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News, Editorials, and Documentations
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Disabled People 'Left Behind' in Emergency Planning by Megan Tady 8/15 +New Orleans Hospital Staff Discussed Mercy Killings 2/16+
2005
Harkin Presses for Stronger Emergency Preparedness & Response for People with Disabilities 12/16+Most of Louisiana's Identified Storm Victims Over 60 11/5 +Family demands answer in 2 deaths Pair died despite evacuation promises 10/26+Hurricane Victims With Disabilities Receive Assistance Through Department Of Education 10/3/2005+The GAO (Government Accountability Office) 9/28/05 released the following reports, testimonies, and correspondences 9/28+Pasadena Star News, Texas 9/27+Mother, Disabled Son Safe After Storm Saga - NPR: Weekend Edition 9/25+Being Disabled and Poor in New Orleans 9/25/05+
I doubt you will read anything more powerful than this. Marta Russell is one of our best! SusanHurricanes Katrina and Rita Were Like Night and Day 9/25+FEMA head directs addition to their staff an individual who is a specialist in issues affecting people with disabilities 9/23 MEMO +Hospital Struggled to Calm Clouded Minds. Nearly 100 mental patients were stranded after officials decided that it was better to keep them in a medical environment. 9/21+United Spinal To Donate A Wheelchair Accessible Bus Filled With Adaptive
Gear To Katrina Victims Who Are Disabled Fort Totten, Bayside, NY 9/20+A Weekly Update from BROOKINGS METROPOLITAN POLICY PROGRAM 9/20+Clinton Launches Withering Attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, Budget 9/18+Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims 9/16+More Than 1M Children Ages 8-18 Care for Sick, Disabled Family Member, Study Says 9/14 +Disabled evacuees languish Advocates: Help for special-needs victims lacking 9/14+
A Fatal Incuriosity 9/14+Separate but Equal? Schooling Of Evacuees Provokes Debate 9/14+The Best-Laid Plan: Too Bad It Flopped 09/11+Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated. 9/10+Black-and-blue Brown Disaster point man has been beat up by jobs, friends say 9/10+ICC/ Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness and Individuals with Disabilities 9/10+N.O.D. / EPI's S.N.A.K.E. Team Special Needs Assessment 4 Katrina Evacuation 9/9+Muslim Americans and Disability Groups Partner to Get Medical Equipment to Hurricane Survivors w/ Disabilities 9/9+ Maybe finally Americans will stop seeing all Muslims as potential terrorists? SusanSocial Security Commissioner Barnhart Announces Proposed Regulation to Improve Social Security's Disability Process 9/9+Secretary Leavitt announces steamlines access to benefits for Katrina victims 9/9+Letter to Chief State School Officers regarding Hurricane Katrina and discussing some of the major areas. 9/7+
OTHER ONGOING NEWSWORTHY ITEMS
The September 8th edition of THE LARGEST MINORITY Radio Show is now online at the Disabilities Network website and available for streaming or downloading to your portable audio device as TLM's new PODCAST! Topics include the latest disability news -- featuring an interview with Bob Kafka from American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) on their upcoming week of action in Washington, DC, an update from the Disabilities Network of NYC, and extensive reports on the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the disabled community including interviews with Lex Frieden, Chair of the National Council on Disability, On A Roll radio show host Greg Smith and a roundtable discussion on the rescue and evacuation from a disability rights perspective by TLM's hosts and guests. To listen online or download the September 8th episode of THE LARGEST MINORITY, go to: http://www.dnnyc.net/tlm.htmlDimenet
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.phpNew Mobility
http://www.newmobility.com/
Inclusion Daily Express
http://www.inclusiondaily.com
Sun Herald - Katrina Specific
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/special_packages/hurricane_Katrina/12567602.htmSome links
DRM Webwatcher
http://www.disabilityresources.org/NEWS.html
ILUSA News
http://www.ilusa.com/links/ilcenters.htm
Disability Gravevine
http://www.disabilitygrapevine.com/DisabilityAdvocacy.html
FULL TEXT OF ARTICLES LISTED ABOVEDisabled People 'Left Behind' in Emergency Planning by Megan Tady
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3537 Aug. 15 – During Hurricane Katrina, Benilda Caixeta, a New Orleans resident with quadriplegia, tried for two days to seek refuge at the Superdome. Despite repeated phone calls to authorities, help never arrived for Caixeta. Days later, she was found dead in her apartment, floating next to her wheelchair. "Benilda need not have drowned," testified Marcie Roth before the US House of Representatives Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus in November 2005. Roth, executive director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, had personally placed calls to prompt Caixeta's evacuation. "People with disabilities are not in good hands," Roth said.
While there are no concrete estimates of how many people with disabilities died as a result of Hurricane Katrina, 71 percent of the 1,330 victims were older than 60, according to a 2006 report by the White House, suggesting people with special needs suffered disproportionately.
Disabled-rights activists have been calling for inclusive disaster-preparedness plans for years – from wheelchair-accessible transportation to closed-caption emergency messages on television. But despite some progress on both the federal and state levels, and even a 2004 Executive Order to strengthen preparedness plans to serve people with disabilities, critics say recent disasters illustrate how disabled people are still being left out of evacuation plans.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 requires that emergency preparedness and response programs be accessible to people with disabilities. But critics say there is currently no standardized federal preparedness plan for disabled people, and many state and local emergency management offices do not have appropriate plans in place to account for special needs."There isn't ownership clearly defined by the federal government as to who is responsible for disability planning," Hilary Styron, director of the Emergency Preparedness Initiative for the National Organization on Disability, told The NewStandard.
While President Bush's executive order created the Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness and Individuals with Disabilities, the council is only instructed to "encourage" state and local jurisdictions to consider special needs in its planning. The ADA defines a disability as a "physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual." There are an estimated 50 million people living with disabilities in the United States.
Disabled-rights advocates say traditional evacuation plans, which often rely on at least some walking, driving, seeing and hearing, are not appropriate for many people with disabilities. Activists have been pushing for more responsive plans, and for governments to include people with disabilities and their advocates in the planning process. Although some states have adopted measures that have begun to account for the needs of people with disabilities, such as a reverse 9-1-1 system and more accurate records on the locations of people with disabilities, gaps still exist.
Styron said emergency managers have difficulty planning for people with disabilities because there is no "one-size-fits-all approach."
She also said many states have seen emergency management funding cut in recent years. According to the National Emergency Management Association, a national nonprofit that produces the only report to examine state-level emergency management funding, there is currently a $246 million shortfall in the government's Emergency Management Performance Grant Program. The program is the primary federal funding source for states and local jurisdictions' emergency management programs.
A three-year study completed in 2006 by the Research and Training Center on Independent Living at the University of Kansas investigated 30 randomly selected counties, cities or boroughs in the US that had recently experienced a natural or man-made disaster. Researchers found that only 20 percent of the emergency managers had specific guidelines to assist people with mobility impairments during emergencies. Additionally, the study discovered that 57 percent of emergency managers did not know how many people with mobility impairments lived in their jurisdiction, and only 27 percent of managers reported completing a course offered by FEMA to help emergency responders understand the needs of people with disabilities.
"People [with disabilities] are being left behind," said Cat Rooney, project coordinator for the study.
FEMA and emergency management offices in Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, California and Delaware that were part of the University study, did not return TNS interview requests.
Disability un-preparedness
Jeanne Abide, complaints specialist for the Advocacy Center, a disabled-rights organization in New Orleans, said there simply was not appropriate assistance for people with disabilities after the hurricane. According to the National Council on Disability, 155,000 residents living in the three cities hardest hit by Katrina – Biloxi, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; and New Orleans – were disabled and over the age of five.
Abide told TNS that the preparedness problems specific to people with disabilities in New Orleans included a lack of appropriate transportation and emergency housing. In February, the Center filed a lawsuit against FEMA, alleging that five months after the hurricane, the agency was still not supplying accessible trailers to people with disabilities.
Disabled-rights advocates say that people with disabilities have a host of concerns that non-disabled people may not consider during emergencies. Groups say many people with disabilities in New Orleans were evacuated without their medicine, medical equipment, wheelchairs and even guide animals.
"What happens if you lose your wheelchair and then you're placed in a shelter?" said Rooney. "You can no longer get up to go to the bathroom by yourself. People lose their independence." Dr. Glen White, the principal investigator for the University of Kansas study also stressed the needs of people with mental impairments. "If someone has schizophrenia and they're put in a great big shelter with all these other people around them, and they don't have medication, that can cause a lot of problems," White told TNS. Other recent disasters have also put the shortfalls of emergency preparedness and response for those with disabilities in the public eye.
A 2004 report by the California State Independent Living Council (CALSIC) found that the emergency response plan for people with disabilities floundered during the 2003 wildfires, in which 730,000 acres of the state burned. The report said that many people with impairments were unable to see approaching danger, or hear announcements to evacuate, which police sometimes made over loudspeakers. There was a lack of transportation for people who were unable to drive themselves, and power outages meant that emergency responders could not access computerized lists of disabled people. Finally, emergency telephones set up at evacuation sites were not equipped for people who were deaf, and were not within reach of people in wheelchairs. "There's just so many tiny things that people don't think about," White said. "Are these all going to go away? No. But the more planning we can do, the better we can make it for people."
