[Mb-civic] 'There Was Real Heroism' - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

'There Was Real Heroism'
Workers Rescue, Tend to Thousands

By Dafna Linzer and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 3, 2005; Page A22

Hundreds of sick and stranded patients who endured four nights in 
abandoned and flooded downtown New Orleans hospitals were rescued by 
military helicopters yesterday and moved to Louis Armstrong 
International Airport, where they had food and water but faced a new 
kind of misery: waiting in an overcrowded and understaffed terminal for 
transfers to medical centers around the country.

Two military C-130 planes flew about 200 patients to hospitals in 
Atlanta but did not immediately return for more, emergency medical staff 
said. With patients and storm victims numbering in the thousands at the 
airport, and the heat exceeding 90 degrees, doctors rushed between the 
sick and the weak, helping many but losing some whose illnesses overcame 
them.

Ross Judice of Acadian Ambulance Services sent out an urgent plea for 
help at dawn yesterday, when he said a meager staff was trying to care 
for more than 2,000 sick and injured patients, and eight to 10 patients 
an hour were dying. By late afternoon, airport officials said 3,000 
people at the airport were receiving medical attention in the terminal 
and on the tarmac, including some suffering from dehydration and exposure.

Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who had set up 
the makeshift hospital to handle hundreds -- not thousands -- of 
patients, said they needed to move people out before more could be 
accommodated at the airport.

Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr. (R-La.) said he spent hours on the phone 
yesterday at Acadian's headquarters in nearby Lafayette pleading with 
the Pentagon to send more C-130s. By evening, after a short break to 
tour a center for storm victims with first lady Laura Bush, he still had 
not received an answer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/02/AR2005090202336.html?nav=hcmodule
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