Day 4. Sept 2

[Anonymous]

Day 4: Friday September 2, 2005 Pascagoula, Mississippi

Once again, our day began early in the morning. After spending the night sleeping in the lobby of the cancer center of the Singing River hospital, our day shift took over the duties of running EMS calls for the area, and the rest of us reported to the operations compound and began loading food and water on the trucks for distribution. The operations compound was located on the Jackson County fairgrounds, about two blocks from the hospital. It was being used as a makeshift station for ambulances, a camp for the National Guard and a distribution site for food and water. Tractor/trailers, helicopters, police cars and ambulances were constantly coming and going.

Similar stations were set up in Gautier (GO-shay), Moss Point, and Ocean Springs. From these sites, our unit alone would distribute thousands of cases of MRE’s, diapers and baby formula, over 10,000 gallons of water and administer nearly 15,000 vaccinations against tetanus and diphtheria. In addition to the humanitarian relief, we treated hundreds of people for problems relating from psychological crises to heart attacks, trauma and we even treated a looter who was shot by police.

Let me take a minute to describe the living conditions:

During the morning, some of us located a building that had cold water only, and managed to take a shower. We had to shower by flashlight and the water coming from the faucet was brown and cold, but it felt good to clean up a little. Along with a liberal application of Axe, I almost smelled presentable.

We were flushing the toilets at the hospital by using buckets of water from the pond outside. Since we didn’t have a lot of that, the toilets didn’t get flushed more than a few times a day. The smell was soon horrible. It would have been much worse, except most of us were constipated by the MRE’s.

All that changed by Friday afternoon, when about a third of our group had diarrhea, and we were dealing with that. Worries about sanitation and disease began to occupy our minds. We were starting to see come nasty infections come in. If we had problems with sanitation, how was the public dealing with it? Children were even playing in the sewage run off in some areas.

While traveling around delivering food on Friday, I saw a lady standing outside a military surplus store trying to dry the merchandise soaked by the flooding. I managed to buy 3 pairs of BDU pants, some socks and some foot powder. Most of my clothes were contaminated with sewage water from previous operations, so it was badly needed.

I had thrown away one of my 2 pairs of boots by now, as they had smelled of raw sewage. I was developing large blisters on my feet from the other pair, but I couldn’t pop them because of the fear of infection. The foot powder was a real help, it felt so good on tired, hot feet.

That night, we discovered that the 500 gallon fuel tank we had with us was slowly leaking our fuel supply on to the ground. We patched it as best we could and hoped for the best. Vehicle maintenance was becoming a problem. We had already had to deal with 3 flat tires and several breakdowns, but were able to get the parts and materials to make repairs. All in all, we were still in good shape.

Pictures can be found at:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/sharpenu/my_photos

[MBismyPlayground]

Waiting impatiently for the next chapter.

[Pebbles]

Thankyou for continuing to share your personal account. I think these are valuable and important insights from those involved in assisting victums. And also thankyou for continuing to server yours and other communities, it's people like you and others that care and make such a difference in peoples lives.