Filling the gaps
As local, state and federal planning fails, people with disabilities and their advocates are doing their best to compensate.
Susan Fitzmaurice, who uses a mobility scooter and has a child who is disabled, was concerned about the temporary housing being offered to Katrina victims, with no mention of the special needs of people with disabilities. Although she lives in Michigan, Fitzmaurice was determined to help. Within days of the hurricane, she set up a website, KatrinaDisability.info, to provide much-needed resources. "With a typical able-bodied person, you could snatch them up out of their house, take them to a motel room and say, 'Here's $50 to get you through the next couple of days,'" Fitzmaurice told TNS. "But if you have a disability, you could be dependent on medical equipment. You could have a special diet. You could have medication that you have to take. You don't just need a house; you need an accessible house." Fitzmaurice's site has now become a clearinghouse for disability-preparedness information, and includes links to local and national emergency response information for Louisiana. She has made similar sites for 30 other states.
"It's wonderful, but then on the other hand," she said, "I'm like: 'I shouldn't be doing this. The federal government should be doing this.'".
Members of the Central Virginia Post-Polio support group are also taking matters into their own hands by inviting speakers to discuss disaster planning at their meetings. Dr. Henry Holland, a polio survivor who uses a wheelchair, and a member of the support group, told TNS that people with disabilities have to become self-reliant. Holland said the threat of a disaster for someone with a disability is "scary." He said a good support network and generator at his home made him well-equipped if a disaster hit. "But what about people who can't afford that or don't have access to help?" he said.
Addressing the needs
As some people with disabilities and their advocates take matters into their own hands, Styron and others are still pushing federal and local governments to adopt adequate emergency preparedness measures. Styron said she would like to see a disability coordinator at the federal level, a coordinator assigned to every FEMA region in the country, and a designated official within each state responsible for disability planning. She is also advocating for state and local jurisdictions to integrate people with disabilities and their advocates into the emergency planning process."If you don't even know the population that you're dealing with, you're never going to get there," she said.
© 2006 The NewStandard. All rights reserved. The NewStandard is a non-profit publisher that encourages noncommercial reproduction of its content. Reprints must prominently attribute the author and The NewStandard, hyperlink to http://newstandardnews.net (online) or display newstandardnews.net (print), and carry this notice. For more information or commercial reprint rights, please see the TNS reprint policy.New Orleans Hospital Staff Discussed Mercy Killings
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5219917"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5219917All Things Considered, February 16, 2006 · Soon after Hurricane Katrina struck, the first unconfirmed reports surfaced of "mercy killings" -- euthanasia of patients -- at New Orleans hospitals. For months, the Louisiana attorney general has been investigating these charges. That investigation has centered on the actions of doctors and nurses at the city's Memorial Medical Center.
NPR has reviewed secret court documents related to the investigation and not yet released to the public. The documents reveal chilling details about events at Memorial hospital in the chaotic days following the storm, including hospital administrators who saw a doctor filling syringes with painkillers and heard plans to give patients lethal doses. The witnesses also heard staff discussing the agonizing decision to end patients' lives.
After Katrina struck the city, conditions at New Orleans' Memorial hospital were horrendous. The hospital was surrounded by water, power was out and back-up generators failed. Temperatures inside the hospital quickly soared past 100 degrees and patients were in distress.
But it was on the seventh floor of the hospital were the situation was most dire. Memorial Medical Center leased the floor to LifeCare Hospitals, a separate long-term patient care facility.
There, doctors and nurses were faced with few options. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly, evacuations were sporadic and security was compromised. Staff agonized whether to attempt to transport critically ill patients who might not survive the arduous evacuation. It appears another choice was considered: whether to end the lives of those who could not be moved. In the court documents reviewed by NPR, none of four key witnesses say they knew who made the decision to administer lethal doses of painkillers to the patients. But all four heard discussions that a decision had been made to end patients' lives. According to the documents, attorneys for LifeCare self-reported all of this to the Louisiana attorney general's office on Sept. 14, 2005.
Angela McManus' mother had been on the LifeCare floor for two weeks before Katrina hit. Wilda Faye McManus, 78, was battling a persistent infection due to complications from rectal cancer. Angela McManus says she was given a bed next to her mother and never left her side until Tuesday, the day after the hurricane. She says nurses told her that helicopters were coming for the seventh-floor patients and that McManus needed to get to the first floor and wait for evacuation boats.
Once on the first floor, McManus said, she could hear gunshots outside the hospital. She saw looters sacking a corner drug store. Many sources confirm that at this point, there were 2,000 people -- employees, patients and relatives -- trapped in the hospital. According to McManus, "The sewer lines had all backed up, and we were down there in all that stifling heat and this odor was horrendous. People were trying to get into the hospital just to get to higher ground, and they weren't allowing that... so they boarded the doors up, and we were just in there smothering all night long."
By Wednesday morning, Angela McManus learned her mother had not been evacuated as promised. She rushed back to the seventh floor and said her mother's condition had changed. "She was real lethargic," said McManus. "She would talk to me, then just doze back off. I was like, 'What's going on with her?' I was just sitting there talking to her and stroking her, and she was just sleeping and I'm like, 'Something is wrong'."
McManus says nurses told her that her mother had been sedated. She grew concerned because she says her mother's pain had been manageable with Tylenol and an occasional painkiller. She stayed with her mom for hours and sang gospel hymns to comfort her. According to McManus, attempts were made to evacuate other patients from the seventh floor. She recalls seeing workers desperately trying to get one woman out of the hospital, only to see that the woman died in the process.
Angela McManus became seriously frightened for her mother when she overheard nurses saying a decision was made not to evacuate LifeCare's DNR patients. "DNR means "do not resuscitate." It does not mean do not rescue, do not take care of," McManus said. She tried to rescind her mother's DNR order to no avail. On Wednesday evening, two full days after Katrina hit, Angela McManus says three New Orleans police officers approached her with guns drawn and told her she would have to leave. New Orleans police confirm that armed officers did evacuate non-essential staff from the hospital.
Confronted by police, McManus raced to her mother's bed. "I woke her up and I told her that I had to leave, and I told her that it was OK, to go on and be with Jesus, and she understood me because she cried," McManus recalled. "First she screamed, then she cried. And I said, 'Momma, do you understand?' And she said, 'Yes.' And she asked me, she asked me to sing to her one more time. And I did it, and everyone was crying, and then I left. I had to leave her there. The police escorted me seven floors down."
McManus says that when she left, only eight patients, including her mother, remained alive in LifeCare.
According to court documents reviewed by NPR, a key discussion took place on Thursday, Sept. 1, during an incident-command meeting held on the hospital's emergency ramp. A nurse told LifeCare's pharmacy director that the hospital's seventh-floor LifeCare patients were critical and not expected to be evacuated with the rest of the hospital. According to statements given to an investigator in the attorney general's office, LifeCare's pharmacy director, the director of physical medicine and an assistant administrator say they were told that the evacuation plan for the seventh floor was to "not leave any living patients behind," and that "a lethal dose would be administered," according to their statements in court documents.
According to eye-witness accounts, LifeCare's pharmacy director said that later that Thursday morning, he found Dr. Anna Pou in the seventh-floor medical-charting room. According to his statement, Pou and two unnamed nurses informed him that it had been decided to administer lethal doses to LifeCare patients. From the court documents, it is not clear where the instruction came from. When asked what medication was to be given, the pharmacy director told the investigator from the AG's office that Pou showed him a big pack of morphine vials. The LifeCare pharmacy director stated that, before evacuating, he saw Pou and the two nurses enter the rooms of remaining LifeCare patients.
No one has been charged in the investigation. And nowhere in the documents or in independent interviews conducted by NPR does anyone confirm seeing doctors or nurses administering lethal drugs.
That's just one of the challenges facing Louisiana State Attorney General Charles Foti as he tries to piece together exactly what happened at Memorial Medical Center. For weeks, Foti has said he cannot comment on the ongoing investigation. The attorney general's spokeswoman, Kris Wartelle, says investigators have subpoenaed more than 70 witnesses and are examining volumes of evidence.
Despite repeated phone calls and letters, Dr. Pou could not be reached for comment. In a written statement, Pou's lawyer, Rick Simmons, said: "Dr. Pou and other medical personnel at Memorial hospital worked tirelessly for five days to save and evacuate patients, none of whom were abandoned." In a telephone interview, Simmons said, "Dr. Pou did not engage in any criminal actions." He said he is confident that the facts will reveal heroic efforts by the physicians and the staff in a desperate situation.
Tenet Healthcare Corporation, which owns Memorial Medical Center, declined to comment on tape for this report. On its Web site, Tenet expresses regret for the loss of life at Memorial and praises the work of its doctors and staff. Tenet acknowledges that investigators from the attorney general's office searched Memorial Hospital on Oct. 1, 2005, and removed records and other materials, particularly from the LifeCare facility. Tenet spokesman Harry Anderson said that evacuation plans for the seventh floor of Memorial were the sole responsibility of LifeCare Hospital.
LifeCare spokeswoman Paula Lovell would not comment on the investigation but stressed that the company is cooperating fully with the attorney general. "In deference to the ongoing effort of the AG's office, and out of respect to the families of patients, we are unable to make any comments on matters related to the investigation," Lovell said.
