[Mb-civic] Patients evacuated in massive airlift - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Patients evacuated in massive airlift
La. airport used as field hospital

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff  |  September 4, 2005

KENNER, La. -- A massive medical evacuation unparalleled in US history 
has used armadas of military helicopters to pick up patients stranded by 
Hurricane Katrina in flooded hospitals, in nursing homes, and on the 
streets of New Orleans and to ferry them to a field hospital at the 
city's airport.

Hundreds of patients, some gasping and trembling, were delivered to the 
temporary, makeshift hospital in the arrival and departure terminals at 
Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in this suburb.

Medical personnel said patients were arriving faster than they could be 
screened and transferred by air to beds available in the region, leaving 
about 500 yesterday on canvas stretchers in waiting areas, concourses to 
gates, and even on baggage carousels. One clutch of patients rested 
under an advertisement that read, ''Looking for a hotel room?"

Disaster medical teams from around the country raced from one patient to 
the next, attempting to assess and stabilize their conditions. The air 
outside the airport filled with the thwack-thwack of helicopters. 
Inside, pockets of air filled with the stench of illness.

Doctors and nurses, weary from 12-hour shifts, conceded that some 
patients were so severely ill they would not leave the airport alive.

The medical director of the field hospital, Art French, a Coast Guard 
doctor from Washington, D.C., estimated that as many as 50 patients had 
died at the airport, many of them elderly with chronic medical conditions.

A morgue was established just down from the Delta and Continental ticket 
counters.

''We have people dying in an airport terminal alone," said French. 
''What a sad way to go."

French said about 1,000 patients had arrived each day since Wednesday, 
for a total of about 4,000 through yesterday.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/09/04/patients_evacuated_in_massive_airlift/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050904/34d35aa1/attachment.htm