Last Hurrah

Made one last trip to New Orleans before heading home today. Every time I go, there are more restaurants and shops open. One of the restaurants has this fountain with a fire in the middle of it. The local folks tell me that there are not nearly the amount of people on the streets that there usually are, but it looks to me like things are getting up and running. I had one last bowl of gumbo, this bowl complete with a crab claw in it! There was a group of musicians playing on the street and I stopped to listen for a while. Today it is 70 degrees and absolutely gorgeous. We had turkey dinner yesterday at camp with dressing. The turkey dressing had shrimp in it! Tasted ok, just surprised me. I was the last one out of camp today, it was very empty with only the 10 people left who are going to maintain the generators, etc. The morgue will start back up on Dec. 27. It will be sad not to be there with them, but I am eager to start my FEMA job. The folks at the morgue have made so many identifications there are just a few left to do, although they keep finding bodies. Each day it seems they find one or two in the debris and they bring them to the morgue. Our camp is right next to the river and sometimes we wake up to foggy mornings. I love the fog, it makes everything so mysterious. Here is one of our guards standing his post this morning. This will be my last posting from Louisiana. Email me if you want to see any other pictures, I took over 300 of them! Happy Holidays to all of you, love Sandy

Pictures from "home"

Well, we are winding down now, everyone is leaving tomorrow and Friday, going home for the holidays. Most of the folks are gone already and there are a few of us left. I will be traveling home on Friday, the 23rd. I thought I would post a few miscellaneous pictures from my Louisiana "home". The weather here is wonderful and I have not missed the snow. Yesterday I saw a nutria and took its picture. It was in a ditch nearby. Nutria are smaller than a beaver and bigger than a muskrat. It was imported from South America around 1900 and has since taken over muskrat habitat and has migrated to many states. I am also posting a picture of my "home" with its fence around it and one of our local DMORT "characters". The close white building has our offices, kitchen, lounge, etc. and the back white building is the morgue. And some more pictures of the 9th Ward. The barge that is sitting on the bus was in the river and was lifted over/through the levee and landed where there used to be houses. We got a few more storm victims. It is hard to believe it is Christmas. We work every day and I haven't taken the time to go into town much. Baton Rouge has increased its population by 250,000 since Katrina, and the roads are having a hard time handling the traffic. Take care, have a Happy Holiday, I will see you all soon. Sandy

Fireworks

Yesterday we had dinner on the levee and a fireworks show that was awesome! Command decided we needed to have a break from working long hours every day and planned a party for us that was wonderful. The levee is outside of our camp and we walked out the gate and past the fence with barbed wire, and there was a feeling of "escape"! We went up the levee (it has to be about a 100 feet wide) and they had been cooking a huge pot of jambalaya (rice, chicken, sausage and spices) all day. It tasted so good! Some local people brought their children and it was fun to see children playing. When you are in an environment that only includes adults all day and being surrounded by death, seeing children adds a dimension of "life goes on" that we don't normally have. After the fireworks and dinner, they built a huge bonfire and we stood around the fire to keep warm. It was chilly, but not bad by Midwest standards. The boats had their lights on and went past us on the river and it was so awesome; the food, the fireworks and the ships passing by all lit up. There couldn't have been a better treat. It is something that all of us here will always remember.

DMORT

DMORT is an eclectic group of folks who include pathologists, dentists, x-ray techs, anthropologists, mental health, heavy machine operators, etc. Everyone in the group is brought along to process and id the dead. MH comes along to be support for the workers. I am going to show you the new facility where the offices are. It is 405 feet, I am told slightly longer than a football field and about 5 stories high. We only use the ground floor, there is nothing above us but air. Reportedly this one was military surplus and so we got it. I was told there is one in Iraq like it. The short buildings are the billeting where we sleep. The grounds are surrounded by bright lights on generators and this place looks like Area 51 at night. We sit in the middle of swamp land with this all lit up against the black sky. We are, of course, surrounded by fence with barbed wire on it and there have been a lot of jokes about "how long are you in for?" There have been literally tons of rock brought in to stabilize/firm up the ground. When we get a hard rain, there are puddles of gooey white clay-like ground that leave white on your shoes and back of your pants when you walk on it. They have put in lots of concrete sidewalks, but still you have to walk in it to get to the cars that are parked here. The lounge is nice, but we laugh about the lamps that are sitting on tables with the plugs hanging and no outlet in sight. We don't really need the extra light, but they look pretty sitting on the end tables. We start our days in the dark and end them in the dark. Here is one of our tireless workers trying to get up the energy to get started!