New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard says it will be difficult to prove if lethal doses of morphine were given. As part of the investigation, he removed tissue samples for toxicology tests from all bodies found at Memorial. He would not say if he found traces of morphine in the samples.
Minyard says the bodies were not retrieved from the hospital until two weeks after the storm and were in advanced stages of decomposition. He says that undermines the accuracy of toxicology tests. "If these people had been treated for their pain prior to the storm, they are going to have it in their system. And they are sick people, and their system is not working like it should work," Minyard said.
In the absence of reliable forensic evidence, all parties say the patient charts containing morphine-dosage levels will be crucial to the case. The attorney general's office will not confirm whether he has seen them.
Meanwhile, investigators are relying on accounts by witnesses like Angela McManus, who is still waiting for answers about how her mother died. "You know, of course I don't know what God's will is," McManus said. "I don't know when he was calling her home. If he did in fact do it, OK. But if man decided that, I want to know that. My family needs peace of mind about that." Angela McManus has retained a lawyer to investigate the circumstances of her mother's death. She wants answers.--------------------Harkin Presses for Stronger Emergency Preparedness and Response for People with Disabilities
Washington, D.C. On Friday, December 16th, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Emergency Preparedness and Response for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2005. (See http://www.aapd.com/News/legislature/S2124.htm for Bill details.) The legislation will address the needs of individuals with disabilities in emergency planning and relief efforts.
"Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has shown us that we need to have a better emergency response plan, especially one that includes preparations for assisting people with disabilities," said Harkin. "This bill is an important step to ensure that the needs of disabled Americans will be addressed in case of an emergency."
Under this legislation, a Disability Coordinator would be created in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who will report directly to the Secretary. The Coordinator would be responsible for:
* Working with local, state and federal authorities about the needs of individuals with disabilities in emergency planning and relief, * Developing a curriculum for first responder training on the needs of individuals with disabilities,
* Ensure telephone hotlines and websites containing information about evacuations are accessible, and
* Provide guidance about the rights of individuals with disabilities regarding post evacuation residence and relocation, among other things.
The Emergency Preparedness and Response for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2005 will also require that 30 percent of temporary housing for disaster victims be accessible, and usable by individuals with disabilities, and would provide incentives to create more accessible housing during reconstruction efforts.
Harkin is a longstanding advocate for individuals with disabilities in the U.S. and has worked tirelessly to call attention to disability rights. He was the chief sponsor of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), landmark legislation which seeks equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for millions of Americans with physical and mental disabilities.
------------------Most of Louisiana's Identified Storm Victims Over 60
State officials raise the death toll to 1,070, with 539 named. - Residents continue to find bodies.
By Nicholas Riccardi Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2005
Among Louisiana victims of Hurricane Katrina whose bodies have been identified so far by the state, nearly two-thirds were older than 60, officials said Friday as they released the latest accounting of the storm's toll. As Louisiana updated its death toll to 1,070, officials also provided more details on the 539 corpses, mostly those of residents of New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard Parish, that it had slowly processed through its morgue and identified.
Twenty-five percent of the identified dead were 61 to 75 years old.
And 39% were older than 75.
The data confirmed what many believe: that Katrina killed the weakest residents of the Crescent City. "They were the poorer and older people who could not get out from the storm," New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard said. "A large percentage will be poorer black people." Seventy-five bodies were recovered from nursing homes, and a yet undisclosed number from hospitals.
The state attorney general is investigating whether medical facilities were criminally negligent in their care of the sick during the hurricane. Much is still unknown about the storm's toll. The state is continuing to add to its death toll as people returning to their homes find corpses that were buried under muck and debris and missed in the first round of searches. And 338 of the bodies at the main morgue in the town of St. Gabriel have not been identified — more than one-third of the dead housed there. The remaining number of Louisiana's storm dead were processed by
coroners in other parishes, and the state lacks data on those
corpses.
The continuing trickle of new deaths and the number of unidentified bodies leave an incomplete portrait of the storm's dead. Of those bodies identified, 40% are black and 34% white; 25% are listed as "unknown."
Families have complained about the slow process of identifying and releasing bodies at the main morgue. The state said that as of Friday, 238 had been released to their families. Officials said that 243 more were ready for release, but that officials had not found next of kin.
Earlier this week, officials sent out a plea for people whose relatives were missing to bring dental records or photographs that might show their loved ones' teeth. The damage to bodies from the storm has deprived medical examiners of many traditional ways of identifying corpses, such as taking fingerprints.
Family demands answer in 2 deaths Pair died despite evacuation promises
http://2theadvocate.com/stories/102605/new_promises001.shtmlBy SANDY DAVISAdvocate staff writer
CHALMETTE -- Dorothy Hingle lit a candle sometime after 9 a.m. Monday, Aug. 29, in her small brick home on Rosetta Street. She crawled into bed with her quadriplegic son, Russell Embry, put her arms around him and prayed. Then she waited.
That's what her daughters have pieced together as her final actions while Hurricane Katrina cut its deadly path through St. Bernard Parish.
A wall of water came crashing over Chalmette within an hour, swallowing mother and son in a small bed in the rear bedroom of the home.
Hingle and Embry died.
Their relatives say the two had waited since Saturday for Acadian Ambulance and Med Air to come and pick them up.
But Acadian never showed up.
Embry, 54, a quadriplegic since 1974, was on a special-needs list compiled by the parish's Department of Human Resources. The list was for those who needed to be evacuated by ambulance in the event of a hurricane.
Hingle was listed as Embry's caretaker and, over the years, was always evacuated with her son.
"It was like clockwork," said Sally Viada, one of Hingle's three daughters. "My mother and brother had been picked up and evacuated by ambulance before every hurricane for at least the last 10 years."
During Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Acadian picked up Hingle and Embry, who was 6 feet, 4 inches tall and weighed about 250 pounds, and evacuated them to Barksdale Air Force Base.
"It never occurred to me that anything could go wrong," Viada said, crying quietly during a recent interview.
And it is Acadian that holds the exclusive rights to provide the wide array of ambulance services needed by residents in St. Bernard Parish. Parish officials signed a contract with the company in February 2004, said Larry Ingargiola, director of the parish's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
"Acadian has had exclusive rights to operate in St. Bernard Parish for more than a year," Ingargiola said. "It's the only ambulance service operating in the parish. It's the only one the contract allows."
When meteorologists determined on Saturday, Aug. 27, that Hurricane Katrina would likely make landfall somewhere in southeast Louisiana or Mississippi, parish officials ordered a mandatory evacuation and the special-needs list was given to Acadian.
"Acadian assured us they were picking everyone up on the list," Ingargiola said.
But somehow Hingle and Embry were not picked up.
And since the storm, Ingargiola has discovered that others on the list were left behind. "We're doing an investigation," he said. "We're going to find out what happened."
Acadian officials refused to comment on the allegations surrounding Hingle's and Embry's deaths.
Steven Kuiper, Acadian's vice president of operations, said Monday the company was not conducting a special investigation into the deaths. Instead, he said, the company was conducting a post-storm "status review," which is "standard operating procedure."
"We're evaluating the disposition status of all the transports in the tri-parish area in the days before the storm," Kuiper said, adding that the tri-parish area included St. Bernard Parish. "That's part of our normal self-critiquing after a major storm."
Kuiper also refused to provide records that would show how many times Hingle called Acadian between Saturday and Monday before the storm. "That's part of our investigation," he said. "I don't have all of those facts. It's part of our total evaluation."
He also said that evacuating residents on the special-needs list is not "specific to the contract" his company has with St. Bernard Parish.
But parish officials disagree, though they note that the contract was lost in the storm along with much of the parish's paperwork."If they agreed to the exclusive contract and they're the only service allowed in the parish, who else would be responsible for moving people on the special-needs list?" asked Lynn Dean, a parish councilman. "That doesn't make any sense."
To the family, there is only one question."Acadian talked to my mother several times over that weekend, and each time they told her they were coming to pick her up," said Betty LeBlanc, one of Hingle's daughters. "What I can't understand is when they knew they weren't going to come, why didn't they just call and tell her that? Instead, Acadian played God, and that's unforgivable."
Left behind
Dorothy Hingle was at the center of her family. She was the person her daughters went to for advice or to be picked up when life dealt them a blow. Despite her 83 years, Hingle was known for her strength and faith and dispensed wisdom to her girls on a regular basis, they said.
As the storm approached on Saturday, each of the three daughters -- LeBlanc, Viada and Hazel Cooley -- talked to Hingle to make sure Acadian was on its way. Viada worked at Sears in the parish's small town of Violet.
"I worked late Friday night and early Saturday," Viada said. "So it wasn't until Saturday afternoon that I found out about Katrina." Viada called her mother immediately."My mother told me to go on and leave," Viada said. "She told me that she had just spoken to Acadian and they were coming to get her within the hour. That was the last time I ever spoke to her."
And Viada left. "The ambulance could only take my brother and a caretaker," she said. "I learned that a long time ago. They had always come before, so there was no reason for me to question it this time."
LeBlanc also spoke to her mother on Saturday. LeBlanc planned to evacuate in her new car, following her son out of the parish. But her mother told her not to go in two cars. "I'm 61 years old, but when I told my mother I was going to follow my son's family out of Chalmette, she said, 'Oh no, you can't do that. What if you get separated from him? It will be a nightmare. You have to ride with him,' " LeBlanc said. LeBlanc left her 3-week-old car behind and did as her mother told her to do. That was the last time LeBlanc talked to her mother.
