they brought several students with them and some are at Jim's house and some are in the campground nearby. They had lost contact with another group that was leaving with them but were not sure where they would find a place to stay. Those are in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Jim said that there is only 4 million people in Lousiana and now a third of them are without homes or livelyhood.") I was surprised to hear on the news that a group of international students were marooned by the storm, awaiting rescue. This was in a piece about ham radio operators, I think. We're helping settle a group of about 35 from a NO church. They've been at the Ramada, but only had funds for three days. Our church has a vacant house, just remodeled, and the rest will be housed at the Salvation Army. They wanted to stay together, so this is the best we could manage. Bob and I have been hauling beds, etc this afternoon. Love, BJ

Posted by: Diana at September 1, 2005 08:04 PM

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