Area around the morgue

Barge pushing coal

I had to do an errand today and I had to go to Placqumine. But to get to the town, you have to take the ferry over. It is so much fun to be on the river! I love watching the ships go up and down the river. We who are landlocked forget how important rivers are for hauling merchandise up and down the river. The barges are constantly going up and down and the little ferry has to go around them; sort of like a semi meeting a Volkswagen. Today we had to go down the river a little to avoid the wake of a big barge. The wake still pushed the ferry back and forth, even the small amount of wake that we got. They have a great system to put the cars on and off the ferry and the guide they have is fun to watch, he almost dances as he waves you around. The ferry comes once every half and hour. The ferry does a semi circle in the water, so you start out backwards and end up going forward. It always seems to end up right!



The area that we are in is very rural. We have cows grazing not too far from us. We are about 200 yards from the river and we can walk up to the levee and watch the river. The berm they have built is very tall and protects this land from being flooded. I am going to attach some pictures of rural Louisiana. It looks like it must be a poor area of Louisiana. Notice how the houses sit up off the ground. The two story photo is the local grocery store and diner.

There is also a huge amount of industry in this area. Some of the factories make cyanide, one produces ammonia, and one makes Styrofoam. We just hope they have emergency plans in place for shutdown!

FEMA and Katrina

I thought you might like to see some of the local humor regarding FEMA and Katrina.

Hansen's Disease

I spent some time yesterday at the Hansen's Disease Museum which is just down the road from us. It is the only leprosarium on the continental U.S. There are still 20 some people living there. The ages range from the 50s to the 90s. It was established in 1894. Apparently people were taken from their homes and moved to this leper home if they had contracted the disease. Their rights were taken from them, including the right to vote, and they were forced to live here. If babies were born here, they were taken from the mother and adopted out. The youngest child placed here was around 8 years old. It was a fascinating history of the disease. I didn't even know we had leprosy here in the US. The tour guide told us that the disease can occur anywhere in the world, it is not a tropical disease. Worldwide we had 500,000 cases last year. She said here in the US we had 22 new cases last year, but it is treatable if it treatment is started early. The disease is bacterial, thought to be transmitted by respiratory infection, and 95% of the population is immune to getting it. There was a cemetery on the grounds and I am attaching some pictures we took last night at the cemetery. Take care, Sandy

9th Ward

I know you have heard lots of talk about the 9th Ward and how badly it was impacted. It was. It is a relatively small area of New Orleans below the levee that was essentially destroyed. You have to really stand there and look all around you to marvel at the power that water has. It is very much like the tsunami last year, except the tsunami pulled all the debris back into the ocean when the water receded. The houses in the 9th Ward were pushed back, and the area where the levee broke was pushed clean. They are filling the levee break with a huge dam of rock. It is wide enough to drive a car on. It is eerily quiet in the area. There are no people there, just destroyed homes and cars. All you hear is the crunch of the gravel under your feet or the wheels of the car as you drive along. I went with another woman, and we found ourselves whispering to each other. We kept saying things like, "can you believe this?", "this is unbelievable". She had also gone over for tsunami relief. We couldn't help but compare what we were seeing here with what we had seen in the tsunami areas. However, people impacted by the tsunami continued to live in the devastated areas, they had no where to go. Tents were set up on the foundations of their homes or in long rows in open areas. Here in Louisiana they have apparently found other places to live, because no one is in the area. It does not appear that any clean-up has started, everything looks like it was pushed by the water and just left where it landed. The roads through the area have been plowed clear, but other than that it looks untouched. There were children's' big wheels and other items pushed into wire fences and they were still hanging on the fences. When you stand there and see the power of the water and the height it went to, it is truly amazing that there weren't more people killed by the rush of water.

Bourbon Street

Yesterday we got a little extra time as the work was caught up, and some of us headed back down to, you guessed it, Bourbon Street. It is awesome and I have enjoyed being so close to New Orleans (little less than an hour). People have written to me because they are concerned for my mental health. Let me assure you that at this job we have been able to work hard and play hard. We also took the opportunity to have a wonderful meal in one of the restaurants. The food here at the morgue compound where we live has been lacking in variety. We have local cooks who cook beans and rice, everyday. I didnt know you could eat beans and rice in so many variations. We have beans and rice with gravy, with sausage, with shrimp, with chicken, and any combination of those ingredients. Sometimes they swap the red beans for black beans and it appears they think this is considered variety in the menu. One of the workers has a badge that has printed on it, "No More Chicken". They fry everything, even the grits. They cook the grits in a pot like cream of wheat, then they grease up the griddle and fry it! The first time I have ever had to cut my grits with my utensils. I think we have had beef one time since December 1. We had spaghetti one night this week and it had shrimp in the spaghetti sauce! Yes, rice was also an option for dinner.

This morning we watched a power point that someone made about the strike team. They wade in deep water to locate bodies and it is a hot, dirty job. The also have sharp-shooters who go with them to keep the alligators from biting off legs. But workers love the challenge and the hard work. The workers here at the morgue continue make matches to identities and the Family Assistance Center continues to find folks who were listed as lost. We sent another strike team out to see if they could locate more bodies. We have so many dedicated workers here it is an honor to be part of the team.

