Katrina info thread II

[SpencerH]

Sorry, I didnt notice what thread this was when I responded.

[Uncle Sparky]

I just received this e-mail from a friend of mine at Cornell.

We just received this from the Dean of our Faculty. Interesting and sad.

Rob


>Dear Faculty Colleague,
>
>Tulane University in New Orleans has been completely closed down.
>Faculty, students and administration have all been evacuated safely,
>but university operations have been suspended for at least this
>semester if not for the entire year. Cornell is making an effort to
>reach out to students and offer them study possibilities here as
>special students.
>
>Faculty at Tulane are in a terrible situation; they have no offices,
>many have no homes, they have no facilities and they probably have no
>salaries. If you know faculty at Tulane and are in a position to be
>helpful, please contact them if you can. We will try to find housing,
>offices and facilities here at Cornell for them, their post-docs or
>graduate students. It is possible that there may be a small amount of
>money available to help with emergency requests. We think that the
>personal invitation from you is likely to be the most effective way of
>ensuring that they find a niche here at Cornell.
>
>My office will be coordinating this effort, so please route any
>requests for assistance to me. Thank you very much for your help in
>this emergency.
>
>Charlie
>
>--
>Charles Walcott
>Dean of the University Faculty
>315 Day Hall, Cornell University,
>Ithaca, NY 14853-2801
>
>Telephone: 607 255 4843
>FAX: 607 255 3791

[Chemical Ollie]

A Hercules with 2 mobile water works and crew from the Swedish Rescue Agency is standing by at Gothenburg airport, waiting for approval from American authorities to go in there.

[:) Smiley]

Colleges in the Bay Area are taking in students as well.

If Louisiana is to have a future, the education system needs to be rebuilt ASAP.

[VetLegion]

Can they ask the Dutch to help? I've just listened to a report on plugging the holes in the levees and it seems they don't have a clue how to do it. As far as I understood none have been plugged yet. The Dutch have a lot of expirience with that, they should call them to assist at least with expertize.

[germanos]

Plugging holes in ****s isn't an easy thing to do. It usually takes a lot of time. (weeks)
It's simply a lot of material that has to arrive on the spot.

[VetLegion]

Yeah, I know. I've been reading what you did after that big disaster in 195x (I think). Lots of different techniques employed, sandbags, concrete blocks, etc. I see Americans mentioning huge sandbags... I'd go with concrete first, then sandbags later.

[DanS]

The levees are not being totally plugged, so that the water will have some place to go. As of yesterday, they had enough material and manpower to plug the biggest levee breaks as they saw fit.

[DanS]

It's really tough to get through to cell phones in Louisiana. My sister evacuated to Northeast Louisiana, but the circuits have been busy all day.

[VetLegion]

DanS, the CNN clip I saw said that they have to plug them first and then *pump* the water out, since NO being in depression water has nowhere to retreat naturally.

They must have some monstrous pumps, or it will take months to do it or over a year.

By the way, the guy saying that they can do it, someone from Corps of Engineers, didn't sound convincing at all. He sounded so fake.

"Ummm, yeah.... we're ready, we can do it... looking into options... sandbags... we'd like a barge, but we're thinking helicopters now..."

Excuses and empty talk. It sounded like they have no idea how to plug them.

EDIT: Here is the clip. You tell me if you trust this guy: http://edition.cnn.com/video/player/...baumy.levee.ap

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Pumping is part of it, but they also plan to breach some of the other levees to drain part of the city. Obviously that won't work for everything, but pumping out 13 feet of water will be easier than pumping 17 or 20 feet.

[Edan]

Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food

[DanS]

DanS, the CNN clip I saw said that they have to plug them first and then *pump* the water out, since NO being in depression water has nowhere to retreat naturally.

Yes, but where the levee broke might not be the highest point that is flooded. So as Lake Pontchartrain receeds, you have to let the water flow out as much as possible.

[Guynemer]

A tale from a New Orleans area hospital

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179702/site/newsweek/

A Horrible Dream



By Susanna Schrobsdorff
Newsweek
Updated: 9:09 p.m. ET Sept. 2, 2005

Sept. 2, 2005 - It’s been a sweltering, agonizing week for the 1,000 staff members at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, La., a suburb adjacent to New Orleans. They rode out Hurricane Katrina and its horrific aftermath without air conditioning, running water or toilets. Most haven’t slept more than a few hours since the morning of the storm, and many have lost their homes or family members. By Friday, these exhausted doctors, nurses and administrators were running one of just three fully functioning medical centers in the city.

But despite the hardships, the 463-bed hospital hasn’t yet lost a single patient due to the harsh conditions. The staff managed to get water trucked in and served regular meals throughout the crisis by cobbling together a supply system of donations from local businesses to compensate for a debilitating lack of government help. In the end, West Jeff wove a private safety net in the midst of a public disaster.

“We are very disappointed, to be quite honest, in the federal and state people,” says the hospital’s CEO, Gary Muller. “We’ve had open roads since Monday afternoon and we have gotten no assistance from FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency]. It’s totally disgraceful. We’re one of three open hospitals and we still can’t get them to say we need food.”


