Day 3, Sept 1.

[Anonymous]

Day Three- September 1, 2005. Stennis Space Center, Mississippi.

5 am comes early. We woke up after spending the night sleeping outside and prepared for our day. We managed to scrounge up a breakfast of eggs and bread. After showering under cold (undrinkable) water in the base gym, we brushed teeth using bottled water and prepared to deploy further.

Overnight, the command post had established the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), or the command post. They were busy receiving the recon reports from the USAR teams that had been in the field since Tuesday. We separated the EMS teams into Task Forces. Our mission was to establish emergency services along the south Mississippi Coast. That area was to consist of the three coastal counties: Jackson, Hancock and Harrison.

I was placed in Task Force Alpha with 40 other fire and EMS personnel. Our assignment was to move to Jackson County and provide EMS, humanitarian and medical services for the county. We moved to the logistics depot and loaded about 4,500 gallons of bottled water on to our vehicles.

The other two task forces moved out immediately, but we had to wait on fuel. We spent the time listening to the radio communications coming out of New Orleans and eating our MRE lunch. After a 2 hour wait, our commanders located a fuel depot about 60 miles away, so we refueled those trucks that were short on fuel from our limited stock and departed.

Retracing our steps down I-10 past the devastation we had seen the previous day, we made our way to Bay St Louis. The road was covered in a foul smelling mud, so slick that our trucks often slid sideways. Rain made visibility limited. Overturned cars littered the roadside, where they had been left by receding flood water. Houses sat destroyed and damaged. People seeing the Florida markings on our trucks waved and cheered. One man even yelled to us, telling us how we had lots of experience in this field. About 5 miles south of I-10, we arrived at the fueling/maintenance point, located in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The store appeared to be damaged.

I had a couple of our balky radios repaired there, and we got fuel. While we were waiting in line for fuel, I walked up to the Wal-Mart employees and asked if I could buy some batteries for my (now dead) flashlight. The told us we could have whatever we could find, but that it would take looking, as the looters had gotten to whatever the storm didn’t.

I went inside to find National Guardsmen shopping through the debris. I was astonished to see them getting toys, children’s bicycles, DVD’s and many other nonessential items. After a 10 minute search through the store, I saw the D batteries I was looking for and got out of there.

Back in the parking lot, a man was cooking hamburgers on a grill and feeding some of the workers. I asked him how he had fared, and he told me that the town he lived in was gone. He had lost his job, his home and his wife. All he had left was the clothes on his back, yet all he could think of was to help others. He wasn’t looting or complaining, he was trying to be part of the solution, not the problem. Every time I think of him, I come close to tears. That is what being a good human being is all about. Out of all of this, he is a true hero.

After fueling, we moved out. We traveled to our next rally point, the EOC in downtown Gulfport. The hospital where my father passed away was just a few blocks from where I was standing. Our command team went inside to receive orders while we waited. After they had gotten briefed on the situation, we again went enroute to our destination.

We arrived in Pascagoula at around sunset and unloaded our water at the supply point. We then moved to the Singing River Hospital and set up operations, after a meeting with the county medical director and the local health officials. We were told that our SOP’s were going to be very liberal and that we would be operating under few restrictions. We separated into 2 shifts and the night shift began EMS operations covering Jackson County. In order to find things, we took a local on each truck, so we could find our way through unfamiliar streets. The day shift set up camp, ate our MRE dinners and went to bed.

Our task force was set up to be self-sufficient for at least 5 days. We had 25 cases of MRE’s, 50 cases of water and 500 gallons of diesel. We knew the real work and heartbreak had not yet begun.

[LAwxrgal]

I'm happy you were there in the front lines trying to help the people impacted by this disaster. I'm interested in hearing more of your first-hand accounts.

[Terry]

Sharpenu - thank you for sharing your story, but mostly thank you for being there to help!

[Anonymous]

Pics available at:

http://photos.yahoo.com/sharpenu

I will post more as I can.

[artist]

absolutely incredible - thatk you again for sharing all of this. It must have been life changing to walk into this.

[artist]

it amazes me how many trees remained standing yet the homes were devastated.