Another Sunday at work

Many of the folks who came after Thanksgiving are leaving already. We have had a large group leave, 20 some today, and many new ones rotating in. We will all leave on Dec. 23rd and then the morgue will be back up and running the 26th. It is good to see old friends from previous deployments. DMORT is a small group, and so I will get to see most of my friends before I leave DMORT for good and start working for FEMA.

When we were at the old morgue location in St. Gabriel, someone had an idea that it would be good to bring an abandoned puppy to the morgue compound for "pet therapy". Let me just say that puppies could potentially put all MH out of work. It was awesome! When folks had a bad moment or a major meltdown, I would see them laying in the grass letting the puppy lick them and bark and wrestle. It was amazing to watch. You could see their faces start to relax and watch the tension melt from them. We adopted 3 puppies, one at a time. The first was Iber, because we were in Iberville. One of the DMORT decided Iber was too precious to leave behind and adopted him to live in New York. Belle was next and went to live in Oregon. Then we had Wilma (for the hurricane) and she was adopted to another great DMORT home. Iber was literally taken out of the cage to be euthanized at the 11th hour. Belle and Wilma had also been abandoned and were rescued. They are lucky dogs, but we benefitted more from having them with us than they could ever know. That was the month of October. I write this now because our new location is not really suited for a therapy dog, so we have none here. I have had more comments from folks deployed here that they really miss their pets and that having those dogs with us was more therapeutic than anyone realized. I am going to attach pictures of Iber. Love to all of you, Sandy

Family Assistance Center

The Family Assistance Center in Baton Rouge is a place where families can call to report missing family members, call to say they are ok, give DNA, and give information about loved ones who might be missing or dead. It takes and amazing number of people to run this operation, take calls, take information, and all the other things they do. It has been operating since early in the disaster. We have DMORT folks working here and I make regular trips into Baton Rouge to check on them and make sure things are going well for them and to see if there is anything they need. It can be a tedious job and they work tirelessly to try to reunite families. Sandy

Caution urged

Thought you might be interested in the article in the Dec. 3 edition of The Advocate, a local newspaper. It says that FEMA workers are urged to be careful not to wear anything that has FEMA logo and lettering. No workers have been harmed but threats of violence have been made. Someone pulled a knife in Baton Rouge and made threats. We are all safe here, guarded by 24 hour security, and we go out we go in street clothes, so not to worry. As you have seen in the news, bodies are still being found in the 9th Ward, which has recently opened. It was the area right below the levee and is destroyed. Here are pictures of the 9th Ward. You can see how the bodies might have been missed up to this time. Very difficult area to thoroughly cover. There is apparently a rumor that the levee was blown up deliberately so that just adds to peoples' anger. The weather here is in the 50s, so not too cold compared to other parts of the country. Please check the link on this page, MY IT Guy. He has a very interesting picture of one of the strike teams who go out to look for bodies and disinterred crypts. When they find them they identify them and then return them to families and/or the area where they were washed out. Notice the guards they go with to protect them from creepy crawly biting things. Take care, Sandy

New Facility

The work continues, but I thought you might like to see the new building. Last week we moved to the new facility, which is very comfortable. We have smaller rooms, much smaller actually, and the showers are right in the same building! The room on the left was my old bedroom. I slept with 40 of my closest friends! It was noisy. Once the coughing stopped, the snoring started, and then the creaking every time some turned over in their cot! Now we have smaller, quieter rooms. This is an empty room, mine is not this neat, but they are all the same. We are not eating in the tent now, but have a cafeteria. We even have a lounge. We are still working 12 hour days, but have a place to have down-time. The weather is pleasant by Nebraska standards, in the 50s. Take care, I will write more later, Sandy

Today is colder

Today is colder again. It is around 40 degrees. We have our sweatshirts on and the heat up. We work a 12 hour day every day of the week. It is hardest on the morgue workers when it is cold as they frequently have the doors open and closed all day. They are dedicated workers and the work is steadily getting done. My job is to be available for the workers to talk. Sometimes the work gets stressful and it is helpful to be able to vent with someone. This is my second deployment down here and I will travel home in time for Christmas.

I am headed over to the Family Assistance Center today to talk to some of the workers over in Baton Rouge. They are looking for the missing and they also deal with the families who are looking for loved ones. They have a very stressful job, and they are excited when they find folks in other parts of the country who have been listed as missing. It can also be helpful for them to have someone to talk with, although it is hard for them to take the time as they are very busy.

Day 100 Katrina DR 1603

Yesterday I spent time down at the area that was hardest hit by the disaster. The devistation is unbelievable. It makes you feel small in comparision to the area that is destroyed. Houses are gone, the only thing left in some areas is the
concrete steps that led up to the house that is no longer there.




Bourbon Street in New Orleans is coming back. Restaurants are serving food, bars are open, stores are selling t-shirts, and people are back out on the streets. It is wonderful to see people back out and enjoying life.