By A.J. Heightman, JEMS Editor-in-Chief
The first few days after levees broke as a result of storm damage from Hurricane Katrina, the situation in New Orleans was chillingly similar to the movie War of the Worlds. With limited communications with the outside world, limited transportation and no food or fresh water in many areas, stranded residents were shooting each other over bags of ice and trying to hijack ambulances as a means to escape the hellish conditions that exist in the disaster area.
With bodies lying out in the open and medical helicopters being fired on as they approach landing zones, New Orleans was a hazardous area for the men and women of EMS.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, in an MSNBC article published on Sept. 1 issued what was termed “a desperate SOS” for food, water, manpower and other resources. Although officials were attempting to regain control of the city with thousands of National Guardsmen being sent to the city, unruly mobs were reacting out of their instinct to survive and looting and accosting hospital staff, EMS units and reporters carrying water bottles. It was a grim scene as EMS units were forced to protect themselves from the starved, distressed and angry crowd and wade through contaminated water.
But, through it all, the men and women of New Orleans EMS hung in there, working around the clock to rescue trapped residents and render care under some of the most complex circumstances ever encountered in a natural disaster. Immediately after the hurricane passed through New Orleans, New Orleans EMS crews hit the streets in ambulances, in boats and on foot in many areas to serve the city they love, despite the fact that many had lost their homes and had family members and loved ones unaccounted for.
Reporters at the New Orleans Convention Center reported seeing bodies scattered outside and witnessed hungry people breaking through the steel doors to a food service entrance and pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find. What the media failed to report was the efforts by New Orleans EMS to get crews and resources to the Convention Center to address the residents’ needs.
On scene medical personnel report that what is being seen on televised news reports is just the tip of the disaster iceberg and the equivalent to the impact of a tsunami striking America. Its consequences will be felt for months, perhaps years, to come.
“They’ve been telling us for years and years that this is going to happen,” says Ken Bouvier, a native of New Orleans, acting deputy director for New Orleans EMS and president of the National Association of EMTs. “We’d dodged the big storms, we’d gotten lucky before, but now our time had come. The greatest asset New Orleans EMS has is our EMTs and paramedics, and the many EMS crews that have come to our aid from the county.”
New Orleans EMS, which runs the emergency medical services system in the city, is now transporting its trauma patients straight to the Mississippi River, where the medical ship USS Iwo Jima is docked where cruise ships once were.
“There are still a lot of people who don’t want to evacuate,” Bouvier said. Though much of the city’s populace has left, those remaining (plus those who are in the city to clean up) still need ambulance coverage, so New Orleans EMS has set up temporary shop in a nursing home building that wasn’t flooded. “It’s brought us closer together because we’re all kind of camped out together,” Bouvier said. “Some of our (former) employees who moved away have come back to help us. They saved their old uniforms and came back.”
Because of the lack of outgoing communications, the media has been unable to learn the many heroic accounts of what EMS crews were doing before and after the hurricane all along the Gulf coast.
In upcoming issues of JEMS and on this Web page, we will bring you first hand accounts of what really happened on scene during Hurricane Katrina, from not just New Orleans, but many other affected areas along the Gulf coast.