[WillowTheWhisp]

Thought you might be interested in two "inside views" which I received via my cousin. This first one is from a doctor in New Orleans:

Aug. 31, 2005

This is a dispatch from New Orleans from Dr. Greg Henderson, a pathologist who recently moved from Wilmington:

Thanks to all of you who have sent your notes of concern and your prayers. I am writing this note on Tuesday at 2 p.m.. I wanted to update all of you as to the situation here. I don't know how much information you are getting but I am certain it is more than we are getting. Be advised that almost everything I am telling you is from direct observation or rumor from reasonable sources. They are allowing limited internet access, so I hope to
send this dispatch today.

Personally, my family and I are fine. My family is safe in Jackson, Miss., and I am now a temporary resident of the Ritz Carleton Hotel in New Orleans. I figured if it was my time to go, I wanted to go in a place with a good wine list. In addition, this hotel is in a very old building on Canal Street that could and did sustain little damage. Many of the other hotels sustained significant loss of windows, and we expect that many of the guests
may be evacuated here.

Things were obviously bad yesterday, but they are much worse today. Overnight the water arrived. Now Canal Street (true to its origins) is indeed a canal. The first floor of all downtown buildings is underwater. I have heard that CharityHospital and Tulane are limited in their ability to care for patients because of water. Ochsner is the only hospital that remains fully functional. However, I spoke with them today and they too are on generator and losing food and water fast.

The city now has no clean water, no sewerage system, no electricity, and no real communications. Bodies are still being recovered floating in the floods. We are worried about a cholera epidemic. Even the police are without effective communications. We have a group of armed police here with us at the hotel that is! admirab ly trying to exert some local law enforcement. This is tough because looting is now rampant. Most of it is not malicious looting. These are poor and desperate people with no housing and no medical care and no food or water trying to take care of themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the people are armed and dangerous. We hear gunshots frequently. Most of Canal street is occupied by armed looters who have a low threshold for discharging their weapons. We hear gunshots frequently. The looters are using makeshift boats made of pieces of styrofoam to access. We are still waiting for a significant national guard presence.

The health care situation here has dramatically worsened overnight. Many people in the hotel are elderly and small children. Many other guests have unusual diseases. ... There are (Infectious Disease) physicians in at this hotel attending an HIV confection. We have commandered the world famous French Quarter Bar to turn into an makeshift clinic. There is a team of about seven doctors and PAs and pharmacists. We anticipate that this will be the major medical facility in the central business district and French Quarter.

Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under police escort. The pharmacy was dark and full of water. We basically scooped the entire drug sets into garbage bags and removed them. All under police excort. The looters had to be held back at gunpoint. After a dose of prophylactic Cipro I hope to be fine.

In all we are faring well. We have set up a hospital in the the French Qarter bar in the hotel, and will start admitting patients today. Many will be from the hotel, but many will not. We are anticipating dealing with multiple medical problems, medications and and acute injuries. Infection and perhaps even cholera are anticipated major problems. Food and water shortages are imminent.

The biggest question to all of us is where is the National Guard. We hear jet fignters and helicopte! rs, but no real armed presence, and hence the rampant looting. There is no Red Cross and no Salvation Army.

In a sort of cliché way, this is an edifying experience. One is rapidly focused away from the transient and material to the bare necessities of life. It has been challenging to me to learn how to be a primary care phyisican. We are under martial law so return to our homes is impossible. I don't know how long it will be and this is my greatest fear. Despite it all, this is a soul-edifying experience. The greatest pain is to think about the loss. And how long the rebuid will take. And the horror of so many dead people .

PLEASE SEND THIS DISPATCH TO ALL YOU THING MAY BE INTERSTED IN A DISPATCH from the front. I will send more according to your interest. Hopefully their collective prayers will be answered. By the way, suture packs, sterile gloves and stethoscopes will be needed as the Ritz turns into a MASH

Greg Henderson



This second one is taken from a report from our church in the area:


Katrina’s devastation may be the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. Over a million people have been displaced from their homes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama by savage winds and murky, rising floodwaters contaminated with sewage and bodies. Eighty-five percent of New Orleans is under water and rescue workers are marking X’s on houses that contain the dead.

Martial law has been declared in the city and all residents are being asked to leave. All the lanes on all the roads around New Orleans are one way—leading out. Coastal cities and towns in Mississippi and Alabama have been devastated by the tidal surge.

Ole Christensen, President of the Denham Springs Stake (of the LDS church) and chairman of the regional welfare committee, gave the most graphic description, “It reminds me of the chaos in 3 Nephi.” That completes the picture. Utter catastrophe. The face of the world changed.

“I’m sure the people then were probably numb too,” said President Christensen. You really don’t have time to think about it because the phone never stops ringing.”

“This is something you think will never happen,” said his wife, Joyce.

Most of us are experiencing Katrina’s wake through television images of desperate people who have become refugees with no place to go, huddled in the Superdome or climbing, drenched out of water, saying they have no food, no water and no one to tell them what to do.

Latter-day Saints knew immediately knew what to do. When the storm hit, Priesthood leaders began what is an ongoing assessment of the whereabouts and well-being of the members. The Church has announced that all missionaries were evacuated before the storm hit. There are no reported deaths or injuries of members although many have not been accounted for.

