2005 - 09-05-04

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 Charity
Hospital 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 are
admirably 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. There are ID 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 7 doctors
and PA 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 fulll of water.
We basically scooped the entire drug sets
into gargace bags and removed them. All
under police excort. The looters had to be
held back at gun point. 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 with be from the hotel, but
many with not. We are anticipating to
dealing with multiple medical problems,
medications and and acute injuries.
Infection and perhaps even cholera are
anticipated major problems. Food and water
shortages are iminent.

The biggest question to all of us is where
is the national guard. We hear jet fighters
and helicopters, but no real armed presence,
and hence the rampant looting. There is no
Red Cross and no Salvation Army.