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Two Weeks in a Steam Bath
by Linda Seeley


When Hurricane Katrina hit, I knew I had to go help. I was glued to the radio and internet news reports. Hearing the voice of a nurse reporting from Charity Hospital, telling the world how they had received no help – no food, water, emergency evacuation – for five and six days after Katrina, keeping their patients alive by hand-bagging, and sustaining each other by giving IV fluids, the “nurse” in me had to go.

I started my quest by going to the local Red Cross headquarters, thinking they could use the services of a nurse practitioner and certified nurse-midwife. How wrong I was. The Red Cross will not send a physician or any other licensed professional health care provider to work under its auspices. You can volunteer with them, but you will be restricted to handing out over-the-counter medications and referring to local hospitals and clinics. But the problem in New Orleans was that all local hospitals and clinics were closed.

So then I registered with the US Department of Health and Human Services, who were compiling a data bank for licensed health professionals who wanted to practice their professions. I received back from them an email stating they had over 33,000 health care professionals in their data base, and that they didn’t need my services at the moment.

I believed them. What a relief! So many health professionals were in the hurricane-ravaged area that people’s needs were being met. What a great system we have here in the USA!

Then I received an email from Michael Moore. He reported that in most areas of New Orleans where people were still living, there were NO medical services available, and in the backwater bayou regions, people had never even caught a glimpse of the Red Cross or FEMA. He talked about Common Ground Clinic, a grass-roots, newly-formed health care facility housed in a mosque and staffed entirely by volunteers in Algiers, a neighborhood of New Orleans that had not been flooded. I called them.

Two days later, my friend Judelon LaSalle, an RN, and I were on the plane bound for Houston, just in the wake of Hurricane Rita. When we got off the plane, Houston looked like a ghost town. We were virtually the only people on the highway to New Orleans, and we saw giant steel girders bent over like pretzels, houses without roofs or walls, football stadiums filled with water.

We drove into New Orleans around midnight on September 23rd. There were no street lights, the heat was oppressive, and the streets were crawling with humvees with armed soldiers hanging out the sides to cool off. When we arrived at the Common Ground clinic, we spread our bedrolls on the floor, along with 15-20 other people. It was hot, clammy, and noisy. I barely slept a wink. Next morning began our strange, wearisome, and joyful journey.

I spent the next day at a church, giving vaccines to 65 souls who straggled in from throughout the City to pick up food, water, and clothing in the 100+ degree heat. Back at the clinic, Judelon and other volunteers saw over 140 people with various health problems, ranging from high blood pressure and diabetes to post-traumatic shock, heat-related illnesses, and skin lesions from exposure to toxic mud.

After working at the clinic for several days, we left New Orleans and headed out to the Bayou at DuLac, a finger of land in the Gulf of Mexico about 2? hours southwest of New Orleans. There, Cajuns, Creoles, and Native Americans, all mixed together, speaking a patois of French and English, live on the water – shrimp, crab, oyster harvesters – at home with hurricanes. They say they’ve never seen such a hurricane as these two, Katrina and Rita. Four weeks after Katrina, the water’s still knee-high, and there is no way they can return to their homes. At the local shelter, set up in a Knights of Columbus hall that was on high ground, we give tetanus vaccine while listening to Cajun music from the next room. We eat shrimp jambalaya and white beans prepared by the local priest and his helpers; they made 700 pounds of it this morning, and most of it is gone.

One huge difference I notice between the people of the Bayou and of the City is here everyone knows everyone else; in fact, most of them seem to be related in one way or another. They are aware of each other’s needs, a real sense of community. I feel deep inside that these people will be all right. Their fabric of love and friendship has been strengthened by their suffering. Relatives are housing them. And all of them intend to rebuild and live on their own land.

In the shelter in Houma, in great contrast, are people from the City who have nowhere to go – people lacking community. They are suspicious, and angry at the government and each other. Most are renters, and most had no insurance to cover their losses. They don’t know what will become of them. Many fear that friends and family are dead. Many say they will never return to New Orleans. They saw too much, suffered too long waiting for help. I speak to Millie, a thin, elderly woman wearing a hair net. Her blood pressure is 200/100. She hasn’t been taking her medication. She reports she was in her attic for three days after the hurricane, watching the corpse of her neighbor float in her yard. Finally, a fisherman from the Bayou came in his own boat and rescued her and her son. Every night, she says, she dreams of water.

Now that I am home, I, too, dream of water and mud every night. I feel connected to the people of Louisiana, and I want to go back to help some more. The devastation covers an area the size of Great Britain. Corporate carpetbaggers inhabit the downtown luxury hotels where they sign no-bid contracts worth $65 Billion to “rebuild” New Orleans and the Gulf area. In the meantime, the City of New Orleans just laid off 3,000 city workers because they don’t have the money to pay them. I don’t have answers, but I do have questions.


Linda Seeley is a nurse-midwife and the director of the Terra Foundation. She has lived in SLO for 24 years, is a mother and grandmother, and loves the Earth with all her heart.


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