FEMA and military induced chaos in NO (medical care)

[rainbow4321]

Read this in the magazine that gets mailed out to nurses in the Southwest states.. then found it online. I really hope that if the Dems have hearings on chimp's lack of response, they get a hold of the medical people who lived thru the storm and saw first hand how FEMA sabotaged the rescue efforts/medical care!


http://www.nursingspectrum.com/katrina/ATinyCity_VG.cfm

Ochsner maintained nearly every service, including emergency care, Davis says. “A driver abandoned a metro bus full of paraplegics, but they were found by a volunteer and driven here,” she says. “It’s just pitiful here. We sent a truck of food, water, and medical attention,” so people on the streets wouldn’t be abandoned.

Despite scrupulous planning, Ochsner encountered obstacles.

“We had no help from FEMA,” she says. Even worse, “they commandeered our air space so we couldn’t use our helicopters.” They appropriated ambulances and confiscated Ochsner’s incoming trucks loaded with supplies and equipment, says Davis. (As of press time, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials were unavailable to reply to the criticism.)


http://www.nursingspectrum.com/katrina/Tarmac_VG.cfm

Patient care wasn’t the crew’s biggest problem. “There was such chaos, the stories changed from one minute to the next,” she says. At the airport, “there were 20 or more Army helicopters but no patients, because they had heard people were shooting at helicopters. … They were figuring out what to do.”

Inside, Roberts says, “the head of our ED had three teams set up three mini-EDs and a command center for triage. They brought tons and tons of medical supplies, pumps, water, meds, everything. The military was going to load 40 patients in one huge cargo plane, but they scrapped the plan to use individual helicopters when it was safe to fly.”

After waiting several hours, the teams learned they would be transferred. An hour later they were told to return home to Houston because nobody knew where to send them.

The next day, “three teams waited 12 hours, but none of them went out. Six nurses helped in the ICU, waiting all day for the call, but they never got it.”


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Main website:

http://www.nursingspectrum.com/katrina/CourageM.cfm

[fooj]

1. Take a look at this...

FEMA ordered doc to stop administering med. care to hurricane victims!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1786336&mesg_id=1786382

Peace.