on site

Will try to be more brief. Just wrote a page and 1/2 and the wind blew the satellite com on the roof. We're here and it's up and running. Has been an exhausting few days but we're happy to be here. You may have guessed from the media reports that things were a little rough for a while. We were having much trouble finding an appropriate place to depoly. Our initial mission was to support the Regional Med Ctr in Boloxi. However, they had done an incredible job of restructuring and had gottem back on their feet. On our inspection of the site, we felt there was no mission. At least the kiond we felt we could and should respond to. That's when we hit a roadblock. Our calls to redeploy to an area of need fell on deaf ears. Thanks to hard work and persistance, we managed to create a redeployment to the eye of the storm. Many thanks to Jeff Guy at Vanderbilt who was very helpful and instrumental in getting our plight out. Bottom line - eveyone dod the right thing and we're in the eye of the storm. We deployed to ground Zero, a little place called Waveland between gulfport and New Orleans. The eye went right over us. The devastation here is complete. We arrived at night and wirked through the night into the morning to set up camp. We're in a demolished strip mall in front of a Super K. Unbeleivable. You won't beleive the pictures. Our SWAT team and a local demo truck pulled flooded cars from the are and piled them to creae a sound perimeter. We put the SWAT team in PPE and they crawled around the buildings scouting for our perimeter protection. They found 8 bodies on the roof. Apparently the flood waters rose above the roofs. 40 bodies in the Walmart next door. Alligators and coppermouths. But we're safe. Really. Can't Pee without a guard with an M-16. Ben is doing recon in a helo looking for refugees. I just got back from the DMAT sytem depllyed at New Hanover Hospital. Destroyed. I managed to get some sterilization equipmengt and TA-55's. Business is booming. As word gets out, more and more patients are arriving. Bowel obstructions, MVC's, dehydrated children, wounds, lacs, you name it. Taking lots of x-rays, sending out free meds. Since we're here, infrastructure is being built around us. When we arrived, there were whole families in the parking lots. A liitle city with nothing. Now a tent city is being buit next us. CNN is here, helo's flying over constantly. I'm going to work now on arranging a LZ for the helos. I'm happy we're here. A rough couple days, but now eveything is moving right along. Happy to be here. Love to Mel, Jackon, and Berk. By the way, our first patient was a puppy with dehydration and some nasty skin disease. Doing O.K. on a cardboard box under the hospital.
Chip