Herb Stansbury, who has lived next door to Hingle for about 30 years on Rosetta Street, was surprised when he saw her at his door Sunday afternoon with a cake. "I couldn't believe she was standing with some cake," Stansbury said. "I was surprised she was still there. She and her son had always been picked up by ambulance this close to the storm's arrival. I said, 'What are you doing here?' She said, 'The ambulance is coming soon. Don't worry.' " When Stansbury's wife, a nurse, finally got home just before 3, they evacuated.
"We saw Ms. Hingle standing outside. I had a bad feeling, but she said the same thing, 'I just talked to Acadian and they're on their way. Don't worry about us. We'll be fine.' " As he pulled down the road and headed out of Chalmette, Stansbury couldn't shake his concern. "I worried about it for a month," he said.
Hazel Cooley, who lives in Mississippi and is the only one of Hingle's daughters who lives outside St. Bernard, called her mother several times over the weekend. "I talked to her two times on Sunday, and each time she told me that she had just talked to Acadian and they would be there in an hour," Cooley said. "She was always in a hurry to get off of the phone because she was afraid that Acadian was calling her to let her know they were nearby." But by that time, Hingle admitted she was concerned and had called a parish councilman and 911 to see if she could find out what was taking Acadian so long, Cooley said. "After she called 911, a deputy came out to see her and reassured her that the ambulance would come soon," Cooley said.
Councilman Dean remembers getting a call from Hingle. "I told her to call the director of human resources," Dean said. "I gave her the phone number and told her that she should have the director call Acadian. They always responded when the director called them."
Mitch McDaniel, who works in the parish's Department of Human Resources, remembers getting calls Saturday from residents complaining that Acadian hadn't picked them up.
"I called Acadian, and they assured me they were going to pick everyone up," McDaniel said. "They just couldn't give us a time frame." McDaniel said he was concerned, but did believe that everyone would be picked up. "As the hours were passing, their answer was the same," he said.
When Cooley, who was at her Mississippi home hundreds of miles away, hadn't heard from her mother by Monday morning, she called her. "It was a little after 9 a.m.," Cooley said. "I was surprised when she answered the phone. She said, 'If they're coming to get us, they're coming now.' And then, in a different voice, she said, 'Honey, don't worry about us. God is with us.' I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me, and we hung up." That was the last time Cooley talked to her mother.
The list
Parish officials began holding meetings on Friday, Aug 26, in preparation for the storm. By Saturday, they called for a mandatory evacuation. "That's when we started calling everyone on the special-needs master list," McDaniel said. "There were five or six of us making the calls, including an employee of Acadian."
People on the list were asked if they wanted to be picked up or had made other arrangements, McDaniel said. Once the calls were completed, he said, the revised list was handed over to Acadian. "We were prepared," McDaniel said. "Acadian had plenty of time to pick everyone up." McDaniel said he can't find a copy of the list. "Our computers were commandeered after the storm by parish employees," he said. "I haven't found mine yet, and I don't have a copy of the list." He doesn't remember whether Hingle's name was on the list, but he did say there were about 30 people who needed to be evacuated. McDaniel said that some years earlier, the parish advertised for people who needed assistance in an evacuation to sign up at his office.
LeBlanc provided a copy of a parish application for "Evacuation Transportation for Disabled or Homebound People due to Hurricanes or other Catastrophic Events in St. Bernard Parish." The application, accompanied by a letter from a doctor, says Embry was bedridden, couldn't sit up and had to be evacuated by ambulance. It lists Hingle as his "caretaker." The application has a letter from a doctor attached that states Embry is an "invalid" and, in the event of a disaster or hurricane, "will need to be evacuated by ambulance to the nearest medical facility." "I filed that application myself with the parish," LeBlanc said. "I filed one every year, and each time there was a hurricane, mother and Russell had been evacuated by ambulance."
The parish held emergency preparedness meetings as officials tried to get ready for Katrina's arrival, Ingargiola said.
"There was a representative from Acadian at each meeting who reassured us that everyone on the special-needs list would be picked up," he said. Ingargiola said he now knows that didn't happen. "Now I know they didn't pick everyone up," he said.
A futile search
After Cooley called her mother Monday morning, she called her sister, LeBlanc, to let her know their mother was still in Chalmette. "I was shocked," LeBlanc said. "By that time, communications were going down all over from the storm. I tried to call the parish and I couldn't get through. I called a sheriff's office in Mississippi, and they couldn't get through." For hours, LeBlanc tried to find a way to help her mother. "I couldn't get in touch with anybody," she added.
LeBlanc said she didn't know about the storm surge.
Residents and parish officials who stayed during the storm said the surge struck about 10 a.m. They estimate it took about 15 to 30 minutes for it to cover the parish with about 10 feet of water.
Still, Hingle's daughters refused to believe she was dead. For the next 24 days, they frantically searched hospitals, nursing homes and the Internet to find their mother. Cooley said Hingle's and Embry's description was on 40 Web sites. "It was a full-time job," she said. "I got up every morning, and that's what we all did all day and into the night. We looked for them." LeBlanc, who lost her home and car in the storm, made phone calls. "I even walked through a nursing home and hospital looking for them," LeBlanc said. "I kept thinking that maybe something happened and mother couldn't talk." Cooley and LeBlanc even provided DNA samples, hoping that in the event their mother couldn't talk, someone would match their DNA to hers. "When we could finally get through to the parish, we asked that someone go look in the house to see if they were there," Cooley said.
Each time, the daughters were told no one was at the Rosetta Street house. But on Sept. 23, LeBlanc talked to a woman in the parish and explained the situation to her. The woman sent her husband to the house, and he found the bodies of Hingle and Embry. He told the family that Hingle was lying next to her son with her arm around him.
"I am so hurt, so angry that they laid there for that long in that contaminated water," LeBlanc said. "It's cruel. It's heartbreaking. It's wrong."
Because of Hurricane Rita, the bodies were not removed from the house until Sept. 26. The bodies were sent to St. Gabriel, where all those who died in the storm are taken to a special morgue for autopsies and identification.
"This is insult to injury, having to wait for them to release the bodies," LeBlanc said. "After everything that happened, we have no closure to this."
A few weeks ago, the sisters went to their mother's house. "We found her purse by the door because she was ready to leave," Cooley said. "We also found a candle tipped over with wax that flowed out when the flood water washed over it. That's how come we know she was praying. She always lit a candle." A neighbor found a plastic bag containing phone numbers, a three-days' supply of Hingle's and Embry's medicines, and $40.
Now marked on the side of the house on Rosetta Street is a large orange "X" put there by the St. Bernard Parish Fire Department. On the bottom of the "X" is the number "2," denoting two bodies found in the house. "The only thing that I keep thinking about is what my mother always told us," LeBlanc said. "She always said, 'Betty, the Lord won't take anyone one second too early or one second too late.' "
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) 9/28/05 released the following reports, testimonies, and correspondences:
1. Army Corps of Engineers: Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project. GAO-05-1050T, September 28.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-1050T
3. Hurricane Katrina: Providing Oversight of the Nation's Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Activities. GAO-05-1053T, September 28.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-1053T
These and other GAO products are available from the "Reports and Testimony" section of GAO's Internet site, http://www.gao.gov.Hurricane Victims With Disabilities Receive Assistance Through Department Of Education 10/3/2005
Gulf States to Get $25.9 Million in Vocational Rehabilitation Services President Bush signed into law on Sept. 30 the Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Act of 2005, granting the U.S. Education Department authority to permit hurricane-affected Gulf Coast states access to $25.9 million in federal funds for vocational rehabilitation (VR) services without the states having to provide matching funds.
These VR services may include education, training, assistive technology or various supports necessary for employment of individuals with disabilities affected by Hurricanes Katrina or Rita that contribute to the economic growth and development of communities. "Children and adults with disabilities face challenges with the loss of their homes and supports for daily living," Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said. "Through the department's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, this funding will provide additional assistance to those with disabilities affected by the hurricanes."
Federal funds for VR services will be made available to affected states in the following amounts:
Louisiana, $16.4 million;
Mississippi, $6.1 million;
Alabama, $1.7 million; and
Texas, $1.7 million.
Beyond the support to people with disabilities provided by this new law, the attached fact sheet lists additional efforts by the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to help hurricane victims.
Pasadena Star News, Texas
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
While we're rebuilding, let's do something about health care By Nicholas D. Kristof IN the richest country in the world, a man named Eugene Johnson is going blind in a homeless shelter, because his eye medicine washed away in Hurricane Katrina and he can't afford to buy more.
At one level, that's an indictment of the official rescue effort: The authorities were sufficiently concerned about hurricanes that last year they pre-positioned 10,000 body bags in New Orleans, but they dozed as Katrina approached.
Yet at a deeper level, Johnson's plight is a window into our broken health-care system. Sure, we need to think about how to rebuild New Orleans, but we also need to reconstruct a sensible health-care system. And that task is urgent, for one study suggests that more than 18,000 Americans will die this year as a consequence of not having health insurance.
Barbara Bush thought that Hurricane Katrina worked out pretty well for the poor. ("Many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said after touring the Astrodome, "so this is working very well for them.")
