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08-06-2015, 11:26 PM
Ten years ago this month Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and Eastern Louisiana and Mississippi. It was a ferocious storm, Category Five with winds topping 125 miles an hour. Many Americans watched television coverage, in horror, seeing scenes of residents being rescued by Coast Guard Helicopter off the roofs of their flooded homes. There were reports of alligators swimming around flooded buildings on Canal Street.
Hurricane Katrina also showed the poverty of New Orleans. This city, rich in history and culture, known for its exquisite building architecture, its food and music was also revealed to display a lot of suffering due to years of neglect regarding the lack of educational, vocational and medical resources for its citizens.
In 2006 I would begin my tenure as Officer In Charge, for Behavioral Health And Traumatic Brain Injury at Medical Task Force Camp Shelby, MS ( a two hour distance Northeast of New Orleans). I was serving on active duty at the time with the Medical Service Corps as a Clinical Social Worker for the Army Reserve. I would spend many weekends visiting a Navy Chaplain friend of mine who lived in Belle Chasse, La (on the West Bank ).
The drive into New Orleans from Slidell, LA was always a revelation. I would drive a good twenty-five miles along I-10 west towards the city and the landscape would be reminiscent of the set of the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunder dome.
Indeed, the scene was apocryphal. The Six Flags Amusement park located along I-10 was completely demolished with only a partial skeleton of its roller coaster still intact. Blocks and blocks of devastated homes and debris in the streets stretched out before your eyes. This scene was not only true in 2006 but it continued this way into 2007 and 2008. I would always think to myself "If Hurricane Katrina would have hit Greenwich, CT would the timeliness of the response have been different?"
The suffering of the residents of New Orleans was equally alarming. In the Fall of 2006,I attended a church conference in New Orleans, La at a historic church located up in the Upper Garden District. That day I met at least six ministers from my denomination who were all suffering from Major Depression. They told me that they would have to wait over eight months to get an appointment with a Primary Care Physician. At that time there were only twenty-two Psychiatrists left in New Orleans. Ochsner Medical Center, on the West Bank, was the only medical center that was in operation at the time.
I remember preaching at a Presbyterian Church and at a Unitarian-Universalist Church on Jefferson Street and you could still see the flood water lines on the walls of the church sanctuaries ( this was two years post storm ). The flood lines were over six feet high.
Initially, when the storm hit, many people evacuated from the city. The original population of 450,000 dwindled down to about 200,000. Many of the diaspora migrated to Atlanta, Ga and to Houston,Austin and San Antonio, TX. For weeks Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX served as a site for emergency housing, medical care, social service support and disaster recovery. Mental Health services began to be available in the weeks that followed the initial crisis.
The fallout of Mental Health suffering has been evident in New Orleans for years after the storm. Right before I left Camp Shelby, MS in the winter of 2009 to move to Fort McPherson, Ga ( in Atlanta ), I facilitated a training on dealing with holiday stress. The training was held at the previously mentioned historic church in the Upper Garden District. I will never forget an African-American woman, who was a congregant of one of the local churches, who survived the storm. Her depression was constant and her symptoms in 2009 were worse than what she experienced in 2005; also she had no access to any quality medical and mental health care.
It's now 10 years later. New Orleans has made a tremendous come back as a city. The New Orleans Saints have won the Super Bowl. Thousands of people continue to flock to the New Orleans Heritage And Jazz Festival every Spring. The population of New Orleans is back to 378,715 (2013 ) New Orleans (city) QuickFacts from the U.S Census Bureau (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/.../2255000.html).
Life has returned and it appears to be better than ever for the " Big Easy." I am glad for New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast region for it is too rich an area with its history, culture, food and music to be lost. We need to celebrate its return and its life. We also need to learn from the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina regarding how we can better save lives and property and promote quicker healing both medically, mentally and spiritually when the next storm hits again. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Hurricane Katrina also showed the poverty of New Orleans. This city, rich in history and culture, known for its exquisite building architecture, its food and music was also revealed to display a lot of suffering due to years of neglect regarding the lack of educational, vocational and medical resources for its citizens.
In 2006 I would begin my tenure as Officer In Charge, for Behavioral Health And Traumatic Brain Injury at Medical Task Force Camp Shelby, MS ( a two hour distance Northeast of New Orleans). I was serving on active duty at the time with the Medical Service Corps as a Clinical Social Worker for the Army Reserve. I would spend many weekends visiting a Navy Chaplain friend of mine who lived in Belle Chasse, La (on the West Bank ).
The drive into New Orleans from Slidell, LA was always a revelation. I would drive a good twenty-five miles along I-10 west towards the city and the landscape would be reminiscent of the set of the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunder dome.
Indeed, the scene was apocryphal. The Six Flags Amusement park located along I-10 was completely demolished with only a partial skeleton of its roller coaster still intact. Blocks and blocks of devastated homes and debris in the streets stretched out before your eyes. This scene was not only true in 2006 but it continued this way into 2007 and 2008. I would always think to myself "If Hurricane Katrina would have hit Greenwich, CT would the timeliness of the response have been different?"
The suffering of the residents of New Orleans was equally alarming. In the Fall of 2006,I attended a church conference in New Orleans, La at a historic church located up in the Upper Garden District. That day I met at least six ministers from my denomination who were all suffering from Major Depression. They told me that they would have to wait over eight months to get an appointment with a Primary Care Physician. At that time there were only twenty-two Psychiatrists left in New Orleans. Ochsner Medical Center, on the West Bank, was the only medical center that was in operation at the time.
I remember preaching at a Presbyterian Church and at a Unitarian-Universalist Church on Jefferson Street and you could still see the flood water lines on the walls of the church sanctuaries ( this was two years post storm ). The flood lines were over six feet high.
Initially, when the storm hit, many people evacuated from the city. The original population of 450,000 dwindled down to about 200,000. Many of the diaspora migrated to Atlanta, Ga and to Houston,Austin and San Antonio, TX. For weeks Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX served as a site for emergency housing, medical care, social service support and disaster recovery. Mental Health services began to be available in the weeks that followed the initial crisis.
The fallout of Mental Health suffering has been evident in New Orleans for years after the storm. Right before I left Camp Shelby, MS in the winter of 2009 to move to Fort McPherson, Ga ( in Atlanta ), I facilitated a training on dealing with holiday stress. The training was held at the previously mentioned historic church in the Upper Garden District. I will never forget an African-American woman, who was a congregant of one of the local churches, who survived the storm. Her depression was constant and her symptoms in 2009 were worse than what she experienced in 2005; also she had no access to any quality medical and mental health care.
It's now 10 years later. New Orleans has made a tremendous come back as a city. The New Orleans Saints have won the Super Bowl. Thousands of people continue to flock to the New Orleans Heritage And Jazz Festival every Spring. The population of New Orleans is back to 378,715 (2013 ) New Orleans (city) QuickFacts from the U.S Census Bureau (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/.../2255000.html).
Life has returned and it appears to be better than ever for the " Big Easy." I am glad for New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast region for it is too rich an area with its history, culture, food and music to be lost. We need to celebrate its return and its life. We also need to learn from the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina regarding how we can better save lives and property and promote quicker healing both medically, mentally and spiritually when the next storm hits again. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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