I can’t even wrap my brain around all the devastation in New Orleans right now. I keep wanting to watch the news and see something good, but I just keep hearing bad news. Don’t read if you don’t want to be depressed. I know it now though, so I have to tell you.
There was a man that could not get to his mother in a nursing home. She called everyday and said “when are they coming to get me?” On Monday, he told her “tomorrow, mama.” She called the next day and he told her to hang on one more day. That happened every day last week. She drowned on Friday.
A woman stopped a New Orleans police officer and asked for help and he told her to “go to hell. It’s every man for himself out here.” Nice.
A little boy that is six years old was found wandering on the median of I-10. He had six little children under the age of six clinging to him. He had been taking care of them for a full week by himself. They were separated from their parents. He did not even know all of their names. Okay, I guess this story actually gets good. They posted them on the National Clearinghouse for Missing Children site and the Mom found them from the shelter in San Antonio, TX. They have all been reunited now.
Please remember: the media LOVES to focus on the negative. The media is the reason that the nation is divided in this time when we should be united.
For every one story of tragidy that is printed, there are dozens more of people helping, saving, loving, and giving their all to help us while we are down.
For example:
Disasters always spawn heroes.
On Sept. 11, 2001, many of them wore dark blue uniforms that said FDNY.
On Sept. 1, 2005, many wore hospital scrubs that said MD, RN and EMT. Thousands of health care workers stayed with patients in devastated hospitals after the storm struck. Thousands more rushed in to help.
They are people like Dr. Norman McSwain, a legendary, 68-year-old Tulane University trauma surgeon who on Sept. 1 waded through fetid floodwaters to get out word that thousands of people were trapped in hospitals running out of food and water.
And Dr. Rich Tabor, a 38-year-old Bethlehem, Pa., emergency medicine physician who got partners to cover his shifts and paid $520 out of his own pocket for a plane ticket to Louisiana, where he climbed into an airboat and went door-to-door with rescue workers.
And Barry Albertson Jr., 42, a paramedic from Easton, Pa., who missed his 7-year-old son’s first peewee football game to join a caravan of ambulances making the 30-hour trip to New Orleans.
And Dr. Lee Garvey, 48, an emergency room doctor at Carolinas Medical Center who dropped everything to staff a state-of-the-art mobile hospital that provided the only trauma care for seven devastated counties in rural Mississippi.
“We’re here because this is what we live to do,” Garvey said, “trying to offer something to these people.”
The only way to cope is to remember that the city is swarming with people like the above mentioned. WE WILL SURVIVE!
Comment by ta — September 10, 2005 @ 12:35 am