I'd like her to come here to the rural Mississippi town of Kiln, near the Louisiana line, and meet Johnson. A barrel-chested retired plumber, a white man of 57, Johnson suffers from diabetes that has already cost him two toes. Complications also threaten his eyesight, and so he must take nine prescription medicines, including two to preserve his vision.
But the hurricane destroyed Johnson's house. Since then, he has been bouncing from one shelter to the next and is now sleeping on a cot in a school gymnasium, along with his wife and four of his five children (one is grown and has left home).
Once Johnson found a pharmacy that was open and had one of the medicines he needs. But it charged $119 for it, and he couldn't afford that. So Johnson is slowly going blind.
"My eyes are starting to mess up," Johnson explained. "I see little spots. And then sometimes they all move around, like a TV picture that's gone bad."
Finally, a first-rate aid group, Children's Health Fund, brought doctors and a mobile clinic to Johnson's shelter. One of the doctors, David Krol, examined Johnson, was horrified, and is working on obtaining the medications he needs. But as Krol described the mobile clinic: "We're a stopgap. Nothing more."
If Johnson were more mobile, more adept at working the system, and more of a complainer, he might have gotten help earlier. But the poor tend to be stuck in shelters, without vehicles, and many are busy looking after small children. And many, like Johnson, are disastrously polite, patient, deferential and even cheerful. Around here, if you have the patience of Job, you suffer like Job.
Nearly every medical worker I spoke to warned that there would be a surge in deaths from heart disease, strokes and other ailments, concentrated among the poor, because of the interruption in medicines. Dr. Jay Lemery told of treating a single mother in a shelter whose three children were bouncing off the walls because they had attention-deficit disorder and hadn't had their medication. The mother herself was prone to depression and had run out of her own medicine as well -- in an environment that would make Pangloss suicidal.
The shelter was hot and tempers were so frayed that two women were having a fistfight. Lemery added: "Even the Red Cross people, who have the patience of Mother Teresa, were in tears."
Yet the reality is that our medical system failed this region long before Katrina arrived. One of the Children's Health Fund doctors discovered a previously undetected hole in a 4-year-old boy's heart. The mother said nobody had ever listened to the boy's chest before. In both Mississippi and Louisiana, infant mortality is worse (for every 1,000 babies born, 10 die in their first year of life) than in Costa Rica (8 die per 1,000). For black babies in either state, the picture is still more horrifying: 15 die per 1,000. In poor, war-torn Sri Lanka, where per capita medical spending is only $131, babies have better odds, with 13 dying per 1,000.
So let's rebuild the levees, but let's also construct a health care-system that works. A dozen years after the last, failed attempt to reform health care, the system is more broken than ever. For the sake of Johnson, and for our children, it's time to try again.
Nicholas D. Kristof is columnist for the New York Times.
Mother, Disabled Son Safe After Storm Saga
NPR: Weekend Edition - Sunday, September 25, 2005http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2101159
Three weeks ago in the first days following Hurricane Katrina, we introduced you to a woman - Carmen Vidaurre. She and her son were stranded at a triage center set up at the New Orleans airport. The son has muscular dystrophy. They had been waiting for days to be evacuated after Hurricane Katrina.
"The people that are, you know, incapable of doing for themselves, you know, they should be treated better."
As she spoke, Vidaurre stood next to her son, Joseph, who was elevated in his wheelchair. She could see he was getting sicker and sicker. He needed to be evacuated to a hospital, but private and military airplanes kept leaving without them.
One doctor came over to her in the airport terminal to say her son1s wheelchair was too heavy: "We're taking 60 people back with us to get treatment, medicines and that kind of thing. Problem is we're on a faster plane and I can't put people that are wheelchair-bound."
Carmen Vidaurre refused to leave without that wheelchair. Her son needed it to get around - and more, his special cushions protected his delicate body and without it, he was in danger of developing painful bedsore, which are a cause of death for many people with his disability.
NPR's Joseph Shapiro picks up the story:
Carmen Vidaurre remembers the scene of the crowded New Orleans airport. She was getting more and more worried about her son, Joseph.
"He was getting like pale - kind of weak. I noticed something different about him, you know. By his face, you know - I could tell that he was getting sick."
It had been five days since the storm waters came rushing under the door of their first-floor apartment and rose up above the wheels of her son's wheelchair, shutting down the motor on the heavy machine. That wheelchair cost about $20,000 and took three months to get from Louisiana Medicaid.
They wound up at the airport, where elderly and disabled people had to be evacuated from the hospitals and nursing homes. Many were left to lie on the floor in stretchers. Doctors and nurses were overwhelmed.
Joseph had just celebrated his 24th birthday. He's got dark, tousled hair and a black moustache. Muscular dystrophy left his chest flat and narrow, like a piece of plywood. He weighs less than 80 pounds and he's always one health crisis away from facing death.
"That's all I kept thinking is, they're going to drown." Anna Geratana is Carmen Vidaurre's daughter and Joseph's big sister. She had no idea where they were. "They're going to drown because I know my mother and she's not going to leave my brother. I mean she can't physically lift him."
Back home in New Jersey, she'd spent days on internet search sites and on the phone. Then, her mother called from a hospital in Baton Rouge. She and Joseph had been evacuated finally by ambulance. Joseph was sick and dehydrated. He was hooked up to an IV, but too many other people needed his hospital bed, and Joseph and his mother would have to leave again.
Geratana got on the phone: 'I'm fighting with the hospital because they discharged him, so I lost it. By this time I'm yelling at the nurses, the people on the night staff, the doctors. I just I was like, You don't understand; you can't kick her out. I haven't found her for five days. This is the first time I've actually spoken to her to know that she's actually safe and sound and she hasn't been to sleep." I told them if they lost my mother they were going to be fully responsible for both of them.
"I was.I mean at this point, I was like, You do not lose them. If you lose them, I will personally come down there. I will put lawyers on you so quickly. You do not lose them."
Geratana and her husband Tony took the first flight out. When they reached Baton Rouge, they searched the shelters until Geratana found her brother. But she didn1t see her mother, until she looked across the large room and saw her mother with an elderly woman who was confused and alone. She was helping the woman to use a pay phone to call her family.
"That's my mom, she's just amazing. I get there, you know, and I'm thinking she's going to be devastated - "You really have to help other people that really need it, you know."
They tell the story from the kitchen of the daughter's home. It's where Carmen and Joseph are living - at least for now. Ana and her husband drove Joseph and Carmen back from Louisiana - 23 hours to New Jersey. Joseph was sick and exhausted.
"Well, I'm impressed with this story because it talks about how a mother has probably fought all her life for services for her child with a disability." Curt Decker runs the National Disability Rights Network. "So it would not be surprising that in this crisis, she was not going to abandon him and certainly not going to let him go without an essential piece of assistive technology that has been custom-made for him and that really makes his life the best quality it can be based on his disability."
Attorneys with Decker's group have gone into shelters and found evacuees who were forced to give up wheelchairs. Many are now in poor health or stuck on shelter floors.
I think we really found there were three factors involved here: race, poverty, and disability. And often the people that were most vulnerable, least able to leave, and were the last to be rescued turned out to be people who had significant disabilities. The first people to die were people who had medical conditions or disabilities that required some kind of technology or medication that was not available to them.
Back in New Jersey, the family gathers in the kitchen for dinner -" take outš a social worker found a vendor who fixed Joseph's wheelchair for free. New Jersey provided Medicaid services; an aide comes each morning to help lift Joseph out of bed, get him bathed and dressed - two hours, five days a week. In Louisiana, Medicaid paid for aides to come 13 hours, seven days a week. But Carmen Vidaurre is happy with the help she's getting. She and Joseph plan to stay in New Jersey.
ZNet Commentary - Being Disabled and Poor in New Orleans 9/25/05
By Marta Russell
If you are disabled and rich or somewhat well-off and lived in New Orleans you probably got out of the city before the levees broke and flooded some 60% of the parishes.
If you are rich and use a wheelchair you probably had a van with a ramp or car of your own with gas money to get you to safety. If you are blind you likely had a driver with a car to take you to the high lands. If you are deaf, use a cane, walker, crutches, service animal, or have mental health needs and you have money, you also got yourself out perhaps with the help of family.
But if you are disabled and poor in New Orleans you likely had none of these options.
A 911 caller told the operator "I am handicapped and have an 8 month old baby. We are lying on the bed . the water is coming up fast. We need help." But no help came.
No help came because there was no planned evacuation for poor disabled residents.
Being disabled and poor meant one's chances for survival were less than one's nondisabled counterparts. While many of the least fortunate were waiting and hoping for the absent cavalry to arrive on those rooftops at least one quadriplegic could not be pulled up on the roof to semi-safety. He drowned instead. There were others.
We know that in New Orleans 23.2 percent of residents were disabled persons out of a city of about 484,000 people. There were 102,122 disabled people 5 years of age and older who lived in New Orleans at the time of the flood. At least half of the disabled persons in New Orleans who are of working age were not employed.
To be disabled and poor in New Orleans and much of the U.S. meant to rely on a variety of government programs such as Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid to help one meet one's daily service and support needs.
Being disabled and poor in one group home for the blind meant staff abandoned one to sink or swim.
Being disabled and poor meant being separated from any type of accessible public transportation before the flood and there was no accessible transportation afterwards.
