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HURRICANE KATRINA Previous Volume 353:1545 October 13, 2005 Number 15 Next

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When Hurricane Katrina hit, my wife and I responded in a fashion common to many New Orleans residents: we "vertically evacuated" to the lower floors of one of the city's larger hotels. This had been a successful routine for many years. But when the storm blew out the windows in our hotel room, we were obliged to take up residence in an exhibit hall, along with more than 1000 other people, and to live there without power, air conditioning, and water for the next six days.

There, I witnessed some stressful medical situations. Elderly patients from nursing homes with physical illnesses and disabilities, including Alzheimer's disease, as well as patients with emotional problems, had been evacuated to the same large exhibit hall. There were patients with cardiac disease and patients who had long required hemodialysis. There were two families with two-month-old babies. It was difficult, if not impossible, to obtain necessary medications — as I discovered firsthand when I tried unsuccessfully to get an ophthalmic steroid for my corneal grafts.

Eventually, most of the nursing home residents and patients with Alzheimer's were transferred to relatively unaffected nursing homes. Several patients were transferred to our hospital's dialysis center, which could address their medical needs, if not the stress that arose from the lack of availability of their personal physicians and dialysis technicians.

The rest of us remained in the hotel, trapped by the flooding caused by the rupture of levees and by the rioting that spread from the nearby Superdome to the hotel and many areas in the city's business district. Fortunately, the police protected the hotel from the rioting, but as the evacuees were brought through the ground floor from the Superdome to waiting buses, many relieved themselves on the floor, further fouling the environment.

Having experienced the trauma of this event myself, I am certain that social and behavioral problems will emerge in many victims of Katrina — owing to the displacement of families, the loss of family members and friends, the devastation of homes, the separation of people from their culture, the loss of income, and the disruption of community and social networks.

Source Information

Ochsner Clinic Foundation, New Orleans

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