Gary Muller, the CEO of West Jefferson Medical Center, has been working round the clock with his staff for more than a week
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Muller says he told FEMA officials on Monday that the hospital needed an additional generator to supplement its own emergency power system. “They have been here twice to assess whether we need the generator. Twice. Today is Friday and we still don’t know if we’re getting it. This is the government? It’s terrible.” (FEMA officials did not return calls asking for comment.)

Muller and his staff put their hurricane plan into action long before the storm hit. Over the weekend, they began filling up buckets of water and devising a rationing system—one cup of water for each hand washing. Knowing that backup sewage would be a disaster, they figured out a way to use the disabled toilets with plastic bags they carried out for disposal themselves.

On Tuesday, when the staff realized that the water system for the city was severely crippled, they began making their own arrangements. Muller spoke to a colleague in a small hospital in Raceland, La., 60 miles away, and asked for help. Raceland hospital’s CEO, Milton Bourgious, offered to buy and deliver the water himself. “Within three hours,” says Muller, “he got here with the first of six trucks of water. If he can do that, the federal government can do that.” Managing to scoop up enough water for a hospital was a feat in this state where bottled water has become a precious commodity. “Milton went into a Winn-Dixie and said, ‘I’ll take all your water',” recounts Muller. “And they said, ‘You can’t.’ And he said, ‘I’m taking it to West Jeff. Their patients and staff need it.’ They said, ‘Take it'.”

With basic supplies running low, a band of doctors, nurses and management staff drove to the local Wal-Mart, just one mile a way and asked for donations of food, underwear, bras, toiletries, diapers, formula, medicine and water. And then they went to a Lowes hardware store for supplies to cover the 50 windows that were blown out in the storm and start roof repairs. “Wal-Mart and Lowes have been our saviors,” says Steel. “Wal-Mart even gave us food to give to the less critical patients we had to discharge so they would have something to eat at the shelters.”

Meanwhile the exhausted physicians, nurses and technicians continued to care for critical patients. They gave emergency postpartum treatment to a mother who’d given birth in the attic of a flooded home. She was found 16 hours later by a Wildlife and Fisheries Department boat, which dropped mother and baby into a crowd of 1,000 people waiting on a highway overpass. Somehow, the young mother caught the attention of a police officer who brought them to West Jeff. The day after the hurricane, surgeons saved a police officer who had been shot in back of the head by looters. And nurses from other hospitals were flown in after waiting without water for days on rooftops. They came in dehydrated and severely sunburned.

As the sweltering days wore on, West Jeff’s staff fought to stay calm despite the 100-degree temperatures and the bad news they were getting from the outside world. Doctors were serving meals and young family members of patients ran messages around the building to compensate for disabled beepers. Elderly volunteers spent days in the kitchen keeping the food service going.

Jennifer Steel, who has only slept an hour or so in the last 24, can barely keep from crying as she describes how the staff began sharing shoes because some had come to work without even an overnight bag. “No one here has been unscathed by this storm,” she says. “They’ve lost their homes but they’re here taking care of others,” she says. Steel pauses to look at a TV screen showing a fire in downtown New Orleans, blocks away from where her husband is a physician at the flooded and chaotic Charity Hospital. He is helping evacuate patients from rooftops. “I told him not to call me because he should keep his cell power in case he needs to call a helicopter,” she says. “But I’m worried. This has all been a dream. A horrible dream.”

On Thursday night, there was enough power restored to give the hospital air conditioning and running water. To the relief of the staff, toilets and showers also began working again. But outside, the security situation was getting worse. West Jeff’s ambulances were attacked by gun-wielding looters and mobs of people. Muller stopped running them and now insists on an armed escort from the local sheriff or a National Guard M.P. The hospital has set up triage tents on the front lawn guarded by military police or local sheriff’s officers, and Muller warns their suppliers to send guards with their trucks. “The military police have been great, but they need help,” says Steel.

Now, garbage is becoming a problem. “You cannot leave hospital garbage out on the street,” says Muller. And since it’s likely that city services won’t be back for a while, Muller has organized private help to truck the garbage away. “We called our partner Sodexho for help. They run our housekeeping and food. Sodexho has arranged to deal with our garbage dumps as a donation,” he explains.

So far the nonprofit hospital has not seen a huge influx of evacuees, but Muller expects to be inundated on Monday when the city plans to allow tens of thousands of people back to see their homes or what’s left of them. “We’re staying open,” he says. “We’ll be here.” In the meantime, Steel and Muller continue to make calls to Washington for help. “We’ve called the surgeon general’s office,” says Steel. ‘’We’ve called anyone we know. We’re saying we need MASH units, we need military doctors and nurses, we need it all. We’re one of only two or three hospitals in business. And just think of what’s to come.”

To help the staff at West Jefferson Medical Center rebuild their homes contact:
Jennifer Steel
The West Jefferson Medical Center Staff Housing Fund
1101 Medical Center Boulevard
Marrero, LA 70072-3191
(504) 347-5511

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Incredible.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Locutus
Dutch PM Balkenende decided to not to await a formal request for help from the US government and sent in the Dutch navy to assist in the relief efforts. Of course, it'll take them several days to get to the scene, but this is the first good thing he did in his entire time as prime-minister

Originally posted by Gangerolf
Cuba offers to send 1100 doctors and 26 tonnes of medicines

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2....6190&PageNum=0

Cuba, Netherlands.