Being disabled and poor for blind people meant being unable to even get around in one's own flooded neighborhood because one could no longer navigate the environmental landscape.
Being disabled and poor for people with physical disabilities who are over 65 years of age meant being unable to leave one's home, group home, nursing home, or hospital without significant assistance.
Being disabled and poor meant to have lost or become separated from the drugs one relies on daily for diabetes, high blood pressure, and other chronic conditions and have little means to access pharmacies when it became apparent the calvary was permanently absent.
Being disabled and poor for those driven by flood waters from institutions, group homes, or nursing homes meant being housed in less than satisfactory conditions with considerably less than the necessary range of services and supports needed for an unknown stretch of time.
Being disabled and poor meant that one stood a good chance of dying from the insufferable heat as at least 154 patients died this way suggesting that vulnerable people plummeted to the bottom of priority lists if they were on lists at all.
Being disabled and poor for those who have service animals meant not being able rely on those animals outside of the house or group home because these animals cannot navigate safely in the flooded streets.
Being disabled and poor for deaf persons meant being unable to access emergency information through television, radio, TTY, communications for the deaf because public communications systems were compromised and those available through the federal government were holed up outside the city awaiting orders to move into New Orleans.
Being disabled and poor meant being unable to secure life-saving food and water because many were trapped within the confines of inadequate supplied shelters, the convention center, or Super Bowl with all the other evacuees.
Being disabled and poor meant that when you died sitting in your wheelchair some respectful survivor might cover you with a sheet or some plastic.
Being disabled and poor meant that when the first responders at long, long last got to the Super Bowl, disabled persons were forced to leave their wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, and service animals behind, as these were not allowed on the buses.
Being poor and disabled means that one will have to wait months and months - if not years - to replace the wheelchairs and service animals that were taken from them in New Orleans.
Being poor and disabled often meant being evacuated to some nursing home in a strange town where one will have to fight hard to ever acquire the support services to live in the community again.
Being poor and disabled means needing Medicaid yet being relocated to another state where state governors have cut Medicaid to the extent that it is not serving those already enrolled. It is to find out that people are being dropped off the roles by the thousands - not added - when you desperately need your medications.
Being disabled and poor in need of accessible housing means depending upon HUD which has allowed its funding to be cut so thin by the Bush administration that it is pitting the evacuees against the already poor and homeless in need of low-income housing. The Federal agency HUD at the time of this writing has refused to offer any emergency funding to the nations housing authorities that are providing housing assistance to Katrina's victims.
Being disabled and poor meant that if one managed to get to a Red Cross shelter with their wheelchair that the Red Cross would deny one entrance into their shelters because the shelters are not accessible. When the National Organization of Disability advocates went down there to see what was going on, they too were denied access.
We don't have and may never have the data to tell us how many disabled people lost their lives when the waters rose above their heads. We do know that disabled people were disproportionatelly affected. I'm sure the government does not want the public to know how many disabled persons drowned their bodies bloated floating in the toxic sewer that was once a street or dehydrated, or starved in this preventable catastrophe and its aftermath.
But the tremendous loss of life and ongoing devastation was not at root caused by Hurricane Katrina. It was caused by a corrupt government run by people who saw more profit for themselves and their friends in diverting taxpayer dollars to multi-billion dollar corporate contracts in a senseless and lawless war and doling tax cuts out to the richest people in this nation rather than in buttressing the faulty levee system protecting New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain.
When Bush said, "no one knew the levees would break" he lied. The Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and other scientific experts alerted the nation it needed to devote resources and taxpayer dollars to fix this "accident" waiting to happen. The Times-Picayune, the daily newspaper of New Orleans, published numerous articles during the last two years citing the danger caused by the loss of hurricane protection funds to the war in Iraq.
The Bush administration slashed funds for flood control operations in New Orleans. Bush's war left the Corps of Engineers only 20% of the needed funding to protect New Orleans.
Bush played golf and turned away as hundreds of people - including disabled persons - drowned and starved.
What happened to disabled poor people in New Orleans is nothing less than criminally negligent homicide.
Bush says he is responsible but the question is will the nation hold the man accountable for murder?
Marta Russell is the author of "Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract" (Common Courage Press)
http://www.martarussell.com
Hospital Struggled to Calm Clouded Minds
Nearly 100 mental patients were stranded after officials decided that it was better to keep them in a medical environment.http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-psych21sep21,0,1895152.story?coll=la-home-headlines
By Paul Pringle, Times Staff WriterNEW ORLEANS - The 92 acutely mentally ill patients on Charity Hospital's third
floor normally may not even stand near the double-locked windows without supervision.
But on the second day of flooding in downtown New Orleans, nurses escorted them out onto the fire escape, two at a time.
"Some of them wanted to leave the hospital, and we had to show them the water below the balcony," nurse Yvonne Buggage said. "We had to make them feel they were safe with us."
For five days and nights, Buggage and her colleagues weathered Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath with the schizophrenics, severe depressives and bipolar personalities who were stranded in the third-floor ward.
It wasn't easy, but the Monopoly games and the wallet making helped. So did the hospital's well-stocked supply of mood-leveling drugs. And in the end, nurses and doctors say, patients who first seemed to pose the greatest risk of crumbling from anxieties turned out to be among the steadiest. "As the 'psych' patients were exiting," Dr. Keith Van Meter, head of Charity's emergency services, said of the hospital's evacuation, "they were the most
cooperative and polite, strangely enough."
By then, however, Buggage, 49, had spent the better part of a week comforting, medicating and, in one case, bonding with her patients - in castaway conditions that included smothering heat and unnervingly dark nights.
On most days, she and her colleagues were lucky to steal a few hours' sleep. "We all had one ultimate goal: to get out," said Buggage, who was born at Charity and lost her home to the storm.
Charity Hospital of Louisiana is New Orleans' main hospital for the poor as well as a teaching institution for Louisiana State University's Health Sciences Center. Its dingy white towers dominate a city block near the Superdome. Katrina's floodwaters surrounded Charity and filled its basement but did not inundate the treatment areas. The hospital lost power after its generator malfunctioned. Its staff was left to care for about 250 patients without heart monitors, laboratory tests, X-rays or air conditioning.
The psychiatric patients were not physically infirm, but their doctors thought it best not to evacuate them before Katrina hit. "We felt they should stay in a medical setting," said Cheryll Bowers-Stephens, a psychiatrist who heads mental services for the state Department of Health and Hospitals, which provides physicians to Charity. "They were in that setting for
a reason."
A total of 215 mental health patients were evacuated from state hospitals, Bowers-Stephens said.
Eight non-psychiatric patients died while Charity was isolated by the flooding Van Meter said. He said all had been critically ill before the hurricane. The doctors and nurses practiced "intuitive medicine" while they awaited evacuation, Van Meter added. On the third floor, that meant improvising ways to soothe people who had enough trouble coping with everyday life.
This is Buggage's account: First came basic precautions, such as keeping a sharp eye on them whenever they approached the windows. The patients ranged in age from about 18 to 60. Apart from the poverty that most had in common, they possessed a variety of backgrounds - a maid, a cook and a store clerk - and presented a mix of challenges as the siege wore on.
On the first day, things seemed almost routine because the water hadn't risen yet and there was still electricity. The telephones worked, and there appeared to be plenty of food.
"We had TV and we put movies in," Buggage said. "They watched 'Ray.' We made some popcorn." But an older woman could not stop talking, and she had a persistent demand. Unlike the others, she didn't insist on leaving, but on staying - until the staff relinquished her disability check. She had gotten it into her mind that the check had been mailed to the hospital. "She would talk and talk, saying, 'I'm not going anywhere until you give me my check,' " Buggage said.
Eventually, the nurses gave the woman an antihistamine to relax her. Patients who became more agitated received a cocktail of antipsychotic and anxiety-reducing drugs. "We only gave it when it was needed," Buggage said.
That need became greater on the second day. The power went off for good, and
temperatures in the ward climbed toward 100 degrees. The toilets stopped
working. The nurses filled trash cans with water to dump into the toilets so
that they would flush.
Then a man in his 40s wanted to bolt. "He said he couldn't take it," Buggage
said. "He said he didn't live far, he could make it."
He paced and paced.
Other patients became fidgety. They had questions that nurses couldn't answer: How long would they have to stay? Why weren't they being rescued? A 25-year-old woman who had been scheduled for discharge remonstrated with the nurses. Buggage said she had the woman call her mother, and she settled down. The nightly medication time was moved up an hour to about 7 p.m. in hopes of getting everyone to sleep earlier. The patients also were given showers before dinner, just to cool them off.
The regimen worked. The patients slumbered.
But one man in his late 40s refused to take his pills. As a security measure, the nurses summoned more male staffers to the ward, and the patient was given a shot. "We only had to inject a couple of men" over the five days, Buggage said. On the third day, the nurses walked the patients onto the fire escape to show them why they were cooped up. "They were complaining, and that brought peace," Buggage said.
Nothing, however, seemed to console a 19-year-old woman who sobbed during much of the ordeal.
"We tried to give her things to do," said Buggage, who has an 18-year-old
daughter. "We had her write letters to people."
A day later, she was still crying.
"I would sit with her," Buggage said. "I called her Sweetie."
They formed a bond. The small dreams she harbored had touched Buggage:
"She just wanted to get out and work at Burger King."