President Christensen said the Baton Rouge temple was undamaged, though it lost its power for a period of time. Of the 43 buildings in the five stakes of his region, most of buildings sustained little or slight damage, except for those buildings in the areas hardest hit—the New Orleans Stake and the Slidell Stake. Because communications has been nearly impossible with those regions, the fate of many of those buildings is still uncertain.

“My best guess” said President Christensen, “is that two of the buildings in the Slidell area have some water in them. We do not have reports out of some areas—even by satellite phone.

“The New Orleans Stake is a whole different story. We believe that the New Orleans stake center has water in it We have no idea what has happened to the chapel in Port Sulphur. The worst scenario is that it is now part of the Gulf of Mexico, but, of course, we just don’t know.

“We received a report that some members were stranded on the west bank of New Orleans and that President Scott Conlin has organized a caravan of vans to see if he can go pick them up.

As of Wednesday, approximately 10 meetinghouses throughout the disaster area were being used as emergency shelters for members and their neighbors. Many of these had two or three hundred people or more in them.

President Conlin had also developed a warning system and evacuation plan for the New Orleans stake which was put into place this past weekend. This stake has an automated phone system so that the stake president put in a prerecorded message on Saturday and again on Sunday morning that rang into 1700 homes. The message was to evacuate the city. If they weren’t leaving their homes, they were given an 800 number so they could report where they were going to me.

The evacuation plan called for people to go to three different stake centers—two in Mississippi and one in Louisiana that were near the three major arteries that lead out of the city. A member knew which one to go based on the highway that was closest to him.

Of course, there is no way to estimate at this point how many people have lost their homes. “These people are displaced,” said Joyce Christensen. They can’t go home. They have nothing to go home to. We’re still just processing what has happened.”

Though Slidell was one of the hardest hit areas, the Bishop’s Storehouse, which is nearly new, only suffered a bit of water damage when water from the storm leaked through the waters and doors. The power grid was badly damaged and it may take as many as eight to twelve weeks to restore electricity. (Bishop’s Storehouse is part of the LDS church welfare system which helps out members who are out of work/ill etc and run into temporary difficulties. Members contribute monthly towards the storehouse which in turn then helps out those in need.)

At the storehouse, a generator was immediately put to work and commodities continued to roll out the door.

Kevin Nield, director of Bishops' Storehouse Services, said that to this point the Church had responded with 14 semi-trailers full of necessities like water, tents, sleeping bags, tarps, chainsaws, generators, canned food and hygiene kits. When the Church saw the storm danger, “simultaneously we sent supplies to be pre-positioned in those locations to be close to the needs.”

Needs are assessed by priesthood leaders with some guidance based on the experience of the welfare department. Every evening priesthood leaders have been on a conference call with officers in SaltLake so that the Church can be appropriately responsive to needs.

Bennie Lilly, Area Welfare Manager for the North American Southeast Area, talked to Meridian from the Slidell bishop’s storehouse. “It’s hot and humid here. People are tired. About 10,000 members live in this area who have been affected by Katrina.

“Where I am standing, I see a tree that has fallen through the roof of a house and just beyond that a church that has lost its roof. There is no water, but still Bishop David Navo of the Mississipi Picayune Ward is here getting commodities for his hard-struck members.”

Housed in a Church

Bishop Navo’s ward members have no communications whatsoever. (an LDS “ward” is like a C of E parish and the LDS Bishop the equivalent of the C of E vicar) No cell phones. No pay phones. No electricity. Stores are closed, but Wal-Mart is letting a few people in at a time to buy items with cash.

Limbs, trees and branches are down everywhere and many of the roads are nearly impassable. Katrina’s eye passed over Picayune and so they were hit hard.

“Oak trees so big that you couldn’t put your arms around their trunk went down,” he said.

Bishop Navo cannot contact every ward member, so the night before the storm hit, he and his family moved into the Church to be there in case any members had to find shelter there. Come they did, by the scores. They pooled what food they had. The storm hit and the next day misery set in with soaring temperatures and no water and food.

Thus Bishop Navo came to the Slidell bishop’s storehouse for food, water and generators to supply the needs of those living in the church.

What especially pleased him, however, was that a woman who had adopted two special needs children received something she desperately needed. When the children got too hot, they had a tendency to go into seizures, and she needed a generator to keep them cool. Bishop Navo made sure she received the first generator from the Church’s supplies.

Of course people will need more than commodities as the awful realization bears down day in and out of what they’ve lost. LDS Social Services is sending help into the area to support member’s emotional needs—almost a kind of grief counseling. People are reaching out to each other with open homes and open hearts.

And in the long run? How will people rebuild lost homes and opportunities, swallowed under floodwaters or howling winds? That will take a longer assessment.

For New Orleans to be habitable again, they will have to start from the ground up with a completely new infrastructure—including roads and power.

Personally I'm totally lost for words to express how I feel about this disaster. I cannot begin to imagine the horror of it although hearing reports from inside the area makes it all the more real and personal somehow.. I totally agree that those who are looting for food etc to stay alive cannot be regarded in the same light as criminals who are stealing things they do not need. It's all about survival. Perhaps New Orleans just simply won't exist after this. Looking at the aerial photographs it is difficult to imagine how it can ever be restored. Would people want to live there again with the danger hanging over them? Would it be possible to rehouse them in a safer area?