Hospital Conditions in New Orleans Worsen

[leftchick]

~snip~

As floodwaters rose around Charity Hospital, the rescuers needed their own rescuing.

Charity's backup generator was running out of diesel fuel. Nurses hand-pumped ventilators for patients who couldn't breathe. Doctors canoed supplies in from three nearby hospitals.

"It's like being in a Third World country. We're trying to work without power. Everyone knows we're all in this together. We're just trying to stay alive," said Mitch Handrich, a registered nurse manager at the state's biggest public hospital.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said 2,500 patients would be evacuated from hospitals in Orleans Parish, but it wasn't immediately clear where they would be moved.

Police were working to get more generators to Charity and its 300 patients. The most critically ill would be evacuated first, with the rest to go later this week.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050831/ap_on_re_us/katrina_medical

[LostinVA]

1. Hand pumping vents???

Omigod... there's no way med staff can keep that up 24/7....

[Corgigal]

2. HEY FEMA

yeah you guys in Washington. My husband called you on Saturday and asked why you haven't started a humanitarian airlift. You said because you didn't have enough aircraft.

Better find them now assholes.

[leftchick]

4. Remember that they have to refurbish the Helos for their war...

'Boneyard' helicopters get new life

09:49 AM MST on Tuesday, August 23, 2005


By Carol Ann Alaimo / Arizona Daily Star



Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking a toll on the Marine Corps cargo helicopter fleet. For solutions, the service is turning to Tucson.


Military officials are dipping into the "boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and breathing new life into old gray hulks mothballed for the past decade.


For the first time, several CH-53E Super Stallions are being refurbished and put back into service. The massive copters have been in storage since the mid-1990s, said Tim Horn, who oversees naval aircraft at D-M's Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center, or AMARC.


The $30 million Super Stallion is the largest military helicopter in the Western world, about as big as a tractor-trailer. It has three engines and seven rotor blades rather than the four or five blades common on other copters.

[Corgigal]

8. use the helicopter

to bring the people to either C-130, C-141, C-5 and move these people out of there.

Of course I bet no state wants them.

[FreeStateDemocrat]

6. Didn't hear BS excuses for relief in Fl during re-election campaign.

[geckosfeet]

11. Bingo. These facilities should have been evacuated Fri. and Sat.

When a category 5 hurricane is bearing down on you, you run. Technology cannot help if leadership does not know what to do with it.

I am simply astounded at how this has been allowed to escalate. It has been series or errors and omissions.

Simply astounding.

[Pirate Smile]

3. Wow, you can really tell we have figured out how to deal with disasters

whether caused by nature or terrorists. :sarcasm:

[rodeodance]

5. i pray for these patients and the staff.

[The Stranger]

7. We could deal with this if all of the National Guard, helicopters, and

equipment were not mired in a lost war fought on the basis of PNAC lies.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[geckosfeet]

12. Rag heads? n/t

[truth2power]

13. Which is what I've been thinking all week...

This whole mess shows that so-called "Homeland Security" is nothing more than another boondoggle to throw our tax money down a stinking rat hole and enrich the gangster cabal in Washington.

Terra, terra terra...what if there were a REAL terror attack?? Does it look like anyone in Wash. gives a shit or knows what they're doing?

I'm just at the end of my rope with this insanity.

In my own community a railroad tanker car sat on a side track DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET FROM AN AIRPORT FOR 9 FRIGGIN' MONTHS and no one thought to inquire what it was doing there. Last weekend it started spewing STYRENE into the air. The surrounding community has been evacuated, and the rail car continues to spew last I heard. The fire dept. has been pouring water on it for at least 4 days, even though a professor of environmental science from the local university said they are just putting that stuff into the water table.

The company responsible, Westlake Styrene, will probably go bankrupt, as they should, if there were any justice. Lawsuits have already been filed.

HOMELAND SECURITY MY ASS!!! :mad: :mad:

[Tippy]

10. Field hospitals now being set up at airport in NO n/t

[PuraVidaDreamin]

14. and to think, these hospitals are still better off than those in Iraq.

I wish I could help all these human beings
escape this suffering.

[leftchick]

15. update from NPR today

generators are running out of diesel fuel and patients are being moved to top floors of Charity Hospital. :(