Meanwhile, the patients were coaxed into doing arts and crafts. They made
wallets in the staff room.
The Monopoly board also came out, and decks of cards.
In desperation, Buggage called "The Oprah Winfrey Show." "I got the answering
machine," she related. "I said, 'We need help; we need to be rescued.' " She
did not hear back.
By the fifth day, the food had gotten thin. Meal portions had shrunk steadily
and were down to half a cup of corn and half a cup of peaches. But there were
also Ensure and crackers and a little canned juice.
The military transport trucks finally arrived that afternoon. They ferried the
patients and staff to buses a few blocks away.
The patients were taken to Central Louisiana State Hospital in Pineville, where
they remained this week. Bowers-Stephens said some might suffer long-term
effects from their time marooned on the third floor, but it was too soon to tell.
The nurses and doctors also made the trip to Pineville.
"We all made it ashore," Buggage said. "A beautiful ending."
And the 19-year-old had stopped crying.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Were Like Night and Day 9/25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/contentId=AR2005092401758
By Spencer S. Hsu and Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writers, Sunday, September 25, 2005
Reinforced armies of federal search teams, medics and National Guard troops began fanning out into wind-whipped and waterlogged southwestern Louisiana and coastal Texas yesterday, racing to prove the government had learned from its disastrous missteps earlier this month on the Gulf Coast.
And while yesterday's early assessments were positive -- with few reports of unanswered calls for help or broad communication breakdowns that crippled the response to Hurricane Katrina -- officials acknowledged that Hurricane Rita had not presented the ultimate test for which they had prepared.
Hurricane Katrina "was so much more massive. Most people still don't understand that," said Michael Lowder, deputy director of response operations at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington. In New Orleans, the levees failed, "then you had the civil unrest piece of it. That was something that was not planned for, not anticipated. . . . That affects the whole response."
Although floodwater was still rising yesterday in some low-lying towns and wind restricted damage-assessment flights, state and federal authorities cautiously projected confidence in their ability to respond to the storm in coming days, at least partly because it was far less damaging. President Bush, who visited the Texas emergency command center in Austin, praised government agencies as "well-organized and well-prepared to deal with Rita."
Officials also attributed their success to the sometimes chaotic evacuation of 3 million people from Houston and other cities, an exodus left incomplete in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29.
"The damage is not as severe as we had expected it to be," FEMA Acting Director R. David Paulison said in Washington, despite swamped roads, failed bridges and extensive structural damage across several cities and southwest Louisiana. "Every mayor that we have talked to is crediting the evacuations with the fact we have no reported deaths at this time."
Texas and Louisiana leaders said yesterday's relative calm reflected greater preparation and cooperation at all levels.
"We learned a great deal from Katrina that was put in place in Texas," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said in Austin at a news conference with Gov. Rick Perry (R).
"We are all working together as a team," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) said from Baton Rouge, appearing with U.S. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, in charge of the federal Katrina response. "Our efforts to keep a communications network up have paid off."
The differences in the scale of the two storms were plainly visible. Katrina triggered an "ultra-catastrophe," in the words of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff -- cutting a 90,000-square-mile swath across three states, before triggering a flood that swamped the nation's 35th-largest city and broke down civil order.
In addition to its bigger size, Katrina also struck later in the day than Rita and moved north more slowly, hampering efforts by air crews to get aloft during daylight to grasp its impact.
After Katrina, Lowder said that "basically, everything was shut down for so much longer. This one [Rita] moved out faster; we were able to gather more information quicker."
In last week's run-up to the storm, U.S. officials took advantage of a second chance to test the nation's emergency response system after its near-collapse in New Orleans. Preparations dwarfed those before Katrina.
Bush appeared yesterday morning with Chertoff at the military's U.S. Northern Command headquarters in Colorado, which mobilized thousands of troops and fleets of aircraft and ships.
Two days before landfall, Bush declared Rita an "incident of national significance" -- which triggers the federal government's highest level of response -- and Chertoff named Coast Guard Rear Adm. Larry Hereth as the federal officer in charge. Those steps were taken two days after Katrina hit.
Texas called 10,000 National Guard members and asked for 10,000 active-duty U.S. military troops, while Louisiana has 22,000 guard members in place and asked for 15,000 troops. By comparison, Louisiana readied 5,000 National Guard members before Katrina.
The Pentagon moved 500 active-duty troops into the region yesterday. Blanco asked for 40,000 troops two days after Katrina hit; the White House sent the first 7,000 three days later.
Rear Adm. Joseph F. Kilkenny, commander of Carrier Strike Group Ten, 1,100 sailors and 650 sometimes queasy Marines were aboard the USS Iwo Jima in heavy seas yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico as it steamed toward Sabine Pass, Tex., on the Texas-Louisiana border to help rescue victims of Rita.
Crews started at daybreak yesterday flying 15 helicopters on search missions over Lake Charles and Lafayette, La. Kilkenny said the military is using a grid system designed for fighting wars to carry out its domestic disaster response for the first time. Grids 15 by 15 nautical miles should make searches much more systematic than the chaotic searches after Katrina, Kilkenny said, because all the search parties -- state and local, U.S. Coast Guard, National Guard and active-duty military -- will work from the same grid.
In "Afghanistan and Iraq we used the grid system. In that instance they were called 'kill boxes.' In this instance they're called 'rescue boxes,' " Kilkenny said.
By air and sea, Kilkenny said the Coast Guard was handling rescue from the Texas-Louisiana border westward, while the U.S. Navy was operating east of the border.
In terms of ground operations, Kilkenny said, "This will be a pincer movement. We'll have land forces and FEMA state and local coming from the north down into these areas. And we will survey and see if we need to come in from the sea to render assistance" by sending Marines ashore.
Once it stops 25 nautical miles south of Sabine Pass early today, the amphibious assault ship could also provide medical assistance to people who cannot get help at local hospitals. The ship has 80 doctors and nurses aboard.
There are two other amphibious assault ships, the USS Shreveport and the USS Tortuga, in the Gulf area, as well as the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, and the supply ship USNS Patuxent. They and the USS Grapple, a rescue and salvage vessel, could join the Iwo Jima as needed. Within about two days, seven or eight Navy mine countermeasure ships are to arrive to help assess damage to offshore oil platforms.
As Rita approached, federal emergency managers positioned twice as many search-and-rescue teams in Texas as they did in Louisiana last month. Officials fueled more that 900 buses for evacuation and rescue, and placed on standby 12 heavy-lift military helicopters, six transport aircraft and dozens of civilian aircraft -- equipment in short supply immediately after Katrina.
FEMA last week stockpiled 45 trailers of water, 45 trailers of ice and 25 trailers of ice in Texas before Rita's arrival, twice as many as last month at Louisiana's Camp Beauregard.
"The big difference is that we have been gearing up our entire system for a month now," Robert B. Stephan, assistant secretary of homeland security for infrastructure protection, said in Washington. "There's no warm-up period -- the car is started and ready to go."
Hendrix reported from Austin. Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson, aboard the USS Iwo Jima, contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post CompanyToday (9/23) Secretary Chertoff signed a memorandum addressed to David Paulison, Acting Director of FEMA; Admiral Allen, the Principal Federal Official responsible for the Katrina operations; Admiral Hereth, the PFO responsible for the Rita operations; and myself.
Secretary Chertoff stated his concern about the suffering that people with disabilities in the affected regions have experienced, and, God forbid, may experience as Rita makes landfall in the next several hours. He called attention to the fact that the number of people with disabilities in these states are extremely high, numbering close to a million people according to Census data.
He directed that Adm. Allen and Adm. Hereth add to their staffs an individual who is a specialist in issues affecting people with disabilities. These individuals are charged with helping the PFO to deal with the complex issues that we are so familiar with:
* ensuring the availability of durable medical equipment such as mobility aids, adaptive accessories, and hearing aids;
* ensuring that there will be adequate stocks of medicines that people with disabilities will need;
* ensuring that there will be a sufficient amount of accessible housing; and,
* so many other issues.
We will identify these individuals and deploy them to the region as soon as travel is practicable after Rita. We expect them to be on the ground early next week.
The Secretary was and has been very supportive of the work of the Interagency Council, as well as the disability advocates who are working so hard in the region and around the country.
One last point – the Secretary also ordered that the needs of people with disabilities must be fully incorporated in future emergency preparedness planning. As you probably know, the President has tasked DHS to rapidly conduct joint reviews of Emergency Operations Plans for all of the major urban areas in the country. These reviews will be conducted over the upcoming months. The Secretary directed that these reviews include a rigorous examination of how these communities plan to prepare, inform, evacuate and care for people with disabilities. Hopefully, pre-planning will help avoid situations like we have witnessed recently.
I would be glad for you to let people know about these developments. Thanks for working with us.
Dan
DANIEL W. SUTHERLAND
Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Department of Homeland Security
(202) 772-9816 (office)
(202) 441-6906 (cell)
United Spinal To Donate A Wheelchair Accessible Bus Filled With Adaptive
Gear To Katrina Victims Who Are Disabled Fort Totten, Bayside, NY September 20, 2005United Spinal Association, a< national disability rights organization, has joined the nationwide relief effort for victims of Hurricane Katrina. This morning the Association deployed a wheelchair accessible bus and box truck to Louisiana, filled to capacity with supplies and equipment which will be donated to a New Orleans Resources for Independent Living (RIL) Center. Among the donations are 30 new manual wheelchairs, two power wheelchairs, two hospital beds, a Hoyer lift, 30 new wheelchair cushions, and a number of canes, crutches, and walkers. To ensure recipients are properly fitted for their equipment, United Spinal will be sending support staff, including a wheelchair technician and specialist. United Spinal will also donate the 33-foot bus that is being used to transport the equipment. The total value of the donation is estimated to be $50,000.
