Riding out the storm: Part 3

I woke up Wednesday morning relieved the generators had not given out during the previous night and headed back to a small section of the Superdome set aside for mostly elderly people with special needs.\nThe atmosphere in the dome had gotten incredibly tense and the soldiers were walking around with shotguns, which I assumed was an ideal weapon for close quarter combat.\nTwice the day before people had walked up to the special needs area bleeding from either accident or fight injuries thinking we were the first aid station, which was actually one floor below us. When I got to the special needs group, I realized the conditions there were horrendous and deteriorating rapidly. Many of the special needs people had been in their feces- and urine-soiled gowns for three days and all of them had been sweating profusely in the sweltering unventilated stadium.\nWithout medical training, there was little I could do but fan them, give them water through syringes or talk with them. One of the ladies was a 91-year-old great-great-grand mother who had immigrated from Cuba when she was 25 years old. I would practice my amateur Spanish with her and she would correct me. One of the men there was a retired Tulane University police officer who was now paralyzed from the neck down. He told me stories of students who bought him lunch after begging him not to inform their parents he busted them.\nUnfortunately, most of the people in special needs required an assortment of immediate medical attention: medication, oxygen, insulin, and intravenous lines -- more than someone to chat with. Knowing that most of the immobile patients had not eaten in days and watching many of them cry constantly was harrowing. I honestly thought half of them would die before being evacuated from the Superdome. By 11 a.m. we had moved all the remaining immobile special needs people to a secured docking area on the ground level of the stadium, which was off limits to the caged masses inside the dome. There, I began a five-hour solo shift where I watched over the last eight special needs people to leave the Superdome, hoping desperately they would not die on me as many of them lay sobbing and telling me they could not hold on much longer. \nOne lady I was looking after was extremely obese and had spent four days in the dome on a folded table top, which had been placed on a large cart so we could move her. She was extremely soiled and her raw bed sores were so irritated by the urine and feces that covered her lower torso that she screamed constantly. Fortunately, we were able to change and wash her in the afternoon, but it did little to alleviate her pain from her already infected sores.\nAt 5 p.m., the last special needs person was loaded onto an open-top, high-bed military truck and I was given permission to join them. I stepped onto the truck with only the clothes on my back and nothing inside my pockets. When I asked why the truck was about to leave when it could accommodate twice as many people, a soldier replied they had not yet devised a way to evacuate people from the crowd in an orderly fashion without starting a riot. Remembering all the children and elderly people who thronged the crowded hallways of the floors above me, I could not shake the guilty feeling in me. \nWe drove away from the Superdome in water that completely covered the wheels of the truck and made our way out of the utterly shattered downtown and submerged city. We, like every military vehicle that left the Superdome, had a machine-gun clad guard, and were told to sit low while passing refugees on the street so they would not know we were being evacuated and charge the truck. We reached the outskirts of the city and stopped at a stretch of highway that had been converted to a makeshift transfer center. Patients were being evacuated one by one in ambulances that stretched as far as I could see, and military and Coast Guard helicopters were landing and taking off next to us every few minutes.\nThe scene was very chaotic and the small secured enclosure area I was in was surrounded by hundreds of stranded people who had walked there from the surrounding areas, desperately hoping to get on one of the buses leaving the city. Three police officers, including one carrying a Soviet-era Kalashnikov machine gun, were only admitting people with life-threatening situations inside the makeshift perimeter. At one point, two of the officers forcibly shoved a man who was begging to be let inside. Once again, I felt guilty for being on the side he and hundreds around him wanted to be on.\nAfter the all the special needs patients were assigned ambulances, I hopped on an evacuation charter bus at midnight, which, I was told, was heading for the Astrodome in Houston. In mid-route we were diverted to Lafayette, La., and dropped off at the Cajun Dome, which had also been converted to a makeshift shelter. \nThe Cajun Dome felt like an oasis after being in the Superdome; it was clean and orderly. I went to sleep at 4 a.m. on the floor and used an Meal Ready to Eat packet as a pillow. The following morning I left the Cajun Dome and was able to get a ride with a family that was driving to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. There, I was met by a family friend who was able to help me out. \nTulane University has canceled classes for the fall semester, as have many other universities in New Orleans. Fortunately, many universities across the United States, including IU, have graciously agreed to accept displaced students. I am now at another university and am very fortunate because things have worked out for me. \nPlease don't worry about me, I am absolutely fine. However, I still don't know what happened to those elderly people I was with, which hospitals they were sent to, or whether they made it. The people of the Gulf Coast need your help and mine. The destruction I witnessed was unimaginable in scale and severity. The region will likely take years to recuperate. I urge you to donate money or volunteer with the relief effort.