The people who are going to be receiving these donations truly need it,said Yovanka Archaga, C.P.A., Executive Director of RIL, one of the largest personal care attendant service providers for individuals with disabilities in the southern region of Louisiana. RIL benefits include care services, supported living programs, and transportation services. Our consumers have lost so much, and we are going to take these gifts to give it right back to the community. Hospitals are overloaded and it's amazing how much we have taken for granted, consumers medical needs are just another luxury that has been taken away as well.
Not wanting to sound ungrateful that the lives of her staff and consumers have been spared, Archaga is forging forward with her efforts to rebuild the Center, despite the fact that the community is at a standstill. With her voice shaking, Archaga describes what she feels was a miracle that after being under two to three feet of water, and with three and a half feet of mold on the walls, all of RILs 25 to 30 computers, and their $10,000 server, functioned normally after being drained. It was just amazing that they still had power, she says. That just tells me that God is saying that Yovanka has to keep goingthat tells you we are doing something good.
We have all seen the images of this unprecedented catastrophe and the suffering that has been endured by the people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, said Gerard Kelly, Executive Director of United Spinal Association. United Spinal Association has great concern for our members and non-members that have been affected by Hurricane Katrina. Knowing firsthand the daily challenges faced by the disability community under normal conditions, we can only speculate as to the added difficulties imposed by these extraordinary circumstances.
Through the cooperation of John Lancaster, Executive Director, Council on Independent Living, United Spinal connected with the New Orleans Independent Living Center currently operating out of Baton Rouge. Kelly remarked, We are ecstatic to have been able to put together the various items we are donating, as well as to donate a lift-equipped bus; we know they will all be put to good use by people in dire need of them. We are very pleased to have the opportunity to serve the people in New Orleans and other places who are presently facing such enormous challenges.
The United Spinal Association is dedicated to enhancing the lives of individuals with spinal cord injury or disease by assuring quality health care, promoting research, advocating for civil rights and independence, educating the public about these issues and enlisting its help to achieve these fundamental goals. Membership is free and open to all people with spinal cord disabilities. For more information please visit our Website, http://www.unitedspinal.org.
A Weekly Update from BROOKINGS METROPOLITAN POLICY PROGRAM
September 20, 2005
Research by the Metropolitan Policy Program (Metro) provides valuable context, lessons, and guidance on key questions being grappled with in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's devastation. Entrenched poverty; masses of people made homeless by disaster; and how to undo the damage of what Metro director Bruce Katz has called "federal enclaves of poverty" are not unique to the area affected by Katrina. Metro research offers solid reference points for addressing such problems.
Soon, a new report from Metro will detail the extent and location of poverty in New Orleans and will outline options available to the city to re-build in ways that do not re-create the locked-in cycles of poverty. In the meantime, this week's e-newsletter addresses three critical areas:
What was the extent of the poverty in New Orleans?
* Indicators of entrenched distress <http://www.brookings.edu/metro/20050920_povertynumbers.pdf> (PDF): High poverty rate, long tenures in public housing.
* Many of the poor cannot flee: Analysis of car ownership among New Orleans residents <http://www.brookings.edu/metro/20050915_katrinacarstables.pdf> (PDF)
What are the best options for housing the people left homeless by a natural disaster?
* Post-disaster housing <http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/katz/20050918.htm> : Decent housing and stability for the suddenly-homeless isn't easy, but it can be done-and we have experience that can be our guide.
How could New Orleans re-build in ways that break the cycle of poverty and provide more access to opportunity to those who return?
* A city with built-in access to good schools, jobs, opportunity <http://www.brookings.edu/views/interviews/20050914_katznpr.htm> : Bruce Katz on National Public Radio.
* Experience and insight that provides solid reference points for New Orleans to consider so they can re-build in ways that break the cycle of poverty
* A New Orleans Like the Old One Just Won't Do <http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-09-18-new-orleans-rebuilding_x.htm> , USA Today
* President Bush's Plan to Rebuild <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec05/rebuild_9-16.html> , PBS
* Why segregation by race and income persists, and how solutions must be regional in scope <http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/geographyofopportunity.htm> : The Geography of Opportunity.
* How to re-make distressed neighborhoods <http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20050913_hopevi.htm> : One program that, done right, works well for low-income people, and enjoys bi-partisan support.
* Neighborhoods of Choice and Connection <http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20040713_katz.htm> . Neighborhoods in which people are safe, healthy, and have hope: A seminal work originally written for a UK audience but with clear evidence and applications for American cities.Metropolitan Policy Program · The Brookings Institution · 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW · Washington, DC 20036 · (202) 797-6139 · http://www.brookings.edu/metro
Clinton Launches Withering Attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, Budget
Agence France Presse,18 September 2005 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_091905I.shtml
Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."
The Iraq war diverted US attention from the war on terrorism "and undermined the support that we might have had," Clinton said in an interview with an ABC's "This Week" program.
Clinton said there had been a "heroic but so far unsuccessful" effort to put together a constitution that would be universally supported in Iraq.
The US strategy of trying to develop the Iraqi military and police so that they can cope without US support "I think is the best strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that," said Clinton.
On Hurricane Katrina, Clinton faulted the authorities' failure to evacuate New Orleans ahead of the storm's strike on August 29. People with cars were able to heed the evacuation order, but many of those who were poor, disabled or elderly were left behind.
"If we really wanted to do it right, we would have had lots of buses lined up to take them out," Clinton.
He agreed that some responsibility for this lay with the local and state authorities, but pointed the finger, without naming him, at the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
FEMA boss Michael Brown quit in response to criticism of his handling of the Katrina disaster. He was viewed as a political appointee with no experience of disaster management or dealing with government officials.
"When James Lee Witt ran FEMA, because he had been both a local official and a federal official, he was always there early, and we always thought about that," Clinton said, referring to FEMA's head during his 1993-2001 presidency.
"But both of us came out of environments with a disproportionate number of poor people."
On the US budget, Clinton warned that the federal deficit may be coming untenable, driven by foreign wars, the post-hurricane recovery program and tax cuts that benefited just the richest one percent of the US population, himself included.
"What Americans need to understand is that ... every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts," he said.
"We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."
Clinton added: "We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense."
Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091605/new_doctorordered001.shtml
By LAURIE SMITH ANDERSON Advocate staff writer September 16, 2005
In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"I begged him to let me continue," said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. "People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.
"I showed him (the U.S. Coast Guard official in charge) my medical credentials. I had tried to get through to FEMA for 12 hours the day before and finally gave up. I asked him to let me stay until I was replaced by another doctor, but he refused. He said he was afraid of being sued. I informed him about the Good Samaritan laws and asked him if he was willing to let people die so the government wouldn't be sued, but he would not back down. I had to leave."
FEMA issued a formal response to Perlmutter's story, acknowledging that the agency does not use voluntary physicians.
"We have a cadre of physicians of our own," FEMA spokesman Kim Pease said Thursday. "They are the National Disaster Medical Team. ... The voluntary doctor was not a credentialed FEMA physician and, thus, was subject to law enforcement rules in a disaster area."A Coast Guard spokesman said he was looking into the incident but was not able to confirm it.
Perlmutter, Dr. Clark Gerhart and medical student Alison Torrens flew into Baton Rouge on a private jet loaned by a Pennsylvania businessman several days after Katrina hit. They brought medicine and supplies with them. They stayed the first night in Baton Rouge and persuaded an Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot to fly them into New Orleans the next day.
"I was going to make it happen," the orthopedic surgeon said. "I was at Ground Zero too, and I had to lie to get in there."
At the triage area in the New Orleans airport, Perlmutter was successful in getting FEMA to accept the insulin and morphine he had brought. "The pharmacist told us they were completely out of insulin and our donation would save numerous lives. Still, I felt we were the most-valuable resource, and we were sent away."
Gerhart said the scene they confronted at the airport was one of "hundreds of people lying on the ground, many soaked in their own urine and feces, some coding (dying) before our eyes." FEMA workers initially seemed glad for help and asked Gerhart to work inside the terminal and Perlmutter to work out on the tarmac. They were told only a single obstetrician had been on call at the site for the past 24 hours.
Then, the Coast Guard official informed the group that he could not credential them or guarantee tort coverage and that they should return to Baton Rouge. "That shocked me, that those would be his concerns in a time of emergency," Gerhart said.
Transported back to Baton Rouge, Perlmutter's frustrated group went to state health officials who finally got them certified -- a simple process that took only a few seconds. "I found numerous other doctors in Baton Rouge waiting to be assigned and others who were sent away, and there was no shortage of need," he said.
Perlmutter spent some time at the Department of Health and Hospital's operational center at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries before moving to the makeshift "Kmart Hospital" doctors established at an abandoned store to care for patients. After organizing an orthopedics room and setting up ventilators there, Perlmutter went back to the